Cardinal air: Bonds, Promises, Endurance

This is the engine of storytelling – in any story, there is a winnowing of options, a set of choices that become a single choice. This is what makes the story resonate – we can feel the experience of the characters as they grapple with what we must, every day.

Cardinal air: zone rites, magic, intensity

What happens within the zone can be wild, magical, and sacred, so long as it is protected by the power of a safe container.

Cardinal air: curiosity, meandering, surprises.

The work exists because of you and your unique understanding of the world you are creating, so how could it ever disappear?

Cardinal air: mycelial networks, field notes, fungal categories

In The Museum of Atheism, each chapter begins with a description of the fungus that has taken over the town of Rosewood, where the action happens. These descriptions act as field notes about real and imagined fungal forms

Cardinal air: hoodwink, meditation, play.

This scene could be from a play or a photoshoot. The figure could be sitting for a portrait, or waiting for a lover to release them from a game.

Cardinal air: initiation, commitment, artistry.

Every artwork requires both sacrifice and desire.

Venus and the Moon.

Cardinal air: wild foxes, psychedelic spores, freezing air.

On Christmas night, a small girl is crowned at a pageant, before stumbling into the snowy darkness, alone, to meet her greatest fan

Cardinal air: harmony, nourishment, artists

I’m thinking about art about artmaking. My own process is in disarray at the moment, and I am finding solace and guidance in the work of other artists grappling with these questions.

Mutable earth: roses, funerary plants, secrets.

The sweetness of Venus, with the fast movement of Mercury, speeds up the border between ripeness and rot, and between freshness and decay.

Mutable earth: Homecoming, mortality, transition

This card feels like a hopeful and homely card to pull - it gives a sense of things being in their rightful place - but the ten gives a sense of the next transition to be to something else, another stage of life. For some of us, that transition is into the realm beyond life, and the spectre of death haunts this card and decan.

Mutable earth: reality blur, possession, bodies.

The film unspools like a dream. The actors slip in and out of character. It isn’t always clear which parts of their histories belong to them, and which to the characters they’re playing. Artifice and performance are made visible but also blurred.

Mutable earth: blackberries, ripeness and rot, thresholds, brambles, boundaries.

Virgo II is about late summer slipping into autumn. Melancholy and heavy ripeness. Delicious fruits that mark the end of the harvest.

Mutable earth: mint, clarity, lamplight, ancient traditions

This atmosphere is guided by Mercurial movement, freshness, and clarity. It is the clarity and coolness of mint tea on your tongue.

Mutable earth: the craft, inner circle, art

But the film is also about the daily grind of showing up. Showing up to your job when you want to work on your art. Showing up for your art when you’re exhausted from your job.

Mutable earth: tiny cauldron, communal rituals, the unexpected

Water in three vessels – a cauldron, a glass, and a jug, hit at regular intervals with water poured between them to change the pitch of the notes and traffic as a background carpet of sound.

In the first episode of season two, I have the pleasure of speaking with writer, editor, and playwright May Ngo. I talked to May about the process of writing her first novel, the whiteness of crime fiction, the traumas of academia, and how pregnancy is a Tower moment.

Fixed fire: blades forged in fire, revenge, steadfastness

For the proper adherence to ritual we had shaved our hair ultra-close, and smeared on a square of silver zinc.

Fixed fire: unearthly glow, blood red, full moon

Into the kidney dish she drops two eerily ice-preserved blossoms, bruised and tender, beside the ring which gleams lilac.