creativity through the houses

an announcement!!!

tl;dr new project on creativity through the houses with the wonderful

Maeg Keane

just dropped. read for more!

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I’ve been thinking about the astrology of creativity for a long time.

How folks’ preferences in building a creative practice show up in a birth chart, definitely. But also how creativity is shot through the whole damn chart. I did readings focused on the 3rd house, where I put writing and writing routines, for a few years, but ultimately retired them because if that specific reading taught me anything (and it taught me a lot), it’s that the practice of art-making can’t diagnosed in a single house of the chart. You can start to hone in on it through examining a planet, or the 3rd house, or even the 5th (where dwells our creative and erotic life force). But working with countless artists and writers over the years has taught me that you have to look to the chart in its entirety.

There’s a famous quote, “the whole is greater than the sum of its parts.” It’s often attributed to Aristotle, but what he actually said in Book VIII, 1045a.8–10 of Metaphysics (translated in 1908 by W.D. Ross) is, “the totality is not, as it were, a mere heap, but the whole is something besides the parts.” I think that considering Creativity — as a being, as a spirit, as a practice — ends up looking something like this: that the whole (our relationship to creativity) is something beside, and not the same as, the individual elements of that make up our specific artistic interests, schedules, and routines.

But given that the whole of Creativity is about as unknowable as god (whatever god is to you), a thorough review of specific elements can at least offer some insight with which to move forward.

Like, say, the 12 houses in your birth chart.

am i capable of not using a barbie gif, is the question

In the last year of writing a book proposal (and sample chapters) based on this newsletter, I’ve done a lot of sifting and sorting about how best to organize my thoughts around the astrology of Creativity. An impossible task for which I’m making peace with inevitable failure; even a textbook-length treatise on the interconnectedness of creativity and astrology would not be sufficient.

I’ve been forced to drill down on what is actually reasonable in a book-length project, what is practical. Above all, what is most accessible to folks who aren’t looking for the technical hullaballoo and just want to know how they can apply it to their life? As essential as the houses are, they were deleted out of the proposal, axed by the martial Editor.

So imagine my delight when my dear friend

Maeg Keane

asked me if I’d want to do a joint lecture on creativity in the houses — not knowing that this was a topic I’d been sitting with, mourning the loss of in my own project.

Ideas on the cutting room floor rarely stay there. Ideas that most want to be birthed transform, adapting in form to something else.

I’m so very excited to announce that Maeg and I will be offering, for your creative and astrological edification, an approximately two-hour lecture on Creativity as she shows up in all 12 houses. It will be released on May 26th, but we wanted to offer a pre-sale with a 72 hour early bird discount (code: EARLYBIRD15 for 15% off) for folks who know this is for them.

Maeg is the only person I would do this lecture with. (In addition to the fact that they’re, you know, the one who asked me to do it in the first place.) They’re known for their readings on the 5th house, which are widely beloved and are deeply in conversation with my own previous 3rd house work, but more than that: Maeg is family.

I think that sometimes, it’s hard to tell which of your internet faves are actually IRL besties (and to be fair, I don’t think that anyone owes a list of their nearest and dearest to their audience). But this is important context: that Maeg and their spouse come over for dinner at Meg’s and my house almost every week, that we play D&D together (itself an act of playful co-creation!), that we talk business and life on an almost-daily basis. There’s an intimacy and trust with each others’ practice. An “I know my way around your kitchen,” if you will. I really, really fuck with how Maeg approaches astrology and creativity, and over the years we’ve developed enough client overlap for it to be worth remarking on. A collaboration was inevitable, and this is the perfect one to start with.

L to R: maeg’s spouse, maeg, my wife meg, and lexi (owner of astoria bookshop) at our very chill wedding reception that was literally in our house

Creativity Through the Houses, a pre-recorded lecture, will be available for download on May 26th. Early Bird discount (15% off!) is today through May 7th, with code EARLYBIRD15.

This lecture is for…

• Anyone who values creativity in their own life and wants to understand what it might look like as expressed through different houses in the birth chart

• Working artists and writers, as well as folks with devoted practices in things they may not be comfortable calling Art

• Astrologers who see clients in creative fields and want to expand on their delineations

• Folks who fuck with mine and/or Maeg’s work, especially as represented by our 3rd and 5th house readings

yes we have a shared google doc divvying up tasks and taking notes and writing back and forth in it at the same time a la a text chat WHY DO YOU ASK

It’s my hope that this lecture, in helping ground you in the specific elements, ultimately deepens your relationship with Creativity as a whole.

Integration is a process, and astrology offers a kind of alchemical lens to understanding the world which can’t be summed up by any one class or workshop. But in paying attention to astrology and Creativity, and in meditating on how they influence each other and work together, we are brought deeper into intimacy and devotion with ourselves: the most creative act of all.