It begins in less than 48 hours.
For those who are burned out and disillusioned.
Feeling uncertain of the next step.
Ready to remember what excited them about storytelling before capitalism got its claws in you.
I’m excited to go on this journey with you.
To root down and remember why we are here in the first place.
Something I’ve been asked, in the lead-up to this cloister, is Why Venus?
Since the cloister is, itself, not an astrology class, but rather a container dedicated to creative recovery… why tie it, thematically, to Venus’ Retrograde? Especially when I spend so much time at this newsletter talking about Mercury. When I announced that I was sharing a new offering a month ago, a number of folks publicly predicted it to be Mercury-related.
Here’s the thing. While Mercury rules writing (and also commerce), I think it is vital to also remember that Venus is into art for art's sake. Pleasure for pleasure's sake.
Mythologically, Venus is the patron of artists, of creation, of beauty, of aesthetic.
The Venusian, in (for lack of a better word) white, Protestant, Western culture is profoundly undervalued, and not only undervalued, but condemned as sinful.
So, when Venus stations retrograde — which she does every 18 months or so — it is an opportunity to reflect on the pleasures, care, and simple, decidedly non-monetarily productive creations and resources we have neglected or denied ourselves.
Human creativity — our desire to make — is Venusian in nature.
Venus Genetrix, the Roman poet Lucretius called her: the creative element of the world.
If we are to spend an extended period of time in a metaphorical/metaphysical cloister tending to our creative nourishment, when better to do so than during her retrograde?
Roses & Thorns: A Venus Retrograde Cloister for Creative Recovery, a 6-week journey to the underworld of ourselves — and back again — begins this Saturday.
The cloister, which will work with the Descent of Inanna, includes:
weekly 20-45 pre-recorded messages from yours truly, including one week with guest teacher, my dear friend and fellow astrologer Diana Rose Harper
weekly live calls for questions & conversation
an interactive Discord community (which opens tomorrow!)
and additional choose-your-own-adventure supports, such as:
daily Mary Oliver poems
weekly astrology guides, including the moons of the week
a witchcraft syllabus
an artistic syllabus
an Ella Enchanted book club, which will feature its own final live call at the cloister’s end
I hope to see you there, that we might gather round the Leo bonfire and restore and reignite our creativity together.