on the full moon in leo and your creative hearth
and also on overwhelm
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Before we get into the ICYMI & Full Moon of it all, I want to say a quick hello to a truly ridiculous number of new subscribers, most of whom are here from my unfortunately evergreen January 2024 essay on how Substack continues to fuck up in regard to far right fascism. Welcome! I’m glad you’re here.
In the spirit of (re)introduction, I want to offer the following affirmations — that at this newsletter, we say firmly, in the words of our foremother Marsha P. Johnson, no Pride for some of us without liberation for all of us. That means Palestine, that means Indigenous folks, that means those who are disabled and chronically ill, that means my trans and gender non-conforming family.
any excuse to share brennan lee mulligan’s in-game rant about how laws are threats
Justice is a word that gets thrown around like buzzy marketing these days, but justice — real justice — often has very little to do with the law and everything to do with worldview and perspective, with a commitment to people over profits, with right relationship and empathy.
And so the astrology we do here at Astrology for Writers has very, very little to do with how you can use astrology to extract something for yourself (per capitalism) and everything to do with relationship: with understanding Creativity as a spirit we have a lifelong friendship with, with approaching ideas and stories as spirits to co-collaborate with rather than assume the onus of responsibility (per individualism). Sometimes I also interview other authors, or talk about the business of publishing, or dive more into witchcraft. But mostly, it’s astrology and writing — through that lens of relationship and co-creation.
If that sounds like something you fuck with, I’m truly so happy you’re here. If not, I wish you merry travels on your creative journey!
ICYMI
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Everyone I know is tired and overwhelmed.
Me. My wife. Our friends. In part, this is because it’s February here in the Northern Hemisphere, so I’ve been pacing around my house bastardizing T.S. Eliot, muttering how February is the cruelest month. The body has to exert so much energy to stay warm when it’s cold outside: energy that I would prefer to put towards other endeavors, but instead I’m just trying to warm up after walking 20 minutes to and from the bookstore to pick up my special order.
tl;dr: This week has had big Please Don’t Make Me Leave The House energy, and not only because we are already tired from the jump scare “breaking news” alerts. Between the weather, the lack of light, and the monstrousness of what’s happening in our nation and our world — well. No one I know is okay.
Plus, it’s a full moon.
The Full Moon is exact at 24* Leo at 8:53am Eastern on Wednesday, February 12th, and it is okay if you are too overwhelmed to (literally, metaphorically) leave your house.
More than, actually.
This Full Moon, which is having a very intimate conversation/debate with both messenger Mercury and disrupter Uranus, wants to make sure we’re all clear on our capacity. That we are communicating our capacity to those around us, especially people intimately involved in our day-to-day. And also that we are nourishing the spirit as well as the body, because acting out of sync with your values/capacity is (per Uranus) going to have ~unexpected consequences.~
For writers, this looks like taking a more (lower case c) conservative approach to the work this week. True, Mercury-Uranus being involved in a lunation can sometimes bring a big download of information/inspiration. If that happens for you, amazing. Ride the light, if you can get on it. But, especially under the current conditions (winter illness and fatigue; living under fascism!) it can also mean pushing yourself (or your tech) to the point of fritzing out. We want to move at a speed that doesn’t cause a systems crash.
And this can mean not trying to go full tilt at a speed that was comfortable for your younger self — or maybe just your ideal self. This means being very realistic about where your body is and where your creative practice is. This means literally slowing down (we’re still in Mars Rx!) and also slowing down our expectations.
No one benefits from comparing themselves to an idealized, fictional version of their capacity.
And so this Full Moon in Leo, I’d like to invite us all to gather around a warm hearth.
We aren’t doing a productivity sprint.
We aren’t grinding grinding grinding.
We aren’t berating ourselves for “not writing enough.”
We are simply sitting in front of the fireplace and inviting our creative ideas to join us.
I mean this very literally. Pour yourself some coffee or tea or another beverage of your choosing, and imagine that you’re having a conversation with your project. You can journal or use a divinatory tool like the tarot to do this — but simply thinking or speaking aloud can work, too.
What does your project want, right now? (Attention? Time? Offerings? A playlist?) What do you have the capacity to give your project right now? What is a gentle way that you might touch base and say “hello” to the spirit of your project every now and then, without finding yourself sucked into the current of guilt or shame?
Personally, I like to keep a book altar for my current project(s). And Leo lunations are an ideal time to set one up, or to simply designate space on a bookshelf or cabinet for the spirit of Your Current Creative Project to live. I talk to mine every day, and light candles most days. I’m touching base, checking in, even if I’m not literally writing that day.
We send random memes and “thinking of you” texts, communicating our capacity in relationships — so why not in creative projects?
The good news about creating or tending a creative hearth is that it gets to live in the home, moving at your own pace. It doesn’t require you to leave your house, to go out into the world, to trudge through icy New York City sidewalks or to drive down a similarly iced over road. You don’t have to go sit at a coffeeshop or attend a literary reading or sign up for a class. Your creativity doesn’t ask you to overexert yourself to the point of illness or panic; that’s probably capitalism, baby.
Your job as the writer is just to sit with your project, the two of you, discovering what it wants to be.
Sending you all so much love and peace this Full Moon — and may the Mercury-Uranus of it all lead to an insightful creative surprise.
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I needed that today. Thank you ❤️
Thanks. I needed that.