on the new moon in cancer & your story's ancestors

and prompts to identify them

Before we jump into the New Moon missive and some quick announcements, I want to affirm a few things about the ethos of this newsletter, which has been running for six years!, since my explicit discussion of current events seems to surprise people. Suffice it to say, if you believe that:

• creativity is spirituality

• attention is a form of devotion

• writing and astrology are both mindfulness practices that ultimately serve to bring us deeper into relationship with ourselves and the world around us

• spirituality and astrology are not and cannot be separated from our lived experiences of oppression and empire

then you’re in the right place.

ICYMI:

• TOMORROW!!! 🏳️‍🌈 Queer & trans writers: it’s time for my 4th annual Pride Publishing Q&A! Wednesday, June 25th at 1pm Eastern, totally free, zero sales promo. Answering your questions is the point! My agent Dana Murphy of Trellis Literary will once again be joining me to speak to your questions on the agent front! Free, but registration is required.

• Interested in mentorship? I’ve taken on a few mentees over the last few months and it has already been such a deeply rewarding experience for all parties — truly the kind of work I so love doing and am so nourished by. If you learn best 1:1 in a “pick your brain” style setting, fill out this inquiry to see if we’d be a good fit for working together!

The New Moon is exact at 4* of Cancer this Wednesday, June 25th at 6:31am Eastern.

With the moon coming off a conjunction to beneficent Jupiter and moving towards a sextile with agile Mars, it should be an energizing morning — especially since we will collectively have had 43 hours of a void-of-course moon for most of Monday and Tuesday!

And so the question becomes: where will we direct our energy? Because a New Moon in Cancer is an opportunity for the kind of creation that is born from reflection.

As we recently discussed, Cancer is part of the zodiacal axis most concerned with lineage and legacy. Cancer is cardinal water that holds life and death, but it is also the sign I most associate with history, nostalgia, and memory itself. Cancer is deeply protective because it knows the scope of what it is protecting. It knows the stakes. It keeps the score.

Cancer energy can help us better understand the traditions we are part of — and part of perpetuating. This lunation is an invitation to be unpack our notions of individual “genius,” to better appreciate the way that influence and Story are threaded through time. Releasing the need to be “totally original” in our writing and art is a way of popping the balloon of white supremacy in our own lives, of freeing ourselves from the pressure of singularity and embracing the collective from which we come.

This New Moon in Cancer, I’d like to invite you to reflect on the ancestors of your WIP.

Human beings have ancestors (of blood, of spirit). But art does, too. Sometimes, the ancestor of a story or art form is quite literal, such as the juke joint scene in Sinners which evokes Blake musicians, dancers, and artists past and present, very literally tracing Indigenous instruments and dances of West Africa to the blues and swing to contemporary rock and hip-hop, twerking and crip walking.

This is important work: reckoning with what has come before, with the forms that influenced and even evolved into the art form you currently work in, with the stories of a culture that has struggled to keep its mythos alive over the years. As discussed on the most recent Call Your Coven episode, research is a form of devotion. When we know what the past looks like, we can better identify and situate our own present. And this is vital, because

sometimes, the ancestors of a story are more metaphysical in nature.

Here, we get into work that is thematically or spiritually influential: the content moreso than the form (not that they are wholly separate). Often, these story ancestors are classified as fairy tales and folklore; sometimes, they are reduced to tropes. Think of the star-crossed lovers featuring in tragedies the world over, from Tristan and Iseult and Orpheus and Eurydice to The Butterfly Lovers and Layla and Majnun. How has their influence been felt over time? across genre? across cultures? by way of a butterfly effect, inspiring artists and seeding intertextual work?

My grad school professors insisted that there was no such thing as universality, but fairy tales and folklore the world over suggest otherwise. The context of the lived tales are culturally specific, but the theme? More often than not, the heart of Story reaches across the alleged boundaries of borders and time.

This New Moon in Cancer, let us intentionally, devotedly remember (re-member) the ancestors of the Story that now occupies our imagination.

Let us honor the ancestors of the art that has gone before (that has survived before), and — if you are willing — let us seek their support and guidance.

Bettmann / Getty Images

Identifying your story ancestors this New Moon in Cancer:

• What are the general themes of your current project? Love, resistance, revenge, parent-child relationships, inherited trauma, the search for identity or belonging — you can go as big and list as many as you like.

• What stories did you love in childhood and adolescence that dealt with these theme? Again, list as many books, films, TV shows, comics, etc. as you like!

• What stories have you learned (books you’ve read; films you’ve seen) about in adulthood that also deal with these themes?

• What myths, legends, folklore, and/or fairy tales do these themes connect to? Remember that in many ways, both Greek and Hindu pantheons and legends inform the constellations and stars that can also serve as story ancestors. Perhaps you are telling a story of survival and so are reckoning with Orion the hunter; perhaps your memoir about your mother puts Andromeda and Cassiopeia into the limelight.

• How does it feel to consider your project in conversation with these big stories? Does it feel activating, due to the (white supremacist) pressure of “originality”? Does it feel like relief, that human beings are drawn to these stories over and over and over again? Or does it feel like something else?

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Thank you for reading this edition of Astrology for Writers. If you enjoyed this edition, or if you’d simply like to join the Discord and meet like-hearted writers (and get access to the new monthly meetings, the first of which is this Saturday at 1p Eastern!), please consider becoming a paid subscriber.