A Beginning and a Return
A Beginning and a Return
how I began to write and a Venus in Sagittarius sale
Hello folks,
I come to you getting back into the Portland groove after my month-long trip and writer’s retreat. Old routines start to emerge, as do old habits, fears, hang-ups that didn’t seem so close when you’re away from your normal context. The astro-weather has also felt particularly lurching today but I, in normal October fashion, am finding solace in as many horror films as possible. I could be an encyclopedia for them if I was more concerned with facts and objectives.
Just this past week, I’ve seen:
The Substance (disgusting, cutting, a truly “mean” movie and I loved it)
The Front Room (an evil mother-in-law story turned on its head feat. Brandy)
Jaws (a classic for a reason)
Host (2020 Zoom seance horror— short and tight)
Audition (too much for me at times but I appreciate)
I’ve been reflecting on why I like horror films so much and I think it has something to do with where my mind goes. My Mercury is in Scorpio, the sign of horror films, conjoined Pluto and squaring Saturn, stuck between crises and roadblocks, so to speak. In some ways, my mind is trained to expect the worst and I have a general “if you see it, no you didn’t” policy when it comes to anything remotely creepy.
There’s something almost relaxing about horror films because the Bad Thing has happened. Now what? Perhaps it’s my Saturn-Pluto contact that makes me “good in a crisis” but there can be a calm when everything is falling all around you and all you time for is to act.
They also make us consider fear, the mind killer. How much of our lives is dictated by it? When is it useful, actually? When does it trip us up? I’m thinking about the trope in Stephen King’s It, where Pennywise the Clown can only hurt you if you’re afraid of him. When do our fears make the horrors and tasks of the world worse?
This is something I ponder as I began to craft my first Wordcraft piece, an introduction to how I got where I am now. I hope you enjoy.
Wordcraft: The Beginning
I can remember one of the first moments where I felt an affinity with the word. It was second grade, probably the first time I could write in earnest, and I filled a notebook with a story about a family going to Disneyland and eating all of my favorite foods— writing as fantasy, huh? I remember writing run-on sentences trying to fit all the splendor into the page— “and then we went to this ride and then we ate here and there we ate this”. Over time, I began categorizing these pages as “not good writing” but that wasn’t the point of my seven-year-old scribblings. Writing was a vector for my desires, for the joy of seeing your dream manifest into the material world, at least on a few parcels of it.
Somewhere along the way, however, writing became part of my Identity, something that I had to prove. By the time I got to middle school, outside of my schoolwork, it became impossible to write the stories and poems and essays I wanted to. Anything I put down seemed wrong. I would read back what I wrote and if I thought it was bad, that meant I was bad, that I’d been lying to myself all this time, and that I shouldn’t even start to begin with. Even the bits I put together for zines and poetry readings in college were sparse, picked-over, unlived-in. It was a start. But it wasn’t enough.
I remember breaking down to my friends on an uphill ride on a shitty bike because they were all out there creating art and sharing it with the world. People knew them as artists. I was so stuck in my own inner critic and agonizingly wondering what I brought to the table. I was stuck.
Finding my way back to writing was an explicitly spiritual experience. I was living at a Zen Buddhist monastery, following some deep whim, turning an unknown wheel, but would still come to the library on days-off and stare at the blank page in fear. But Zen is a practice of silent illumination, of letting the flurry of thoughts that cloud our minds fade until a more essential truth emerges. I was receiving the tools to see past these frantic doubts.
One week, we hosted a retreat led by Stewart Cubley specifically geared to opening up our Creative Practice. All day, we would simply paint, moving on from one image to another when that image was “done”. Attendants would float around and have conversations with us to help tease out that essential place of finality. The point was not skill or beauty but following the life of a discrete painting from beginning to end.
I cannot begin to describe what opened up for me because of that practice. I began to see myself not as some lone genius proving herself with each word but a steward, a vessel for a larger idea. My role as a writer and artist is to continually turn the wheel of creation, to be a faithful steward to its ebbs and flows, sparks of inspiration and wasted time. Suddenly, I began to see that no one piece of work would save or condemn me, artistically, perhaps morally too. That making of “bad art” is part of making art, period. That the only way I could fail is to stop trying.
From there, I wrote and wrote and wrote. I published a book of food essays with a friend. I created a whole manuscript of poems for a class I took of my own volition. I have pages and pages of google docs filled with essays, poems, fragments, musings, that will probably never see the light of day but which I am infinitely grateful for creating.
The point is: I decided that if I felt the desire to create, the siren song of the artist’s way, then it is for me. Talent, frankly, is none of my business. I’ve come to a point now that I rarely think about how “good” my writing is because I’ve done it enough to know that, regardless, I will keep doing it forever.
That’s another thing to consider in any creative endeavor: how could make it such that you could keep making your craft forever? What does your routine or ritual need to create space for all of your creative cycles?
What also helped, was writing a lot. Having no time to think if something is good or not but being thrilled that it exists at all. But that’s for another time.
A Venus Return Sale
This past Thursday, after being afflicted in Scorpio, Venus entered Sagittarius, the sign my natal Venus. Robert Hand describes the power of Venus this way: “Venus rules the spontaneous power of attraction between two entities that differ in such a way that together they form a higher and more complex whole than would otherwise be possible”.1 We experience Venus when we attract the things we like towards us, when we merge with another human, a creative process, or in this case, a piece of clothing and somehow become more, more than, ourselves.
So, what does a Venus return mean? Hand tells us it has us taking the initiative in relationships, as well as desiring more beautiful things, glitzing ourselves up and seeking things which allure the eye. He sums up the transit thusly:
The desire for beautiful things is strong under this transit, influencing you to buy things of beauty, such as clothes, cosmetics, objects of art, things to beautify the home, or works of literature and musical recordings. Surround yourself with beauty and take advantage of the lighter and more pleasant aspects of life.2
In Sagittarius, Venus’s pleasure as outsized, multi-faceted, philosophical. Ruled by Jupiter, Sagittarius enjoys variety and Venus’s normally streamlined style takes a more maximalist bent.
I love using mundane things, like fashion, with astrology because they show that even the simple act of getting dressed is a spell, whether that be sweatpants to banish cares or a statement necklace over your business casual to infuse your day with celebration.
By understanding the planets associated with colors and styles, you, too, can embody their traits just by the clothes you choose to wear.
Venus in Sagittarius casts the enchantment of exploration, experimentation, adding two more things to your wardrobe before you leave the house.
When Venus moved into the sign of the archer, I consecrated the return by reciting her Orphic hymn, offering rosé to the roses, and brushing my hair amongst them while it began to rain. Of course the drops didn’t fall until Venus had entered the sign of the rain-bringer. I found myself trying to attend to all the rose bushes, giving them equal attention. I paid attention to the open blooms, the emerging buds, and getting snagged by the thorn made me stoop to witness prickly stalks and cut off stems. But then I realized I hadn’t actually gotten intimate with a rose. I crouched next to one and gave it a kiss, a water bead dripping down my nose. The stickiness of everything. The reminder we are on a journey, that love is a process, ever-changing, and to remember to stop focusing on the grand journey sometimes and get intimate with the moment at hand.
By dressing with its tenets in mind, you, too, can invite in Venus in Sagittarius and Jupiter’s generosity, connection and luck. You can invite in its ability to help you contain all your multitudes, balanced looking at the forest and the trees, as well as find beauty in the weird and unexpected— how trends are made.
You can learn all about the style of the planets and how they align to your specific becoming through your style in my three Styling with the Stars Guidebooks. Now through the end of Venus in Sagittarius (11/11) you can purchase any volumes or the bundle at 20% off.
P.S. My Books are open for October <3 Book a natal, timing, fixed star or creative practice consult now <3
Start your journey to enchantment now <3
Until next time,
Love,
Chloe
Hand, 179
Hand,