A Different Place

journeys through the desert and Mars in Cancer as the Monstrous Feminine

Shoshone Falls, Twin Falls, Idaho

Hello friends,

I have been absent for a moment, as I shift scenery for the next month.

A week from today, I left for a solo road trip from my home in Oregon to Albuquerque, New Mexico. I passed through Idaho, Utah and Colorado before emerging into the globe mallows, bosques, and rocks a particular shade of red different from all the others I had passed on my ways, all telling me I had made it to the desert I’ve been wanting to me for years.

In the desert I am confronted with unfamiliar yellow flowers dotting every highway, a common sunflower I learn. It is certainly a more modest size than their classic counterparts. Harold Roth writes of the larger “haughty” species that “due to its height, the sunflower is also thought to exemplify loyalty or adoration, because of how it follows the Sun's path”. I felt this too as I passed through unfamiliar valleys, mountains towering on either side, or on remote scrubby sections of the highway where no speed limits are posted and a car doesn’t approach yours for miles.

Like the archetype of Virgo, where the Sun currently rests, the smaller sunflower feels more earthly, able to tilt its golden head towards other, nearer, things than the sky’s blinding light. I made an essence of them on a quiet morning at a park in Moab, a cluster of them gathered by the bridge across a trickle of a river. People walked their dogs and children played around me as I witnessed the growingly familiar blooms.

But before the sunflower there was datura. Datura, a plant I’ve been warned against since college, thrives in the dry, rouged soil here, and encountering a bush of her angelic, seductive flowers at the edge of a parking lot certainly felt like a mirage. Also known as Thorn Apple or Devil’s Trumpet, Datura has long been associated with witchcraft. Daniel Schulke writes that “enticing and subtle is the scent of the just-opened flower, lovely and beckoning in appearance”. But “behind the veils of this subtle beauty saunters a bumptious sprite, taunting and teasing— and wielding hidden knives and poison”.¹

Datura.

I had first heard of Datura as a cautionary tale from a college friend, alongside horror stories of the teenagers who ingested their seeds and experienced horrible, days-long trips. It wasn’t until reading Harold Roth’s The Witching Herbs that I saw a different side of this bewitching plant. While poisonous, he also conveyed her potent power, worthy of being respected, and deeply hurt by the humans around her. She is strong, beautiful, enchanting, and playing the long game with her seems to a wise option.

I have long thought of her in the years since reading Roth’s words but it wasn’t until this trip that I encountered her in person. As mentioned above, she immediately dazzled me but I knew better than to get too close or comfortable. Despite my hesitance and happiness to simply have witness her, divination indicated that she was inviting me in. I placed an essence bowl at the base of the bush of datura, no part of the plant touching the water, and sat with her. I don’t know what I will do with this essence, but it feels important that I made it.

Now, in Albuquerque, I am hunkering down on The Book. I have spent the past year immersed in ritual and research with the Behenian Stars and will spend the next month focusing on completing a final draft before my deadline.

I am so excited to share more with you from this spirited desert.

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Mars in Cancer and the Monstrous Feminine

L’Envoûteuse (The Sorceress), Georges Merles, 1883

Mars has officially entered Cancer, where she will stay for months thanks to an upcoming retrograde.

Mars, the warrior, is in fall in the sign of the home, the mother, a place where protection and comfort are prioritized. Planets in fall are low-down, unresourced, building their position from the ground up.

Mars a hot, dry planet wishes to act decisively and brutally, while Cancer moves sideways, subtly, recalling shifting waves the the flickering power of witchcraft. While Mars rules wars, weapons, metal smiths, fire, surgery, disease, Cancer recalls the protective embrace of a caregiver, a deep well, and a rich, fertile magic.

Mars in Cancer asks: How does one prepare for war in the home or defend what is precious without compromising safety?

Here, again, we wade into the territory of the monstrous feminine.

As my colleague Heloïse explains in her chapter on the Moon, a primary lunar deity is Artemis, the huntress. Not only did she defend her band of nymphs from male intrusion, she was also a goddess of childbirth, protecting mother and infant in that often treacherous liminal space.

She punished anyone who invaded her private space (another lunar/feminine attribute), including Actaeon, who stumbled upon her naked and was turned into a stag. Though the Moon and Cancer are planets of enclosure and protection, Mars in Cancer is a vicious mama bear who will attack anyone who threatens their offspring, even at the expense of harmony or strategy.

We want our women safe at home, tending to the children, not acting on their feelings in the public sphere. Or, we don’t want the private sphere and its hierarchies to be questioned or pierced with conflict, conversations, boundaries that are necessary for healing deep rifts and repairing our tender hearts.

One of my favorite examples of this strain of the monstrous feminine is pop singer Halsey, who was born with Mars in Cancer as their chart ruler conjoining the Moon.

She describes her 2021 album, If I Can't Have Love, I Want Power, as a concept album on "the joys and horrors of pregnancy and childbirth,” quite apt to their chart. It explicitly explores Mars-Moon themes like the madonna and whore dichotomy, body horror, desire versus need.

In the song “I am Not a Woman, I’m a God,” they sing:

A couple bodies in the garden where the grass grows
I take 'em with me to the grave in a suitcase
Maybe I could be a different human in a new place

They set a tone of making the lush and familiar deadly, violent, transformative. We see how our culture tries to sanctify and sanitize the home space and birthing process, often at the expense of women and children. Politicians fight to outlaw abortion, no-fault divorces and vilify childless adults in the name of some ideal family requiring a mother shackled to her sacrificing, domestic role. Those who wade into the process of pregnancy or birth themselves find a different world than the one that fascists and trad wives depict.

still from the “If I Can’t Have Love, I Want Power,” visual album trailer

While pregnancy and motherhood are lifted up as pure, saintly activities, they are dangerous, bloody, serious work. In the space where new life transitions to this plane, death is closer than usual. Both the infant and the birther are at risk. It connects us with our primal instincts and shows how close life is to death, a fact we’d rather forget. It connects us with the body horror inherent in creating life or just existing within the physical plane.

People with Mars in Cancer, particularly femmes, remind us of the war involved in creating a family—biological, found or otherwise— and protecting oneself while also allowing the necessary changes to occur. Mars in Cancer evokes mysterious actions made through our heart’s blood, through witchcraft, through all the dark, deep resources within us that the patriarchy refuses to acknowledge save as a threat.

Let us wake her up.

Learn more about the darker side of the Moon and other chaotic feminine archetypes in Heloïse and I’s monstrous feminine guidebook, out September 21st!

Stay tuned for more updates.

For now, I leave you with this poem by Anne Sexton that has been near to my heart this season:

Until next time,

Love,

Chloe

1. Daniel A. Schulke, “The Green Mysteries,” p. 415