One of the reasons I like living where I do is how quickly spring insists on reappearing. Even when it’s still cold and rainy, crocuses and daffodils begin to emerge in February and by early March, the chickweed, violets, and celandine follow. Just this past week, cherry blossoms and magnolias have begun to bloom too. All this excess and luxury, and spring is still a week away.
It goes to show how we often experience time not as firm lines between before and after but through smudges and bleeds. We feel it when our energy bodies began to open and tingle with anticipation before we meet a new beau, or start to feel skittish, inward, prior to a big event landing into our lives. Watching the flowers emerge each year is a way to ignore what should and shouldn’t happen in “winter” or “spring” but instead focus on the blooming present, the moment where these flowers and I actually exist, and where we can meet.
In light of my flower essence class, I have been spending time getting to know the flora around me, dancing with them, touching with, seeing how they talk back in their own, subtle way. I have been taking walks at least a few times a week to greet the quiescent blooms and visit the flowers with whom I have begun to build a relationship. The language of plants requires slowing down and being in my body. When I sit still and listen to what the flowers are actually saying, versus what I want them to say, so much beyond my imagination comes together.
Part of my homework right now is to begin making essences, which are medicines made with the energetic signature of plants, but my teacher, Liz, emphasizes the importance of building relationships and asking permission. There are plenty of plants that stir my heart with their visage or their scent but when I approach them I feel a disinterest or a distinct feeling that they are not my medicine right now. Though daphne and violets have long been two of my favorite plants, I get a strong sense that they’re not For Me, at least for the current moment in time.
The plant that continually pokes its head towards me, gives me such a feeling of excitement but comfort, is periwinkle. A humble, common ground covering that I have often mistaken for violets, it is often found in shady spots. As such, it can be easy to overlook this more rapacious and tricky blooms. No wonder, then, one of its folk names it “Sorcerer’s Violet” and its dark glamour and Lunar-Venusian nature makes it a flower for witches.1 It was often used in love spells and fertility charms as well as in funereal rites. Its name in Italian, fiore de morte, means “flower of death” and can apparently used for haunting magic.
We’ll see if and how these attributes arise. Right now, I’m much more interested in getting to know how this plant makes me feel and notice its actual effect on me, something I can’t read in a book. I have called flower essences poems you can eat, works of art co-created by humans and plants. I believe all art is a union, a meeting, a friendship, between you, your muse, and the thing being made in that process. Just like you can’t force a friendship, you can’t force a poem or an essence into being— you can only court it.
Funny, then, that the house that rules creativity and the house that rules romance are one and the same. The 5th house, or the house of good fortune, is where we look to find our fecund self. As the joy of Venus, it is where intimacy and pleasure meet.
I have already written extensively on the 5th house, which you can access here and here.
There’s also something inherently relational about the 5th: even our solo art projects come when inspiration says so. That’s why I find saying a prayer or lighting a candle and inviting a spirit or deity in before I create to be so beneficial to my practice. Even when nothing arises, I can trust that it’s ultimately not up to me, just as I can’t make a person give me what I want without their consent.
How are you befriending your art currently?
Working with the Muses: Infusing Relationality into your Creative Practice
So with this relational dynamic in mind, I am going to give you some tips on getting out of a creative rut, inspired by the Muses, the 9 goddesses of creativity. You can find out their role in your art using astrology, by checking the location of the 9 muse asteroids (Thalia, Klio, Kalliope, Terpsichore, Euterpe, Erato, Melpomene, Polyhymnia and Urania) in your chart using astro.com.
May these tips help you with your relationship-building:
Practice Devotion: Though anyone can learn or work with the Muses nowadays, they were part of a pre-established religion in Ancient Greece. We hear stories about prideful mortals who challenged the ability of the Muses, only to be put sorely in their place. This mortal loss is guaranteed because “poetry inspired by the madness of the Muses is infinitely superior to anything that a mere mortal can produce”.4 Hubris was a cardinal sin to the Gods so having a humility is a good way of inviting in the sacred help of the Muses. Pouring a bit of milk or honey on the ground before creating can be a show of openness to their help, as can a regular recitation of the Orphic Hymn to the Muses. As the Muses are associated with Apollo, God of the Sun, planning more elaborate rituals around Solar days or hours can also be powerful.
Focus on technique: Though Plato, in "The Ion," divorces the ecstatic inspiration of the Muses from technical skill, Murray argues it would be specious to consider the poet/artist completely devoid of skill. Socrates points out there is a difference between someone who "[knows] how to produce pathetic, frightening, or menacing speeches” and a true tragic poet, who knows "the structure of" a tragedy, as well as how each part is "appropriately constructed relative both to each other and to the whole”. In other words: practice your scales. Write your daily pages. Sketch the same tree over and over and over again. If you’re not feeling inspired right now, focus on what you can control, and what, in my opinion, makes you more prone to divine inspiration.
An increased acuity allows inspiration to be that much fuller.
Breathe: As you may already know, the word "inspiration" derives from "inspirare," meaning “to breathe into”. This etymology keys us in to inspiration entering us from without. aMore specifically, Socrates in “The Ion” tells us that "[w]hoever comes to the doors of poetry without the madness of the Muses, persuaded that he will be a good enough poet through skill [technē], is himself unfulfilled”. Believing that you alone are responsible for your art, in other words, limits your possibilities. When properly invoking the Muses, then, it is not your place to question the outcome or source. Perhaps this painting or poem that you know is bad even as you're making it has to be made regardless because how else would you have the space to access the good stuff? Just keep breathing, making, even if you doubt the presence of the divine.
Depersonalize: The Ancients make this fact very clear: "relationship with the Muse, however that is figured, gives the poet access to truth, knowledge, and wisdom which is hidden from ordinary mortals”. Our work is better, in other words, when we accept that it is a co-creation and not our mind's sole responsibility. Maybe you have to write or draw something shitty to get to the good stuff! Maybe what you're making is better than you think it is! The more we can see the quality of our work as not up to us, the more we can get to simply creating.
Trust You Current Cycle: This point is related to the last one; if our output is not up to us, neither are the ebbs and flows of inspiration. Perhaps you need to take a break to gather new ideas. Perhaps a piece of art needs some time to percolate before you can take it to the next step. Remember that creativity takes many forms; what we wear, cook, talk about; whom we connect with and bare our souls to— all of these are manifestations of our innate artistry. The Muses can be present in any thing, any place. Go where the Muses take you, even if it's toward rest.
I offer these tips as an entry-point to getting to the know these friendly deities and letting them support your creative practice. While I will be diving much deeper into each of them and their astrological role in future newsletters, I want to impart to you something I have learned over and over in my astrological practice.
Because no one, to my knowledge, has delved into the Muse asteroids, I am running on a limited amount of resources. I have had to commune with the Muses myself to glean the information I seek, much like my work with the Fixed Stars, of which is there is little extant information.
I tell you this because I want to encourage you to look for yourself and the unique gnosis you can develop. Even my discoveries are just one part of a larger whole that are further supported by the unique wisdom of others. Don’t doubt your own.
🌸Creative Practice Consult Sale 🌸
I created my Creative Practice Sessions to help empower your own wisdom and creativity.
Looking at a flower, a conversation between friends, the smell of the sea, eating a summer peach: this is what an astrology consult with me is like. These moments are what makes life meaningful, what connects us to and helps us befriend our world.. These moments are where we transform.
It’s like the end of the Rilke poem where after basking in the glow of an ancient statue, the writer decides “you must change your life” in its wake.
This is how i conduct my consults, my work, my art: by honoring those sacred moments of revelation and bringing them out of people
I dare you to consider the gravity of your unfolding as it comes alive in your little gestures— where the magic is. I help people witness their lives, which leads to harnessing their depths, which leads to change.
My consults are a distillation of this magic, creating wisdom that arises from wise conversation between friends.
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Coming Soon: Styling with the Stars Volume II
Continuing my interest on bringing the divinity of astrology down into our daily lives, I will be releasing the second in my series on planetary fashion: Styling with the Stars Vol. II: an Astrological Guide to Using Your Natal Chart to Uncover Your
Divine Style. While the first volume focused on understanding the aesthetics of the seven visible planets, this second volume helps you apply this knowledge to your own chart by outlining the placements to look for when defining your unique fashion sense. It is filled with plenty of examples, brand new techniques and is perfect for anyone looking to align their outward dressing with their innermost sense of self
**More information to come so keep your eyes peeled for an official newsletter announcement 👀**
For now, I leave you with this lovely essay from my flower essence teacher on her relationship to cottonwood buds. Below is an excerpt:
Until next time,
Love,
Chloe
Daniel Schulke, “The Green Mysteries,” p. 345