✨✨The Fixed Star Essay Collection is Here✨
plus some insight on my process in writing the collection
Hello friends,
Welcome to November. Welcome to the midst of Scorpio Season. Welcome to autumn in full swing. The fall chill has officially come to Portland, bringing the rains with it. Halloween felt like a turning point, our first consistently rainy day. When I went to a nearby park to make a flower essence I couldn’t take notes without the pages of my notebook getting soaked. No matter. The thinning of the veil seemed like an apt time to not worry about the words yet.
It also felt apt for capturing the essence of Scorpio I, the first ten degrees of the sign illustrated by images of red women eating hungrily (Ibn Ezra) and “a man holding a lance in his right hand, but a human head in his left” (Picatrix). In the first decan of Scorpio we face our hungers, their unending nature, as well as how to move through the wheel of desire without getting stuck or caught.
I have been working with Hawthorn since the first year I began studying medicinal plants, stumbling upon a tree not far from my house on one of my walks. It was filled with haws, the little red apple-like berries that sprout from the thorny branches in the fall. I tried to make a tincture but the berries sucked most of the alcohol up. I’ll settle for an essence.
My Fixed Star Essay Collection is officially out!! This volume collects over a dozen essays on the stars, many of them updated and revised, to help you understand their majesty and connect with them yourself.
Most of the writings included are deep-dives on individual stars or stellar pairings, drawing in all of my experience and research to help you feel the whole picture. I’ve included ecliptic degrees so you can see if you have any important placements conjoined the stars mentioned in the book. They are:
Castor and Pollux, the Twins of Gemini: 20º and 23º Cancer
Acubens, Cancer the Crab: 14º Leo
Scheat and Markab, Pegasus Stars: 29º and 23º Pisces
Rigel, Foot of the God: 17º Gemini
Murzims, the Talking Dog: 7º Cancer
Fomalhaut, the Mouth of the Whale: 4º Pisces
Betelgeuse, the Victorious Warrior: 29º Gemini
Bellatrix, the Women Warrior: 21º Gemini
Denebola, the Tail of the Lion: 21º Virgo
Zosma, the Back of the Lion: 11º Virgo
Alphard, the Heart of the Hydra: 27º Leo
Additionally, I’ve written essays on the connection between the decans and the stars as well as one exploring six different “Stars of Mysticism,” or the stellar beings who help you connect with your own spiritual, gnostic ability. That essay includes information on:
Vega, Divine Lyre, 15º Capricorn
Schedar, Seat of the Golden Queen, 8º Taurus
Fomalhaut, 4º Pisces
Alkes, Holy Grail, 24º Virgo
Alcyone, The Light of Insight, 0º Gemini
Deneb Adige, Tail of the Swan, 5º Pisces
I have been studying the stars for years. In addition to writing these essay, I have been giving fixed star consults since 2020, created fixed star lectures (see here) and am currently writing a book on the Fixed Stars for Weiser/Red Wheel.
This volume contains knowledge on the stars you cannot find anywhere else. May it help build a foundation so they you, too, can find your place in the stars.
Wordcraft: How I Write About the Stars
I first started writing on the stars back in 2020, when I also first began communing with them. I would go to my backyard at night and watch the stars, using my phone to identify which ones kept appearing each night, as well as which ones kept catching my eye. I wrote about many of the stars in this volume because I felt compelled to. Their constant reappearance in my life felt like a call to honor them back.
All of which is to say: writing and researching is just part of how I conjure these essays. They are also built on relationship and a more flowing sort of connection between heaven and earth.
I wrote all about my process for contacting the fixed stars yourself in my last newsletter:
Gathering
Before I set out on what I have to say, I draw on the past. This work is only done when we call upon tradition and the minds who traversed these stellar pathways before, so long as we make it our own.
One of the hardest parts of researching the fixed stars is being able to discern what the valuable texts are and where to find them. My biggest struggle in first studying the stars was trying to find sources I trusted outside of the Bernadette Brady texts that introduced me to this discipline.
Over time, I found a handful of books, texts and websites that I refer to again and again.
For traditional resources I turn to Manilius’s Astronomica and Anonymous 379’s Treatise on the Bright Stars. I also like Ptolemy for knowing the planetary pairs of planets.
Diana Rosenberg’s “Secrets of the Ancient Skies” is a lovely, but expensive, book that I use often.
I love Constellation of Words for historical, cultural and astrological context for the stars. An invaluable site.
I also call on folklore, like the myths of the stars from different cultures for context. I also find symbol dictionaries to be extra handy to suss out the meaning of a star. If' I’m studying a star in the Scorpio constellation, I’m sure to look up the symbology of scorpions, for example.
Planning
Once I have gathered my sources, I pore through them for any relevant mention of the star I’m studying. At the beginning, I try to cast a wide net, including both the basic and more esoteric meanings in my notes. After I have exhausted all the raw material, I begin to organize it by themes as the emerge. Do multiple texts mention the star’s use in navigation? Do many of its myths have to do with protection in some way? I arrange all the relevant bits of information according to what part of the star they highlight, building a rough, but detailed, outline. Over time, I begin to see the one or two major common threads identified with this star. I usually put those themes first. Then, I focus on the more mysterious, complex themes that help fill in the contours of the star and really bring it to life. I try to order it so one theme flows seamlessly into another.
Writing
Thanks to my detailed outline and years of experience writing these essays, the actual writing part is pretty seamless. I usually introduce the star with its major myths and astronomical attributes, then follow my outline. Though I may need to move some quotes around or rearrange the order a bit, I just find the connection between all the bits of details until, through this lexical exploration, a gestalt of the star emerges. Hard to summarize, but felt. I really feel like I’m following clues and whispers that gesture towards the true grandeur of the star.
I include literally everything that I find on a star in these essays. They are meant to be detailed and exhaustive. Though reading about the stars is not the same thing as experiencing them, I want these essays to help you begin to see the splendor of the stars and be a finger pointing at the moon, encouraging your own stellar exploration.
You can enjoy the fruits of my labor right now.
May it help you touch the stars.
Until next time,
Love,
Chloe