Three Minutes in Front of a Candle
on actually doing the ritual and exploring my own trends
My mind likes to be right. So much so that it tell me something won’t work before I’ve even done it, especially activities with mysterious outcomes— magic, art, spiritual practice. Why would short walk, stretching in between writing, a morning ritual to the Moon, have any significant effect on my life? I can’t predict the effect. I can’t imagine the effect. So it must not be real.
Thank goodness I don’t stop at thought, those flickering channels spewing joy, depravity, wisdom and nonsense on my inner screen with little sense. It just wants to keep me batting around its idea, not going deeper than what I can imagine.
Those tiny routines and rituals require little doses of faith or else why would we try these little gestures at all?
As Saturn is quite activated for me this year, I am turning towards the Luminaries— the Sun and the Moon— to balance him out. Saturn is dry, cold and dark. He constricts, requires, toils. The Sun, on the other hand is hot, bright and animating. He inspires and brings clarity while Saturn tends towards ignorance. The Moon is cold and dark like Saturn. She is also wet— flowing, nutritive, and supplely protective. Both Saturn and the Moon rule time but from different angles: Saturn refers to its passing and the limited amount of it we have on earth, as well as that which lasts a long time. The Moon rules the cyclical, ever-renewing nature of time; how our lives are always changing but contain smaller patterns therein.
By spending time with the Sun and the Moon, I am looking to brighten and moisten my life— switch from despair to active clarity; from seeing the march of time as a burden to seeing it as a river with which to flow.
🦢 If you want to learn more about connecting with the Moon yourself, check out my newsletter on the topic 🦢
So, last Friday, I said hi to her, and very simply at that. I lit a silver candle, put one of my lunar talismans in front, rubbed on some Moon-Neptune oil and recited the Invocation to the Moon from the PGM1:
I call upon you who have all forms and many names,
double-horned goddess, Mēnē,
whose form no one knows except him who made the entire cosmos, IAŌ,
the one who shaped you into the twenty-eight figures of the cosmos
so that you might complete every form
and distribute breath to every animal and plant,
that it might flourish,
you who wax from obscurity into light
and wane from light into darkness
Within a few minutes, I was making coffee and got a facetime from one of my oldest childhood friends, whom I hadn’t spoken to in months. I flipped through old yearbooks with him, trying to figure out which person from our high school he had hooked up with. I then spent the rest of the morning, talking about food and astrology with my group chat and did a bit of writing before calling it a day.
In other words, the Moon showed up.
Here are some of the things she rules that appeared today:
nourishment/sustenance
rumors, messages
nurture
housekeeping
possessions
the assembly of the people
travel and wanderings
(culled from Abu Ma’shar and Vettius Valens).
I used familiar possessions to verify a rumor. I spent a long time wandering along ideas about nourishment and feelings with a group of friends. I communicated with loved ones extensively. I did not take a linear path.
I love this sort of experience because it gives me an embodied, felt, sense of what Lunar time, Lunar activity, Lunar relating, is like.
When I talk about a planet like the Moon, I am talking about a facet of each us: that which, protects, nourishes, connects, communes in intimate and mysterious way. She is the look between friends, the perfect ratio of milk to coffee, the yearbooks you keep around, the looping conversations that meander to a point eventually, and maybe even one you weren’t expecting to uncover.
By understanding the Moon and your moon particularly, you learn about the nature of your short journeys, what type of writer/communicator you are, how you process emotions and nourish yourself; what sort of things you need to feel safe to connect.
If you want help getting to know your comforts zones to help transform your rituals, creative practice, work and/or rest schedule, my books are open:
Trend Dive: Studiowear
A few weeks ago, I posted my own list of 2023 trends:
I wanted to spend more time dwelling on these because a) I think it’s fun and b) our likes, quotidian noticing, the details with which we arrange our life, all matter.
This Corita Kent quote sums it up nicely:
“Artists, poets, whatever you want to call those people whose job is “making” take in the commonplace and are forever recognizing it as worthwhile.
I think I am always collecting in a way, walking down a street with my eyes open, looking through a magazine, viewing a movie, visiting a museum or grocery store.
Some of the things I collect are tangible and mount into piles of many layers and when the time comes to use those saved images I dig like an archaeologist and sometimes find what I want and sometimes don’t.”
— (source unknown)
So with that, I introduce you to one of my favorite personal trends this year: studiowear
Studio: n. a room where an artist, photographer, sculptor, etc. works; late 18th century (denoting a piece of work done for practice or as an experiment): from Italian, from Latin studium (see study).
Simply put, studiowear is what artists wear when they are working, most likely in a dedicated space of creation and play.
It shares strains with workwear, both employing utilitarian, comfortable outfits, often uniforms, that the wearer is ok getting dirty. Studiowear, however, has a more tailored, inspired look about it. While not the thing being looked at, being worn when creating art gives it a certain sheen.
It also has similarity to the outfits of poets and philosophers, intellectuals with the leisure time to follow immaterial threads and turn them real, but, often, writers are pictured amidst stacks of books, almost buried in them. Their blazers and layers of shirts and vests lack the comfort and freedom of movement a more tactile, embodied profession affords.
Thusly, there’s a more casual, less aspirational, quality to studiowear. Surely, there are plenty of artists, such as Kahlo with her bright skirts and flowers, or Picasso and his striped shirts, that are known for their fashion in all contexts; but the real interest to me is what the artist puts on in service of another task. As writer Charlie Porter puts it, “I’m actually more interested in artists that dress kind of sloppily or messily. As with any human being, I find that much more interesting to look at.”
Still being artists, however, there is some intention behind it— or at least we can spend time guessing in between the repeating outfits and the mystery behind their gaze. Porter continues: “I realized that considering an artist’s garments can make you think about someone’s way of working and being in a way that I might not have done if I had just read a biography, or just seen the painting.”
Much of my “trend reporting” comes from my study of the current and upcoming astrology of 2023. This searching for wisdom beyond what is written— in the experience itself— feels like a beautiful translation of the Jupiter in Taurus ethos, a transit that will begin in May of this year. Jupiter rules abundance both within and without; the bounty of the land and the richness of spirit. Jupiter spends a year in a sign so marks each one with a signature system or way of thinking; a marker of shifting abundance. Taurus is a Venus-ruled sign, planet of beauty, intimacy, pleasure, creativity. Its joys are more immediate and sensual compared to Jupiter’s lofty thinking.
Thusly, now is a great time to find meaning in your loves, your pleasures, your style. There is a philosophy or system behind what you wear, even if you don’t immediately see it. Let your body guide you towards what to wear to embody comfort and style, what I think studiowear so beautifully encapsulates. Studios are places of play and experimentation, while also following what feels easy and “you”. Let your clothes reflect that this year.
Some Studiowear Themes:
- Smocks and loose-fitting tunics
- paint splatters
- black and white
- busy hands
- jeans and tailored pants
- denim shirts and button-downs
- focused gaze
- black turtlenecks
- simple skirts and dresses
- looking and feeling yourself
- workwear with intention
And for now, I leave your with this translation by Kristin Mathis of Sappho’s hymn to Aphrodite, the only full preserved poem of Sappho’s we still have:
Read the whole thing on p. 14 of this document here.
Until tomorrow, for part II on Meeting the Moon.
Love,
Chloe
Shout-out to Shuly Rose for turning me onto this hymn
Love the Moon so much 🤍