The Poison Cure
Dear Friend,
Scorpio II is a poison cure.
It is a chalice full of darkly brilliant molten Sun.
Samhain and Scorpio season ask us to think about decay as a form of renewal.
To think about compost as a way to create new life.
As the darkness takes over, the Sun hides its fierce light but it still shines.
🜁🜃🜂🜄
Three poem excerpts about gold and mortality have woven their way into this week’s newsletter.
The first is from Mary Oliver (via Phoenix Yemi’s stellar poetry newsletter ‘Worm Moon’), the second from Robert Frost via T. Susan Chang’s reflections on the Six of Cups, and the last from Maeg Keane’s poetic essay on the Sun, co-ruler of Scorpio II.
To live in this world // you must be able / to do three things: / to love what is mortal; / to hold it / against your bones knowing / your own life depends on it; / and, when the time comes to let it go, /to let it go.
– Mary Oliver
Nothing gold can stay
– Robert Frost
The Sun is a golden zombie, a deathless thing, running a track made of animal bodies over and over and over.
– Maeg Keane
Our creative projects benefit from this time of darkness and decay, as much as they do from sunlight and green shoots. This ritual for the underworld of your project takes you deep into the void to find the gold.
Scorpio II is a place where a therapeutic dose is quite close to a toxic one.
A little can be enlivening, a spur to creativity, but a lot can be paralysing or dangerous.
The Sun itself, co-ruler of this decan, is a poison cure – all life on earth relies on its heat, but it can poison us with its rays.
To stay with the Sun, to be devoted to what is hidden, is a practice for Scorpio season.
Writing is an act of devotion, the same as any other magical practice.
The work of writing is as integral as any other form of ritual, ceremony, or prayer, and devotion produces magical results.
Phoenix Yemi describes a prickly form of devotion embodied by sea urchins: ‘There's the ache, and then there's the longing. Sea urchins are beautiful, their soft bodies armoured in spines. Sometimes hunger can be devotional.’
I will leave with her beautiful poem for autumn, full of melancholy and eroticism; a devotional work.
there are
sea urchins
in my
bath water
&
on sundays
we gather
three women
saying come
saying go saying run
saying grey
saying
call in
the seduction
&
consider not
the trembling
leaves.
– Phoenix Yemi
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🍄 Fruit
I want to show you how cute the laboratory of potions is looking in Atmospheres. Not only do I want to drink this week’s molten cocktail, but the whole collection is looking delicious.
I am so grateful to Kening Zhu for weaving magic out of our conversations and turning them into something tangible.
Scorpio II: The Poison Cure
Fixed water: nostalgia, symbiosis, healing
A little can be enlivening, a spur to creativity, but a lot can be paralysing or dangerous.
Six of Cups
Fixed water: alchemy, memory, distillation
Nature’s first green is gold,
Her hardest hue to hold.
Her early leaf’s a flower;
But only so an hour.
Then leaf subsides to leaf.
So Eden sank to grief,
So dawn goes down to day.
Nothing gold can stay.
Atmospheres now has two live options for each atmosphere: Friday at noon GMT and Sunday at 5pm GMT.
There is also a gift option available for those who would find the cost a barrier to joining.
Find out more here.
🦠 Spores
This week, in Labyrinth, I am doing a Show and Tell for the first time since school. I will be talking about how I’m using ritual, chance, and Tarot to write my novel.
𓍊𓍊𓍊 Mycelium
Sarah Corbett of Rowan and Sage has shared some beautiful Samhain rituals for the whole month of November. You can sign up to her newsletter here and find the rituals here, including one on Samhain apple magic.
Apples are traditionally associated with this time of the year, partially because it’s the beginning of their harvest season, but also because they are considered sacred, immortal (their fruits remain viable while everything else dies around us), and spiritual guides for souls into the afterlife.
Ali A. Olomi’s Patreon is full of sunken treasures. This week he introduced Ghola, the shapeshifting, cemetery-dwelling, carnivorous jinn and witch. I recommend his work to anyone interested in ‘deep dives into talisman-making, medieval psychology, gender and sexuality in medieval Islamic thought, and the history of the jinn’.
Diana Rose Harper has a new course, Everything is Relationships, and though it doesn't work for my time zone, I am jealous of everyone who has the chance to attend.
I wish you a week of apple magic, gold chalices, and poison cures.
Love, LJ
this is microdosing ceremony, a letter from my artist’s cocoon to yours.
find out more about rituals and writing on the ceremony podcast.
explore creative rabbit holes on my website.
🜁🜃🜂🜄