I really don't know clouds, at all...
a little re-introduction after some time away plus some thoughts on the trials of online visibility
This morning I approached my Lenormand deck with a question, and an additional request for clarity on where to lay efforts for this newsletter.
Naturally, the first card I drew was “Clouds”.
Spring is a cloud season here in Washington, a time where unique formations can be spotted that I’m uncertain if I’ve ever seen before. The hawthorn flowers are blooming, sharing company with dogwood, rhododendron, lilac, wisteria, heather, and other garden flowers. It’s a time where time itself becomes a little strange and grows ever stranger, where the good neighbors and other trickster spirits of the sublunar sphere feel activated by the growing light. With light, comes darkness. An underbelly teeming beneath these budding Venusian pleasures. All is not what it may seem, but will bring inevitable clarity as time sorts the fates and fortunes dealt.
There are a lot of stipulations that can halt the arrival of clarity.
In this digital third space, the looseness is intentional. It is a place for sharing inspiration and affirming inner-knowledge, even and especially when words strike other chords and encourage a divergent path. Sometimes this will come via research and citations, other times it will come by showing more than telling, or even telling more than showing.
While nothing should be taken too seriously, some material and immaterial matters call for holding their weight and contradiction with a grace that takes time, and acceptance of inevitable imperfection.
Beyond bringing personal weavings of topics like astrology, magic, herbalism mixed with art, critical theory, social commentary, and music, this is also a message board for offerings and sharing other interests.
Some projects that’ve been percolating lately:
Working on a guidebook on divination and astrology
Making a beginner friendly resource for deepening one’s overall relationship to astrology as a living practice.
Slowly learning the art of metalsmithing, particularly lost wax casting.
Reworking a website
Dreaming and re-imagining new possibilities for how to show up and receive material support through more soul-aligned work via the Captolia Witch + Famous community
Tending to a small garden
Engaging other art and music practices
Re-acclimating to a new city, in a different season.
Now if I can get real for a few minutes…
For a long while that the idea of only occupying a single role online (astrologer, artist, etc.) hasn’t felt quite right, while the idea of unabashedly containing multitudes also felt confusing. At some point, these mostly self imposed limits became totally halting. In this age of information overwhelm and 8-second attention spans, instant legibility feels necessary. Divulging a whole personhood that exists offline much less spirit practices into a public facing digital sphere can feel disorienting and futile. However, broadcasting beyond physical limits through aesthetics and other proclivities can also offer unique opportunities to effectively communicate a multivalent self, and spark connections with others beyond physical limitations. Finding joy through this process again has called for moving through a profound fear of being seen. Like most fears, the only way out is through facing it. And then facing it again, and again.
To be seen is a sense that sounds limited to visual perception, but it evokes more than what its physical sense implies. To truly be seen harmonizes with the innermost self. The Sun commands attention by both granting and taking life. Because of the imbalanced choleric tendencies of Western culture, our relationship to the Sun can be supremely imbalanced. Marked by ego battles and fixations on productivity, the notion that time = money and money = happiness, and the maintenance of the status quo, among other ails. Balance often calls for integrating and welcoming the literal shadows, accepting the call to an Underworld journey. Remediating the Sun is often an ancestral practice of humbling resolution following some kind of death.
There is another way this fear of being seen tends to play out in the modern digital age: a fear of being exiled. Getting ‘cancelled’ in online spaces is practically a canonical experience that nowadays says very little on paper about one’s character, yet the perceived danger poses a threat that can feel like death. These events constantly play out in places that initially feel like a refuge. Even when it’s not happening to us personally, our minds cannot so easily tell the difference. Existing in the digital ether further blurs the line between reality and dream, self and other.
The more one is perceived, the more one is likely to be misunderstood. Yet to truly step into being ‘seen’, requires opening oneself up to being wildly misunderstood. Whatever thought exists about any other person, is more fantasy than reality. We are different people to everyone we know, much less to ourselves. Some of these reflections may be worth considering, others simply reveal more about the nature of the person casting judgment. To stay in the shadows feels comfortable, even virtuous, until it becomes a form of self-sabotage. A slow death by denial. Yet seeking recognition and acceptance in digital public spaces can become a form of surveillance culture imposed upon the self, readily reinforced by others, but mostly self-defeating.
Reconciling the above in the current political climate, feels akin to weeding out the Himalayan blackberry that’s become invasive to much of the PNW. It’s ubiquitous, aggressively thorny, and has a way of coming back. Introduced intentionally at the end of the 19th century by an eugenicist farmer named Luther Burbank, this plant has a way of both choking out native plants and eroding the soil so that nothing else can grow. It’s prolifically adept at survival, adaptable to virtually any landscape in western Washington. Yet Himalayan blackberry provides nutritive berries, for human and animal alike.
Staying on top of pulling blackberry up in a limited space is torturous, and never-ending. I’ve opted to co-exist with the damages done by someone who had the audacity to play God over a hundred years ago, but damn if the damages aren’t innumerable. This parallels existing online when most media channels are operated by some of the worst men of our times. We are all seemingly left to either somehow co-exist with or endlessly battle these thorny weeds in the face of something that feels doomed to its own demise, but won’t die. It’s been replicating itself since approximately the dawn of agriculture, and has granted some fruits that have soured after being left too long. And it’s not just about these bad men, it’s a legacy bearing ailments we’re all reconciling and replicating, too.
To sum this up, trying to exist in order to materially support myself in a digital landscape that just doesn’t feel good overall has brought its own clarity. The more I have fortified self-trust, the more trust in others and in spirit has dually strengthened. And it’s led to more interdependence with other people, both close to me and peers doing similar work. While it’s hard to entirely undo wanting recognition, it’s become less motivating. Because I know now it doesn’t mean much, and receiving it doesn’t even satisfy the desire. Right now, I want to find a way back to a teeming pool of creative expression and more ease in receiving material support through that, and I genuinely want the same for you, should you want this, too. I believe there is ever-expansive room for everyone to receive it, despite all the challenges, the trials, the threats to our livelihood in the political climate du jour, our personal similarities and differences, and the body/psychological horror of digital existence. Alas, sometimes it seems clarity may only be found through moving forward along a foggy path, even if it takes a lot longer. I’ve found most initiations feel this way, but do not leave us there. More thoughts and words coming your way soon.
For now—
Enjoy the flowers,
Ione