“Everything you do to protect, save, restore and build your energy is productive” - Katherine Morgan Schafler, The Perfectionist Guide to Losing Control
I can’t even remember the whole context of this conversation, but my friend known to this crowd as Virgo-chan (the Kent to my Ikki because try arguing that Gemini Sun Taurus Moon Scorpio Rising isn’t Ikki’s big 3, and Kent is Virgo sun at the anaretic degree canonically) and I once joked that if she too wrote a memoir it’d be “Fancy title. Lessons from the year I etc”
I was reminded of it as I thought over the idea that the done thing at anniversaries is to look back on the year that passed, and mull over the lessons of it. Entirely arbitrary thing, I know, but at time of writing it’s Nov 18th and I needed a prompt because I’m tapped out of any intuitive connection to a deeper wisdom (hello, period).
In truth, I had one topic left in my random thoughts for future uses that I never categorise so was it for this newsletter? Another one? Who can say…
Is it laziness or emotional dysregulation?
If I had to write a memoir of 2023, which I kinda have in 12 installments like a Victorian novel, since I’m celebrating a year of taking up space and writing personal essays in an age where personal brands have become all about “providing value” and selling in Stories and shareable soundbites put into a thread because they perform better for the algorithm, this could be its title.
I put value in quotes because it’s not us who determine what is of value for someone else. If you’re reading this, you have determined that I am giving you value, whatever form it takes. For me as a reader of personal essays, the value is in not feeling alone. It’s in the validation of my feelings and struggles, some times in the challenge to see things a different way. Sometimes I just want to live vicariously through someone else to forget my life for a while, same as I’d do with a novel or otome game.
Personal essays, in their diversity of experiences and insightful vulnerability, are a permission slip to be yourself.
But in the world of online business, the words “providing value” are a shorthand for the pressure to share knowledge in manageable but impactful chunks so people can taste your quality before they invest in you. Like standing outside your restaurant with a platter of free appetisers.
“Meaning is what transforms entertainment we like into art we love” - Katherine Morgan Schafler, The Perfectionist Guide to Losing Control
Around this time last year, unbeknownst to me, both me and my ex had started to take action towards moving out of the house and finally giving a clean break to what had been a slow and painful death to a relationship that should have never gone as far as it did.
The emotional toll of the grief and navigating the uncharted territory of figuring out my identity that had been the constant companion since 2020 is what drove me to seek out an outlet for creative self-expression to avoid falling into my pattern of overworking to numb myself, which is a serious danger when you’re self-employed.
Little did I know how fast it would stop being just a hobby, as people associated me with it as much if not more than they did with photography. Although it seems they still associate me more to being obsessed with Hakuoki.
I wanted to make meaning out of the pain, not out of a belief that everything happens for a reason, but out of a desire not to become a victim to the randomness.
Maybe it’s my specific flavour of Sag energy, or maybe that’s what the sign of wisdom and philosophy is like at its core, but I find that trying to assign meaning to something a priori (like it’s all part of a plan) to be the small-minded option rather than the bird’s eye view.
Controversial, I know, since you’d think teleology is a way to trace back from the details to the overarching plot. But the thing about teleology is that it makes the events all canon events, and we cannot interfere.
Maybe that’s what I like about Otome games, even those that do not have a multiple timelines setup openly built-in are a multiverse.
I’m a big fan of the quantum leap conversation, but it seems to me that the science doesn’t back the way spirituality talks about it. A quantum jump is “an abrupt change, sudden increase, or dramatic advance”. And the spirituality industry ran away with it because we all want to believe that our lives can have the hero’s journey of overcoming the great hurdle.
“I quantum leaped into 6 figures within a year with my online business” is sexier than “every single day I make small intentional decisions that shift the direction of my future trajectory to get closer to the vision I have for my life.”
I probably look like a failure to many, I know I do to my mother who believes that if magic was real then I’d have the results (= the 6 figures) to show it. But I don’t attach my worth to my circumstances, and that it took 3 years from setting the intention to Japan changing the law to give business visas to digital nomads has given me the time and space that I needed to work through the shit I don’t want to take in my metaphorical carry-on on that flight.
It doesn’t mean the spells didn’t work because they didn’t work as fast as I’d have liked when I had something I wanted to run away from.
The woman I was when I set that chain into motion is far removed from the version of me in my 5 years vision (which is now 3y-ish away 😬), and in a number of ways that have become apparent working with former Starry Sky guest Kelly Dawn this past week, from me too, even if I am already far removed from her as well.
Detachment is the secret to manifestation. Everyone and their dogs knows that. But if detachment was easy we’d already be living in a better world. We’d know true world peace rather than just the absence of war. The people talking about their success stories of manifesting major things are the people who mastered detaching their sense of self-worth from the outcomes.
I’m opening up to judgement and the same scepticism as what my mother said to me by opening up about the journey there so that anyone feeling like something is wrong with them because they are doing all the things and have nothing to show for it will know they are not alone.
And they are not broken or needing to unblock more or do more mindset work or whatever. Seeing yourself as in need to change and fix could be the very thing that is blocking you.
Maybe all you need is to build trust in yourself and your ability to tune in with your intuition about the action you need to take.
Maybe all you need is to give yourself permission to take imperfect action and realise that the softwares you get in your hands have gone through alpha and beta and more test versions, and if the developers did not launch the alpha they’d never have known what to fix.
The medicine of the Gemini - Sagittarius axis is about learning to hold the big vision while looking at the details without getting caught in them and bogged down.
Some things require us to focus on a small area, but others require us to let that go and trust that things will work out without micromanaging. Most likely, the same things will require both approaches at different times (or the tricky balance of both at once).
This axis is ruled by Mercury and Jupiter, a tension that will be seen at the Full Moon but I feel there’s room for these energies to work together built into the Zodiac being a wheel.
It seems like something obvious now I’m saying it, but the Moon truly is the biggest symbol of how all energies play together in each astrological season. Like the symbol of the Yin and Yang, the seed of one energy is found in the other.
Mercury and the III House are fast-paced and versatile, and that’s a great complement to the big philosophy go with the flow energy of Sagittarius and the IX House. While it’s been researched and there’s a lot of work out there about how our body stores trauma (and many modalities to release it), often we overcomplicate shifting mindset.
Often, we hold on too tightly to the things we believe and the identities connected to that. But Gemini, in its duality and quick-thinking, helps us to see the other way and choose to just release it and live in the “what if?”
And this is the energy I’m intentionally bringing into my life as this newsletter has its first solar return and I have my Venus one not long after mine.
I’ve been sitting with the duality of my Venus placement being in the sign of Jupiter (the two benefics ruling a sect in Hellenistic astrology), and in the II House while at that.
I don’t have a resolution, and in fact I dare say I’m learning the lesson that I don’t always have to have a definitive answer. Liminal spaces have a value of their own, and there is expansion even in the wait.
Fun fact, Mercury rules over entryways and corridors, as he is the psychopomp guiding souls to the Underword. It’s poetic that Mercury entered Sag before the Sun, almost heralding the season and preparing the way for that transit like a parade heralding a king.
As we enter a Strength year in Tarot in Numerology, this image feels like a vivid depiction of what’s a positive attitude to the liminal space. In recent years we’ve had two royal weddings and a coronation with crowds waiting for the parade coming by, but there are so many smaller moments of excited anticipation for something about to happen. The clock heading for midnight on New Year’s Eve, the lights dimming before a concert or a play, the trailers at the cinema. Marathons and cycling events, the final set of a tennis match.
We don’t really think twice about living in that moment, holding the tension of what’s about to begin with trust that it’s coming. Some times there are hiccups, like the tech delaying the proceedings. Many people at this point lose their patience, and let negative emotions get in. Some begrudgingly stick around, while others will leave.
Sag energy sticks around, seeing the bigger picture, making friends in the queue like teenagers bonding over their oshi at a fandom event, their love for the idol so great that rain or shine (or snow one time for me, actually) nothing can get in the way of seeing the concert. Celebrating the beauty of the shared experience of waiting as much as the shared experence of what it is that you are waiting for.
And on this note, happy birthday*-ish* Witchy Musings
Things I want you to know about this month
✨ If you want to dive deeper into the idea of liminality, this roundtable from Barney+Flo(w) from last year, featuring dear April Dawn is full of wisdom from down in the trenches.
✨ The TONIC Black Friday Sale is 20% off instead of 15% if you use code alexisneve at checkout.
✨ You can get the book from which the quotes have been taken and support both this newsletter (and my podcast) and independent bookstores (affiliate link)
✨ For those in London, I’m opening the books for Q1 of 2024 with a Black Friday sale on both personal branding and empowerment photography (boudoir), as well as having a limited beta for 1:1 mentorship for artists and creatives who want to build their personal brand next year (this can be done online). Follow me over on Instagram for more details coming later this week.
Until next time, keep living in wonder