Would A Raccoon Want to Eat Me?
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If you want to talk about how any of these themes and challenges appear in your own life through the lens of astrology, I hope you'll consider booking a reading with me at Hearthfire Astrology [https://hearthfireastrology.com/book-now].com. This Summer, 25% of all proceeds will be donated to local LA-based organizations providing much-needed food aid during the ongoing ICE raids on our neighbors.
In Case You Missed It, check out my debut appearance on the Our Big Fat Journey Across the Universe Podcast. You can find it on Spotify [https://open.spotify.com/episode/6oDQA53clInmaXaXvLHW8p?si=V7MJnt3xTMafcXyPoVmdGQ&nd=1&dlsi=c6e0a72b11c44c41] or Apple Podcasts [https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/meet-the-expert-part-two/id1823580469?i=1000718400376]. I recently joined my friends and fellow cosmic explorers Kelsey and Jaimie to talk about the origins, practice, and meaning of astrology. I’ll be making recurring appearances throughout the season, but this was my first. It was such a pleasure chatting with Kelsey and Jaimie. Please check it out and help grow the casual community of astrologers talking to non-astrologers about astrology.
Please read on for a text version of this post, listen from your email with the voiceover above, or subscribe on your favorite podcast app like Spotify [https://podcasts.apple.com/id/podcast/hearthfire-astrology-podcast/id1820277646] or Apple Podcasts [https://podcasts.apple.com/id/podcast/hearthfire-astrology-podcast/id1820277646].
Welcome to the Last Quarter Moon in Taurus! This Leo season has been about my center [https://megancohen.substack.com/p/of-sun-center-and-self]. I've explored ways to find my own eternal center while grappling with fear of loss [https://megancohen.substack.com/p/they-always-die-in-the-end] and longing for change [https://megancohen.substack.com/p/utopia-the-good-place-that-is-not]. As the season comes to an end, I again encounter the combination of Leo, the sign of the transcendent, eternal spirit and Taurus, the sign of simple, steadfast abundance.
I last encountered the combination of Taurus and Leo in early spring [https://megancohen.substack.com/p/holding-the-flame]. This project, still a wee sprout at the time, was full of potential. It had come to life only a month earlier and held within it some unknown fruit. I didn't need to tend my creativity to keep it alive; I had an abundant reserve of creativity remaining after a dormant winter. I needed to tend my habits -- the soil in which my sprout would grow.
During the ensuing season I focused on consistency, the simple, steadfast habit of showing up to the page and publishing every week, no matter what. From there I could explore the rhythm of my voice and the fluidity of my moods. I did, indeed, feel quite abundant. But I don't think I really asked myself why I'm doing this or what lives at the center of this work until now. I had enough energy and commitment not to need to know.
As summer came on and this writing project bore fruit, other opportunities bore more -- opportunities unconnected to writing. The energy I had consistently given this project encountered some competition. In a state of full fruiting, it was no longer so simple to decide how to allocate my energy. Consistently showing up to the page began to feel more like confinement of potential enjoyment than support for my creativity.
I maintain a lot of habits to support my creativity. In addition to morning pages and artist's dates I keep a lunar journal, a solar journal, and journals of every planetary aspect and ingress in real time, not to mention my studies and client work nor my labor as a worker and civic participant. Add to that my (very necessary) meditation and energetic hygiene practices, my spiritual practice, the yoga, the strength training, the morning and evening rituals and the good, old-fashioned chores and you have a human life brimming with consistent habits.
I keep showing up to this page each week. But why? And for what?
It isn't for likes or subscriptions or to attract a publisher. It isn't because I think I'll make money. I'd like to make money writing but that doesn't really inspire me. In fact, I have a real fear that money will ruin what makes writing special. I don't write because I think writing will lead to some outcome.
When I used to have a garden, I didn't get down on my knees in the dirt digging until I had tendonitis in both wrists or wake up at dawn to water while the raccoons wrapped up their nightly trash forage because I wanted fruit. I did want fruit but that isn't why I did it. A lot of my plants didn't make it to fruiting, anyway, whether because of raccoons or some failure of my own imperfect tending, or something else entirely. I knew going in that outcomes were uncertain and I was inspired to do it anyway.
The garden isn't linear or mechanistic and neither is my creative practice. I can't expect my consistent habits to have a linear relationship with creative fulfillment. My living center is not a point on a graph where two lines intersect. It is the transcendent, eternal spirit that animates all life running through me in an unpredictable flow of essential numinescence. I can give it all the supportive habits in the world but I cannot control what or if or how much it will yield. And when there are other things I might rather be doing, the eternal spirit that animates me tends to go wherever it thinks joy will occur.
This summer, joy has occurred with my niece at the aquarium and with my sisters watching bad tv. It occurred with my cousins over card games and with my father over homemade crabcakes. It occurred in a subversive bookstore and listening to a dad band drummer play his f*****g heart out at a fundraiser for the subversive bookstore. It was in the tomatoes my sister-in-law grew in her very own garden and harvested for me the year her first child was born while the growing baby played nearby. It was everywhere I looked except the page. I was wracking my brain trying to come up with reasons to keep writing when I'm not being materially rewarded for it at all.
But the answer isn't in my brain. The answer isn't rational like it isn't linear. The answer is in my heart. I write for the same reason I practice astrology and cook nice meals and do yoga: because it brings me closer to that transcendental, eternal spirit that makes tomatoes out of some dirt, water, and a seed. Whatever the Sun is made of that allows them to grow and fruit is the same thing that lives in my heart and allows me to grow and fruit. When I write, I feel more connected to tomatoes and everything else in existence. While not everything in existence brings me joy, tomatoes definitely do. I want to be as much like a tomato as I can be in this life. I want to grow juicy and ripe and one day maybe get eaten and then pooped by a raccoon so I may live again in some other form with totally different potentials.
I don't think a life without writing would make me feel juicy and ripe. I don't think a life of being consistently materially rewarded for my writing would make me feel juicy and ripe, either. Nor would a life without nieces or bad tv or cards or crabcakes. I want it all. If that means I have to use my habits to maintain my writing when the juice is flowing to other things, then great. I'm glad I discovered the magic of consistent habits. And now, when I next begin to question whether these habits are worth it, I'll know to consult my heart and ask myself: would you still feel like a tomato if you stopped doing this? Would you grow? Make juicy, ripe fruits? Would you be appealing to a raccoon? As long as the answer is "yes" more often than "no," I'll keep it up.
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