fey

fey, 1 month ago to random

If you missed the aurora last night due to clouds, don't despair: if clouds break for you at any point tonight or tomorrow night, you may well catch something because the geomagnetic storm is continuing through the weekend.

It's the strongest storm since 2003 & risks of electricity/satellite disruption are real.

https://arstechnica.com/space/2024/05/noaa-says-extreme-solar-storm-will-persist-through-the-weekend/

fey, 1 month ago to random

Please boost emergent cicada pictures for me specifically.

fey, 1 month ago to random

CALAN MAI HAPUS! :invertedpentagram: 🔥 🌹 :_swords: :empress_tarot_card: :GreenMan3:

Let the fires of life, passion, beauty, & revolution be lit. & to those who observe the day by something other than a Welsh name: happy Beltane, happy May Day, and happy International Workers Day. :anarchist_flag:

fey, 1 month ago to random

Emerging fiddleheads on my weekly walk. The transitional seasons are my favorite for walking, not only because they’re most comfortable but because there are so many changes to observe each week. I guess I’ve identified finally that the ferns here come up right after the hawthorn blooms, which is also when the red maples start dropping their flowers for young leaves.

fey, 2 months ago to random

If you’re an Occult-tier subscriber to my newsletter, next week is when I would hypothetically be able to answer questions for the seasonal Q&A that you’re technically paying for!

E-mail me any question(s) you like at the address I’ve provided. In my Q&A post you’ll get a longer, more thorough reply than just through comments or social media.

Should you not be subscribed at the Occult tier, it’s $5/month & even just one more Occult reader would make me break even on my monthly hosting/distribution cost!

https://salt-for-the-eclipse.ghost.io

fey, 2 months ago to random

I keep thinking about the crows that cawed incessantly on the edge of totality yesterday. They seemed upset & bewildered, or at least aware of something existentially overwhelming.

Corvids are so close to humans that it made me wonder whether these crows will have myths & legends of the eclipse for their future generations. Or if they already had those stories from their ancestors & understood everything as a result.

fey, 2 months ago to random

That was exquisite. Hail the Sun, hail the Moon, hail their union. :eclipse2:

fey, 2 months ago to random

Our eclipse hotel has a PERFECT southern exposure for watching things tomorrow & they’ll let us stick around after checkout to do so :ablobcatbongo:

fey, 2 months ago to random

Holy shit, I think I just experienced my first earthquake that I could actually feel & that I know had to be one. Because a friend several states away just experienced an earthquake at the exact same time that my house shook real hard.

fey, 2 months ago to random

Apparently our tomato seeds have sprouted!!

fey, 2 months ago to random

This is a simulation of where other celestial objects will be positioned relative to the total solar eclipse on Monday, in the location where I'll be watching.

I can confirm from past experience that this is what a total solar eclipse looks like, where the Sun is really blacked out as you see here & its corona shines like a jewel around it. There is a 360º sunset effect on the whole horizon. But the thing I'm most excited to see here is how comet Pons-Brooks ought to be visible very close to the eclipse itself, along with some important stars & constellations that I follow.

:helpdescribe:

fey, 2 months ago to random

It seems impossible to find & link an article on yesterday’s Supreme Court activity that actually provides detailed info about the original case — but there’s been a pretty important decision regarding the federal land rights of the Mashpee Wampanoag Tribe.

Almost 10 years ago, residents of Taunton, Massachusetts attempted to strip the Wampanoag of ancestral land that the tribe has been hoping to build a casino on; the other year, the First Circuit court upheld the tribe’s land claim on the grounds that really spurious logic was being used to argue that the Wampanoag “weren’t really Indians” (I’m using that term to refer to a literal legal distinction in the US). However, these Taunton folks appealed to the Supreme Court.

The Supreme Court has declined to hear the case. Kind of surprising at this point. The Mashpee Wampanoag are treating this as a huge victory & it is. It was absolutely ludicrous that the tribe whose ancestors have been tokenized in the Thanksgiving myth itself have had to be engaged in this land rights battle.

fey, 2 months ago to random

I feel as though this particular Full Moon was really intense for a lot of people. Like everyone is sleep deprived.

fey, 2 months ago to random

Ostara greetings to all in this hemisphere, & welcome to the light half of the year. My ritual year is also at its "hinge," basically the midpoint. We have grown & transformed inside over the winter, now it's time to put that inner work into outer action. 🌱 🥚 🌬️ :_wands: :fool_tarot_card: :invertedpentagram:

fey, 3 months ago to random

Saturday's tarot reading was really fantastic. I'm in love with the new deck that I used: https://www.usgamesinc.com/fyodor-pavlov-tarot

I got this on the previous weekend's excursion to (yes) Salem, where the artist happens to be based. I was shown the deck by a friend who also happens to have some tattoos he gave her.

It still isn't as good as designing my own deck & it still relies on what I consider the "wrong" elemental suit correspondences, but it has almost exactly the illustration style I've always wanted, the tactile experience of the cards is absolutely perfect, & very importantly I think it has just the right blend of classically gendered vs. deliberately queered symbolic choices. I have always struggled to find a deck that isn't completely heteronormative but that also flips genders or gender pairings in ways that still compute with my ritual cosmology — especially not in an art style I find appealing. I'm very picky about how I want various "characters" on cards to look because I have such vivid imagery in my own head for them; if there isn't a close match, I have trouble relating to the card even if I totally understand the deck maker's intention in whatever they designed.

Pavlov's suggested interpretations are also really wonderfully worded. Needless to say, my reading was so fantastic because I didn't have to hesitate over understanding any of it — everything immediately made sense because it was using the right visual language for my psyche, even for the Minor Arcana despite the elemental weirdness.

fey, 4 months ago to random

Well: happy Gŵyl Fair to my fellow Cymric-inclined ritualists, & happy Imbolc to more of you!

Yesterday I saw my first bluebird since their fall migration. We’re in the dawning!

:invertedpentagram: :_pentacles: 🌅 🥛 🧈 🧀 :BrigidsCross: :moon_photo:

fey, 5 months ago to random

Looks like after a couple tiny snowfalls in November & December that barely accumulated or melted in a day, conditions on Sunday will finally be as they should be for January: moderately snowy. We're expecting 3-6".

I slightly dread the potential loss of power since our neighborhood is so prone to those — too many branches hanging over lines, I think — but maybe with just that much accumulation it will be just a really nice snow. & we have new tires on the sedan & just upgraded our battery-powered snowblower to a heavy duty version that can handle our steep driveway, so snow is about to get less frustrating. I'm happy for winter to be winter.

fey, 5 months ago to random

Good Jol to you!! ❄️ :candle_pixel: :invertedpentagram: :star_tarot_card: :tarot_cup: 🎄 The wreath is made & so are the pomanders. Bonus tree (unfortunately artificial) included.

I acknowledge this holiday as a time of darkness’ height — a time of maximum mystery & ecstatic indulgence — more than as “the return of the light,” which I observe at the start of February.

Praise darkness & creation unfinished!

A dark green holiday tree hung with blue, white, & silvery baubles, as well as some ornaments like a metallic red Welsh dragon & a white antler striped in gold.
A green wreath, slightly oblong, made of cedar, red pine, scotch pine, red ribbon, & little jackalope decorations. It hangs on a white door.

fey, 6 months ago to random

Very clear view last night considering the neighborhood holiday lights & just not living in as dark an area as I’d like.

fey, 6 months ago to random

Today began very grey & gloomy with the rain, but while the Sun hasn't yet re-emerged, I can feel such changes happening to me from yesterday's good (still secret) news that I just started improvising a song out of nowhere while putting laundry away. Just singing about life & myself & things that are beautiful.

fey, 6 months ago to random

New newsletter post! :boost_requested: :reply_love:

"Last Quarter: On violence"

It's Friday. Hello. I'm writing in the middle of waiting for results for an important medical test. Important and nerve-rattling, for reasons I won't go into unless there's something that merits explaining to other people. In all likelihood there won't be something like that, but it's that fraction of a chance that sends me gratefully into the flow of words — knowing that whatever happens, I will have distracted myself from fear and completed one more work that I would rather not wait until it's too late to perform.

Fitting, perhaps, that after thinking about one particular topic for most of my life and planning to write a piece in this vein for the better part of ten years, I had determined that this week I would finally write my central thoughts on violence. I say central in that they are not my first and will not be my last, but they govern all other thoughts that pass through their nexus.

These thought on violence begin with the awareness that I am living in an extraordinarily, catastrophically violent time, and I have witnessed violence and been subject to it in ways to which I did not and would never consent. I have seen and experienced far less of such violence than some people do, but enough to feel rage, despair, and sickness at my own memories and at what I know is being enacted on others. That is, I suspect, the average encounter with violence that most humans would statistically know. Outside that range, the balance is of course tipped far more toward experiencing a lot of violence, rather than none. And the very world we inhabit is being destroyed in a violent fashion, on every conceivable level that violent destruction can occur. Perhaps even in ways we do not yet conceive.

To examine such injustices systemically inflicted on both human and non-human bodies and spheres, in a pragmatic evaluation I can easily call that violence unnecessary, and as a rare moral absolute I will call it evil. The name I prefer to use for this sort of violence is in fact violation, and all violations are interrelated through their reliance upon and roots within an extractive, entropic paradigm: the imperially centered, individual "self" uses and disposes of "everyone/everything else."

The trouble with portraying violence in these terms, however, is that as honest and accurate as they are, from them it does not follow that all violence is violation. Modern political movements of all flavors are familiar with this distinction, no matter where they might draw the line; and I also do not think I'm setting out to argue anything that a good deal of humans haven't already known and carried in our very blood since before the first so-called civilizations. But to properly make salt for the eclipse, I do believe there will be some necessary violence, and it is time for me to address what that is.

In order to reach my conclusion, I must step — as a leftist — through several problems that the left wrestles with, or does not wrestle with enough. This will be one of the newsletter's longer reads, but also among the most significant since I began it.

All manner of violence, including sexual violence, is discussed here continuously.

https://salt-for-the-eclipse.ghost.io/last-quarter-on-violence/

fey, 6 months ago to random

"The aurora may be visible tonight at your latitude!"

At this point I feel like that headline is a virtual guarantee that we're going to have a cloudy night. & oh yeah... looks like that's the forecast

fey, 7 months ago to random

With the clock change, the Hunter is now quite visible in the sky by my bedtime. Hail to the winter walker. :orion:

fey, 7 months ago to random

The Full Moon reminded me of herself as she rose beautifully between the trees this evening — so of course I had to do tarot. 🌕 I had a very rare unambiguously encouraging reading.

fey, 7 months ago to random

Oh look: language, culture, & cognition DO all influence each other.

This was such a perfectly timed read with my current immersion in complexity theory & indigenous ecological knowledge. All power to all the relations!!!

https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/grammar-changes-how-we-see-an-australian-language-shows/