MY CREATIVE FLOW (5th H)
Fifth House because it’s the place where the Muses love to hang out. Some of them, at least. Maybe not Urania, the Muse of Astrology and Astronomy, but Calliope, Euterpe, Thalia and Terpsichore, most definitely. The Fifth House is the astrological gateway into the intricacies of someone’s creativity, and your Fifth House is ruled by what is possibly the most complex, chameleonic planet of all – Mercury, the androgynous trickster god of intellect, speech, trade, communication and many other things.
Your Fifth House has the sign of Virgo on its cusp. Virgo is one of the two signs Mercury rules. This is actually both the domicile of Mercury and their exaltation sign, and Mercury is the only one who can pull this trick— being both domiciled and exalted in a sign at the same time. Very on brand for a trickster god. Virgo can be fussy – or so we’re told. Is this a truthful depiction of this sign? To some extent. Does it do the sign justice? Not really.
Virgo is ruled by Mercury and Mercury is manifold and often hard to figure out. Virgo is shrouded in mystery. This is a sign that loves to pull the fabric of reality apart and weave it back together.
Your creative flow might look and feel like a study in particle physics – a process of observing, investigating the irreducibly smallest detectable particles, the laws that govern their interactions, their intrinsic duality, and then assembling said particles into composite creations of your own making. Taking the constituents of all matter and combining them into something else. Something that didn’t exist before. Something you wanted to see in the world. God and the devil and everything in between are in the details and you have an exquisite eye for them.
Inspiration is always lurking in the most mundane details of your daily life – in the seemingly small, seemingly plain, seemingly insignificant. And it’s exactly the kind of art material that inspires you to make something beautiful and magnificent out of it.
In your natal chart, Mercury is sovereign in the airy, double-bodied sign of Gemini, in the Second House of resources and movable assets. True to its liminal nature, your natal Mercury straddles the line between the world of matter and the hyperuranion of ideas. Your Mercury is chasing the butterflies of human thought forms in your Second House and then bringing them to the Muses who inhabit the inner sanctum (Virgo) of your Fifth House.
You may or may not realise this, but, at its core, your art is about storytelling. Mercury eavesdrops on conversations and then weaves its own story made up of overheard half-sentences, fragmented words and white noise into something new, something maybe only you, the creator, know the meaning of.
The words that captivate you are the first building blocks of your creation. You observe them under the microscope of your own subjectivity and rearrange them into your very own language. It’s exacting, yet immensely satisfying work.
Somewhere along the way, your natal PLUTO, JUPITER and SOUTH NODE also insert themselves into the dialogue. They are right there with the Muses— Pluto, the dark shadowy lord of all things hidden, Jupiter, the cornucopia of plenty, and the Dragon’s tail aka South Node.
The presence of your South Node in there is particularly striking — the Nodes of the Moon are points of instability as their passage runs along the seismic, life-altering path of the Eclipses. The North Node uses instability to inflate and aggrandize. The North Node is hungry. The South Node is about detachment. It uses instability to purge.
However, your Fifth House is not the final destination of your creative flow. All that gestates and comes alive in there is meant to grow legs and follow the trail of Eclipses all the way to the Eleventh House of long term vision & goals, your people, allies, a community or groups you FEEL you belong because you share the energetic frequency.
Your art is an exclusive offering to certain kind of people only – the ones who get you, the ones on the same wavelength as you, the ones who resonate with your creative vision. Create with them in mind.
LEGACY & VISIBILITY (10th H & MC)
Legacy and visibility are the domain of both the Tenth House and the Midheaven. Although there’s an aspirational quality to the Tenth House, this house can represent people other than yourself. But the Midheaven is all you, and how you position yourself within society, it is how you find your belonging more widely, with other people. The Midheaven is the true beacon of your chart and, like a beacon, it attracts people to you who resonate with its light (or dark) vibration.
Your IC/MC axis reminded me of every single myth in the history of humankind, about every single ocean where every single living breathing thing originated. The waters of ancient creation. This is a mythological motif found across cultures— your IC rooted in the amniotic waters of Cancer and your Capricorn Midheaven towering above your chart from the echelon of the Ninth House of God reminded me of it in a major way.
Whatever is taking shape as a result of your interaction with the reality that surrounds you (your Third House IC) (Third House also dubbed ‘House of the Goddess’ by ancient astrologers) needs to be crystallised into form (Capricorn) and brought into the open, made visible to the world (MC).
The sign of Capricorn speaks of longevity— of things and people with staying power. Of pillars. You are hardened and dependable because you legacy and visibility have calcified the primordial waters of your emotional intelligence into stoic wisdom, and your public and even social presence is a testament to that. Both your Tenth House and your Midheaven in the Ninth are ruled by Saturn, which speaks volumes about the things people see in you and the things you aspire to be and how and why the two very often overlap.
Particularly meaningful is that Saturn, the ruler of both your MC and Tenth House is found on your Ascendant in your First House of selfhood, self-concept and body. What you seek, and what you have to offer, is timeless yet deeply and genuinely embodied truth.
The truth of what you lived through and distilled into wisdom lives in your body, and, for this reason, your body is a very public feature of your artistic output.
You have witnessed entire worlds taking shape and dissolving and you remained the only constant, and this is something that people see in you, whether or not you choose to showcase it.
There is an eschatological quality (of death, the finality, end of days, endings) about your public self and perhaps this is part of your legacy, too — to speak of the ever present reality of death and endings & how does this reality shape what is still here. How the act of creation in itself marks the end of something else. How to recreate ourselves time and again through chaos. One thing for sure— Saturn is the Task Master and you are on the path of Self Mastery that you achieve by getting up everytime you fail/fall, and you fall/fail regularly.
However you decide to show up for the people who love what you do, you don’t need to stick to anyone else’s formula but your own.
The only thing that matters is that you define what success looks like to you, especially in terms of legacy.
Because whatever you put out into the world is bound to outlive you, and being mindful of your legacy is necessary when the most visible areas and points in your chart are ruled by Saturn, the Lord of Time and the Mastery.
What do you want to be the poster child of? What timeless knowledge do you want to pass on to your community? Weaving your personal life philosophy into your body of work (as well as your actual body) seems to be a crucial aspect of your artistry with a Ninth House MC.
What do you believe in? What are the philosophical tenets that carry you? And how can you make them beautiful and manifest?
ABUNDANCE CODES
Let’s talk money and how you can create resourcefulness and financial stability— whether as an artist or in any other way you choose.
Just like your Fifth House of creativity, your Second House of cash flow and assets is also ruled by Mercury, archetype of communication, trade, speech, transportation, translation, language, our environment, information, words as spells.
Regardless of how you decide to make a living, whether as an artist, an astrologer, writer or something else entirely, your capacity for receiving seems inextricably tied to your ability to tell stories. Stories about your art, your creative self expression, stories about your process and your journey.
Mercury is a storyteller and a translator. And when Mercury is the planet in charge of making you money, it’s important to give Mercury what Mercury wants— a language. An audience. Something to talk about. Someone to talk to. Especially in the case of a Mercury that is domiciled in the airy, chatty, dynamic sign of Gemini. Gemini is a sanguine sign with a hot and moist temperament— it’s also unpredictable, curious, contrary and extremely versatile.
The key for someone whose Second House is ruled by a domiciled Mercury is to be prepared to receive financial support from multiple sources. You can make art and teach about it. You can make art and write about art. Basically making a living through art that includes the element of communication, writing and/or speech is a winning abundance formula for you. In addition to ruling professions such as an astrologer, teacher, promoter Mercury also favours mediators and messengers. And, before the discovery of Uranus, Mercury was said to rule technology too.
Mercury is nothing if not flexible, adaptable and versatile, and when in its domiciles in Gemini it moves particularly fast. So, whatever work you choose to do to create abundance with in your life, make sure you talk about it and use communication to connect the dots and build bridges.
In other words: talk about the things you’re offering, selling, making. Start a conversation. Share your process, your ideas. Ask questions. Broadcast your messages. And be sure to always offer a different perspective— Mercury isn’t known as a trickster for towing the line and being agreeable.
AESTHETIC ALCHEMY (VENUS)
Venus is the beauty in you and how you birth it into the world.
Through our personal vocabulary of words, textures, colours and forms, the blueprint of our desire is transmuted into aesthetic experience. Nowadays, the concept of aesthetics is often conflated with mere visuals— but this word originally defined the experience of engaging with something through the senses, a category that includes, but is not limited to, sight.
Your Twelfth House Venus in Aries is like fire contained within smouldering embers. The Hearth is there but one has to cross the threshold of your very own personal psychological citadel to find it. The Twelfth House is secluded, like a precipitous Orthodox monastery atop the Meteora rocks in Greece. Yet on the top of that mountain within the four walls of that remote building, the ardour (intensity) of your wrath, raw sexuality and passion is like one tall flame licking the ceiling until the whole building comes undone.
The aesthetic of Venus in Aries in the Twelfth House is made up of all the blood, sweat and tears – and menstrual blood – the world doesn’t see. Chiron stabs her in the heart and she bleeds profusely. There is aggression here as well as deep well of magnanimous grief and an urge to fight as well as fight back.
Venus in Aries is a forest of forks and knives and howling battle cries.
Venus in Aries is in detriment, which means that you’re prone to do Venus things in a way that is nothing like what people expect from Venus. When we think of beauty and seduction, we hardly ever think of severance and pain and anger, yet roses happen to have thorns. Venus in Aries wants you to take your thorns and your fangs to the world. The only issue being— anything that lurks in our natal Twelfth House is something that we have to actively seek. So it’s necessary to own your fangs which at first it might feel like finding your hands in a dream.
The Twelfth House is the vault of all that is hidden— it’s our blind spot, the terra incognita of our unconscious. We meet planets in the Twelfth House where they’re at— lost in the infinite space of the last house of the zodiac wheel. Yet it’s so incredibly necessary to go find them, to embark on this quest, because planets in the Twelfth House need to be brought out in the open or they’ll fall prey to cabin fever, go completely insane and start plotting our demise.
Your Venus in Aries is lost and wants to be found. You can channel her energy by painting, taking photos and writing about things that are hidden, forbidden, rejected by the society, yet are still very much alive and vibrant as well as armed and dangerous.
Venus in Aries is beauty with an edge, it’s carnivorous flowers and crimes of passion. She’s pretty but she has a vendetta against whoever locked her away. She’s an outcast who loves living in exile.
Your art is not supposed to be harmless and tame. Your aesthetic should shock people into feeling something while serving as a cathartic outlet for things that you can barely speak about because you can barely fathom them.
I’m not necessarily talking trauma— sometimes we are unable to articulate our experience because its specificity genuinely escapes us.
Twelfth House is the house of exile & banishment. A disorienting experience for some, but for your Venus it is a FREEING one. You crave being away from what you love & know yet you don’t quite understand why that is. Creating your own edgy, feisty aesthetic can help — some things are better understood through images and sounds and colours and symbols.
What if your own signature aesthetic was a testament to marginality as a way of taking back your power (Aries)? How would the things you create then, look and feel like? What kind of experience would they provide?
SPACE ODDITIES (OUTER PLANETS)
Outer planets – Uranus, Neptune and Pluto – are not like the other planets. They are less about the reality-based nature of our human experience and more about what transcends it. The fears we cannot name (Pluto). The bliss we look for in all the wrong places (Neptune). Rebelliousness without a cause (Uranus).
Artists are mouthpieces to these transpersonal, archetypal forces, because we are constantly tapped into a place beyond the Self.
It’s then matter of determining which is which— which one of these three Gods is asking to be expressed through your art. Sometimes it’s one of them, other times it’s all three. Outer planets are unbounded gods of chaos and change. They are wonderful to work with because they represent transpersonal, collective forces beyond our control bleeding into our creative expression and aligning us with Zeitgeist.
In your case, the one that demands your utmost attention is your Pluto, in your Fifth House.
Pluto is a fascinating planet— a fathomless black hole that sucks everything in and keeps it there. With Pluto in your Fifth House, you will always be obsessed with expressing yourself.
Your Fifth House is the pit where the lord of the Underworld vomits his thick black bile of terrors and desires, which means that creativity is not a hobby for you— it’s medicine and it’s an outlet for the things that terrify you and thrill you at the same time.
Your uninhibited creative expression is a catalyst for radical self transformation and renewal.
The act of creating impacts your self-concept and enables you to feel powerful, like someone with a sense of purpose. Someone with agency. Someone who can magnetise desires into existence.
And yet, transmutation and catharsis require courage— the courage to lay it all down at Pluto’s feet, our fears and compulsions and innermost cravings. No holding back.
Pluto demands nothing but truth — you must bring your truth to him no matter what.
Pluto needs flesh – the flesh of your Shadow – for his meat grinder. You need to be at least willing to offer him your Shadow. You need to be willing to look for your shadow in every crevice of your being.
You must give Pluto your deepest, darkest and scariest to work with.
Something to chop into pieces and turn into an x-ray of your soul. Then you will be able to see yourself for who you really are and alter what you see to suit who you want to be – the most empowered and integrated version of you.
Your art, your creative self-expression is not so much about transmutation as it is about integration — the moment you graze the mirror of your own shadow you cease to be a two-dimensional caricature of yourself and are born again into wholeness.
Pluto is a planet of extremes. Extreme desire, extreme fear, and all the extreme measures we take to either survive or harness these extreme feelings. There is no escaping— your art is meant to be a potent, shocking catalyst for the integration of the darkness that lurks in the folds of the human psyche.
Plutonians are more than mere scavengers of the Soul— they’re here to do god’s work. You are allowed to play god and offer people the chance to save themselves from their mediocrity by embracing their sordid, unspeakable desires. For power. For being overpowered. Desire to live and desire to disappear in the bowels of the Earth and never be found. Desire that transcends and swallows human logic and chews on it and spits it out all gnawed and mouthed.
Pluto doesn’t do vanilla. Pluto paints it darker and wants it deeper — Pluto is over-the-top drama and passion and force and sexuality.
You must master the art of creating from your guts if you are to accept this mission. You must write and draw and paint what you mean at all times, then go beyond even that – because what you mean is just the tip of the iceberg of your terrors and cravings.
You need to turn yourself inside out to make art that is unapologetically eviscerating – compelling or repugnant but impossible to ignore.
Some themes you might want to explore through your creations: so called evil, power dynamics, desire (particularly desire for more power, more recognition, more influence), atavistic fears and the things you do to keep them at bay, survival mechanisms, feelings and behaviours that are deemed socially unacceptable (envy, competitiveness, malice) and anything else our society considers taboo or undesirable.
IN THE CARDS
A 3-card, past-present-future spread, where of course the past-present-future in question are the past, present and future stages of your very own creative journey. Here’s who showed up for you:
PAST: Elder (King) of Pentacles
PRESENT: The Hierophant
FUTURE: Child (Page) of Wands
THE PAST: The Elder (King) of Pentacles represents the stage of your creative journey you’re leaving behind. This Elder has mastered the art of moulding, shaping and manipulating matter; you can tell he’s beaming with pride as he stands tall in a field, a pentacle in his hands, the silhouette of a mountain behind his shoulders a tangible manifestation of his power and authority. This card tells me that you spent a long time honing and tending to the material aspects of your craft, whether it’s the actual medium or media you work with, or even finances in a sense of seeking and finding financial stability so as to be supported both in a general sense and also in your artistic endeavours. The good news is that you were crowned, so to speak, and are now graduating from that. You have learned your lessons and are now in a position to share your wisdom with the world.
Elder of Pentacles interpretations by Spacious Tarot: key words: competence, direction, mastery, material security and comfort. When you use your competence to generate tangible results you activate your inner Elder of Pentacles. Like the bear in the card you are centred, you’re strong and you are the Director of your own life. It’s time to leave your mark in whatever way calls to your core. You can make things happen, you can effect change – get out there and do it! Elder is all about solutions. Be practical, find what works and embody a healthy sense of self worth. The bear here doesn’t try to hide away – it stands tall front and centre. Let yourself take up space!
RIGHT NOW you’re embodying the solemn energy of the Hierophant. The beautiful artwork for this trump shows us an ancient megalithic stone circle reminiscent of the Stonehenge. A silvery crescent glimmers in the sky, but an even greater source of light illuminating this sacred space is the sun slowly rising from below the horizon. The atmosphere is quiet, liminal and ceremonial. At this present time you should solidify your artistic vocation through symbolic, ritualistic action.
There is an inordinate amount of potential in the art you are birthing at this time! For every artwork you make is a vessel for something special and powerful that cements your role as a wise Crone— a guide, a mentor, perhaps a teacher, albeit not in a conventional sense.
The art you’ll be making at present is the harbinger of a message— that message being ‘I’m here, I have transformed and this is who I have become’. Make art with intention. Your art is a simulacrum (symbol) at this time. You can entrust any message or energy or egregore (spirit, angel) to your creations— and that is the energy that will come alive and impact your physical reality. It’s all part of your personal transmutation as you fully step into your power.
The Hierophant interpretations by Spacious Tarot: key words: societal structures, belief system, group identity, higher guidance. This card summons you to explore your beliefs. Stone circles were important to many ancient cultures and they were used to perform sacred ceremonies and rituals in order for the people to receive higher guidance. The stones in this card invite you to create your own sacred time and space so that you too can receive higher guidance for your own highest good. As important as your individuality is it is also important to know you are a member of something bigger, larger. Having a sense of group identity is a vital aspect of this card. Although the Hierophant has been traditionally linked to organised religion, this sense of belonging can arise in endless settings. Embrace the type of community that is right for you.
THE FUTURE is symbolized by the Child (Page) of Wands. It is said that rules are made to be broken and that once you mastered them, you’re equipped to break them in creative, exciting ways. The Child of Wands wants you to give less fucks about what happens if you let yourself slip or do cringe-y things on the internet— you are coming from a place of inner mastery and it’s safe for you to let the true spirit of your inner artist shine.
Child of Wands interpretation by Spacious Tarot: when you intimately connect to your instincts you align with the fire/passion of your inner child. There is no pressure to conform here. So what if you slip up, if you’re laughed at, not taken seriously or not thought much of? None of these reactions are a reflection of you, a commentary on you but about your nay-sayers. Leave them to it and like a child ignore the “boring adults” and just follow your own bliss. The salamander in the artwork doesn’t look to outside sources but instead to its own channelled flame then it just follows it. How can you embrace your unique creative spark? The Child of Wands teaches you to be optimistic, hopeful and positive – to believe in yourself and you birth right to all the goodness life can offer.
MY BESPOKE PLAYLIST
Your playlist ended up sounding like a collections of very shadowy, very introspective yet still graceful and elegant songs— a vibe that definitely reminds me of you. Some of these songs are about becoming, some are about catharsis and a lot of them are about looking within. My intention is to have these songs inspire you to channel the deepest, rawest and wildest part of yourself into art.
DARKER MATERIALS 