#12: The Prophecy
A greater woman stays cool, but I howl like a wolf at the moon.
Exciting news x2~
Hi from Maine.
In April I left South Florida to head to an island off of midcoast Maine to learn to garden.
I write to you now looking out the window of the 19th-century house I’m staying in, fog settling into the forest just beyond. There’s a haunted feeling in some aspects, a certain comfort among the ghosts of this ancient New World.
In the garden, my body moves rhythmically. Weeding, digging, laying hay, moving things to the burn pile, sowing seeds into the ground, towing compost in the wheelbarrow, transplanting into bigger pots, watering. Broadforking the winter soil, letting the air seep into the earth beds; it’s almost as if you can see her gasping it all in, breathing deeply.
There are no long mirrors in the house. The most of my body that I can see in a reflection is my face and chest. My clothes fit looser, I’m ravenously hungry, my body feels stronger and my steps, lighter. I can’t see myself, but the feeling is better anyhow.
I try to be in the garden with no music, podcasts, or audiobooks. I attempt to let my mind do her thing, find space in the routine, in the physicality of it all. Sometimes I need a song to get me through the last push and I think the plants are grateful for my singing (we hope).
There is nothing natural about gardening, I think, three weeks in. Not one thing.
The plants are spoiled little princesses and I don’t think I’ll ever look at a vegetable the same way again. I say this with love and respect because to germinate as a little seed is still a ton of work. They are working hard, these little things, but man do they need the perfect conditions to do it. And even then, sometimes they just say, “Nah.”
I had seemingly perfect conditions set up in my life only seven months ago. Plot twist. It turns out there was a different path to take, a whole new life to cultivate. This is the mystery. This is surrender.
This is me noticing my South Node (our comfort/past-life soul-gifts in astrology) in Cancer — a little squishy, reticent being with a hard exterior who loves her perfect, homey conditions, swimming in her emotions, and nesting in her tiny corner of the world. I’ll stay right here just fine, thank you. Yet her North Node (what’s here to cultivate and challenge us in this lifetime) is in Capricorn, the mystical, clever sea goat, half hard-Earth, half watery dreamer bringing spirit into matter through radical responsibility, discipline, and entering the fires of commitment.
And so…
Being in a new place shifts us energetically in a multitude of ways — a massive one being planetary. As a student of Mythopoetic astrology and Astrocartography for some time now, and experimenting on myself over the last year, I’ve been affirmed time and again.
I’ve written in this newsletter before how affirmation and validation are often base-level feelings that don’t usually ignite the way forward for us when the time comes. But, with astrology and Astrocartography, they do.
˗ˏˋ ˎˊ˗ As I inch along in this new space and continue my work as a student, I would love to offer some discounted readings in the near future to strengthen my seer's bones :) ˗ˏˋ ˎˊ˗
Here’s a brief breakdown of what I can offer:
My niche of astrology is Mythopoetic meaning I weave in Greco-Roman myths to better illuminate the natal chart as a story — a poem if you will — of one’s psyche, personality, and life. As we know, myths contain a fairytale quality full of twists and turns, highs and lows. I suspect that’s why mythic storytelling has lived on through us from the dawn of time until this very day… we see ourselves in it.
In my readings, I also incorporate Carl Jung’s influential work on Archetypes and the unconscious mind and how it interplays with what we often deem “fate.” (Is it written in the stars? Is it all random? Do our unconscious patterns create our life? Let’s explore.)
A super niche and exhilarating practice: reading Astrocartography maps. Astrocartography is the study of how planetary energies affect us at the exact location we’re living in (or traveling to, etc.) in the world based on our natal and relocated birth charts. This is revolutionary! It’s a huge reason why I chose my specific location here in Maine.
The body-nervous system-aura complex (coined by Pilar Lesko) is the basis of the work I aim to do in all aspects of my life. My commitment to energy work/hygiene, nervous system regulation/somatic awareness, and alchemizing the unconscious/conscious minds ensures there are sovereign interactions and connections when we are working together. This helps subdue any enmeshing of opinions/projections onto you and onto me, etc.
The magic of Astrocartography is seeing how each corner of the world represents a distinct part of you and your psyche that gets activated when you go there.
The beauty of Mythopoetic/archetypal astrology is the weaving together of mystical “talismans and charms,” an imaginary bouquet of wildflowers, stinging nettle, feathers, stones, velvet bows, bones, little creatures, and the like that illuminate the broader strokes of your life and personality.
It’s a story held loosely together with a tattered silk ribbon laid at your feet that feels like a gift, an offering from the Heavens, a remembrance that you are so intrinsically you. Pick it up, touch it, smell it, feel it — see yourself in it.
˗ˏˋ If you are interested in doing a reading with me when I’m ready to launch them, comment below, reply to this email, or email me at guesthouse.earth@gmail.com and you’ll be locked in for the discounted rate as an appreciation. ˗ˏˋ ˎˊ˗
I’m super excited about this, y’all. <333
Garden Thoughts: I
I’ve had “a hummingbird and a snake” written in my personal Instagram bio for years after reading it in a quote from Cheryl Strayed on love, and today I saw two hummingbirds buzzing around the peach trees just moments after seeing a garden snake in the grass.
With my 7th house of relationships and partnerships in astrology living in the sign of Taurus (earthy, bucolic, decadent loving) who is ruled by the planet Venus (goddess of love, pleasure, beauty), relationships and love in all of its forms has been heavy on my mind and heart in this Taurean season.
I read something recently about “fairytale love” and how so many of us want it but don’t let ourselves even feel that we want it because it sounds ridiculous, childish, naive. We say Disney and Co. brainwashed us into thinking it’s “real,” but what if it’s the opposite? The projection fields of our friends, family, trauma, culture, upbringing, etc. infiltrated us and our ideas of love, partnership, and what we’re capable of giving, receiving (this is huge), and building with another human.
We accept the love we think we deserve.
I loved that Perks of Being a Wallflower quote as a teen but didn’t fully grasp it until very recently. That’s because “accepting” something so intangible as love is as innate and automatic as breathing. There’s no method to it, there’s nothing to be taught.
I never considered myself a “romantic” even as a 10th grader lying in bed under the Twilight spell. While I loved the books (iconic), I couldn’t imagine being that over the moon for someone. Same with Taylor’s “Love Story.” I found it wildly embarrassing that a 19-year-old was so open about picking out a wedding dress and crying on the staircase for her long-lost love. Despite its parallels to Shakespeare’s greatest tragedy, I couldn’t dare imagine speaking it to a friend let alone the entire world. (Cue to me in 2023 on the floor of the Era’s Tour happy crying during “Love Story” because it was so joyfully, expressively, sweetly fun. 33-year-old Taylor having the time of her life with us, not a modicum of embarrassment to be seen!)
Despite the many cliches and mass marketing of love, I realize I want it all. Messy, magical, fully human, all-encompassing, sturdy, steady, passionate, safe, quiet, and yes, fairytale. All of it.
Realizing this has been a little light bulb moment, as my former marriage was unconsciously built off the back of what if I never find someone better/another person who will love me more than this? I sensed it from the beginning in both of us and knew we were in trouble. But quiet as the rains are in a desert with no one around, you sit and wait it out, witness the happenings. Or just bury yourself in the sand and pray to take root or bloom. It was a slow death for us, a drought.
As a kid, I loved fairytales and I never found their love, needs, wants, or desires to be embarrassing. I also think back on how as a child I wanted to be a “singer/songwriter” and an “archeologist/geologist.”
Days spent writing songs and singing Shania Twain with my neighbor friend Jade and playing in the backyard that had turned into a construction zone, trees ripped out and turned over while roads and cookie-cutter houses were being built, a new, endless playground for us neighborhood kids. “The dunes” we would call them, huge craters of earth and their mountainous sand piles where pipes and sewage would inevitably go, but until then, endless Earth to sift through and rocks to study. When I was bound for college and trying to pick a major (ha) I couldn’t fathom how I once wanted to be “those things,” but to me now it’s clear as day.
Wanting to be creative and expressive in my throat and words, diaristic, and seen. An urge to dig deep into the soil, the underworld, and the human condition, unearthing bones from the past while being rooted to the solid Earth and to the now. These things are why I am here. I intuited it subtly at eight and I remember it now at 32.
Astrology has illuminated so much of this beautifully. The Midheaven (MC) in our natal chart is often where we find our “legacy,” our “career,” our public image, or our “purpose.” Hold those themes loosely, I beg of you, and rather assess and tune into the underlying energies around that space (and the IC angle) in your chart.
Through this, there’s a time of playful experimentation and integration — what part of your life is beckoning you to pay attention, to connect, to remember?
Astrological transits illuminate this for us more specifically, but the gift that keeps on giving is getting to know our natal chart in its labyrinthy, spiraling glory. Slowly, lightbulbs begin to flicker on, incandescent and soft, in the dark, old house.
Garden Thoughts: II
When I weed and broadfork I feel an array of emotions. There is nothing natural about a garden. Frustration, elation, horniness, anger. My “Deepest Fear Inventory” (a practice coined by Carolyn Elliot) comes bubbling up and I take note to give attention to those fears later with the utmost reverence they deserve.
I feel whiny. So whiny and spoiled like a tantrum-having child. “I don’t wanna!!!” I feel my heart bounce in my chest, big gulping thumps as my body climbs to a warmth that feathers out and radiates off of me.
The loneliness hits — the ache for a warm body next to me, a giant bear hug that feels rapturous and safe all the same. I want to talk to a man deep into the night, fawning over the stars while we lay under the Milky Way.
I recently started writing erotic poetry, the likes of it piggybacking off of my desire for a fairytale love and a fairytale, kinky sex life with said fairytale lover. These poems flow out of me so willingly, a sort of submission to the masculine, to the dominant energies that be.
Soon enough, a random Bartholin’s cyst formed, so painful, and came to a head releasing what was symbolically, to me, sexual trauma, sexual dissatisfaction, and a yearning to connect love through sex in a prolific, euphoric way.
I’ll post one of the poems here for fellow sovereign, rooted, mature, erotic-loving readers, and maybe I’ll post more! It’s explicit, it’s a subtle kink/love exploration, it’s an acceptance of all parts of myself — it’s everything I turned away from that came to haunt me in the worst ways because it could never just simply be, and therefore, alchemized and integrated. Poetry is an expression of that for me.
I bury a garnet ring of mine here on the island. A blood-colored stone that encapsulates so much of me, my January, winter-babe birthstone. Deep pools of dark red, slightly intimidating, beckons to be worn on its own, changes moods in the light. The natural materials beg to go back into the earth, and I don’t wear it much anyway. It’s now buried here on the island that so stoically calls my name among the towering snapped Spruce trees and in the bones and shells that I see as I dig.
Maine is not an instant hit-high love as I had with New York City or Japan when I lived in those places. Maine feels a bit like swimming in familiar waters — comforting, cleansing, reliable, supportive. Cities give off such a high with infinite distractions to escape any unsavory feelings that it’s impossible not to be in love with when the foot hits the pavement. Here, there are no distractions. There is only me, the land, the sea. It’s its own sort of fairytale.
Thanks for reading,
Tracy
Lessons from the garden!
Emailing you 🧚♀️💓