August Transmission: Controlled Fire

Rage as medicine, unmasking, and the feral parts we hide.

“Why the hell are we conditioned into the smooth strawberry-and-cream Mother-Goose-world, Alice-in-Wonderland fable, only to be broken on the wheel as we grow older and become aware of ourselves as individuals with a dull responsibility in life?” — Sylvia Plath

Last week, I announced that my books are now open for 1:1 readings. Since then I’ve had the pleasure and privilege of working with a handful of people, and each experience has been so mutually beneficial. I closed each reading feeling like something within me had been mended. There was also a consistent theme that ran through each one: a deep, persistent fear of being seen. I struggle with this in my own life and creative practice, but I didn’t realize how deep this undercurrent ran through the collective.

I wrote about this concept more in depth a few weeks ago, exploring the historical sources and iterations of the witch wound and how it can present in modern lives. The repercussions and fears surrounding perception are completely valid, particularly for those of us belonging to marginalized communities and continuing to traverse the seventh circle of hell formerly known as America. Unfortunately, everything worth doing requires being seen, and we are always being asked to risk something, even if that something is just our ego or our pride. It is a skill to dance within that tension: the push-pull limbo of visibility and obscurity.

This duality has presented itself in a myriad of ways, but most notably in my music tastes as of late. It is softness paired with grit: Grouper’s lush, atmospheric melodies followed by Chino Moreno’s desperate screams on a churning Deftones track. Julianna Barwick’s cathedral vocals paired alongside the crackling glitch of Kim Gordon’s guitar. August’s playlist may feel chaotic, but it feels like a kind of chaotic good. I contain multitudes, and so do you. We are in the age of Aquarius, after all, and chaos must be embraced.

Themes associated with Black Moon Lilith — the often shadowy and primal aspects of the feminine psyche — have also continued to surface. Two weeks ago, I was lucky enough to snag nosebleeds to MCR’s Black Parade tour, and it revived something dormant in me. I went with one of my oldest and dearest friends, and we lined our eyes with red and black in our very best impression of Gerard Way, wore our heaviest boots, and gratuitous amounts of black layers. We still knew all the words by heart, screaming each one at the top of our lungs. All videos I took during that show feature our toneless shrieks, which only makes my smile wider when I play the memories back. It was pure joy, angst, and catharsis, and it made me realize that even now in my thirties, there is still so much wick left to burn on the unbridled angst I first discovered in my adolescence. I also learned that Lilith is in Aries in my chart, which is an almost comically explosive combination. Honestly, it explains a lot.

A snapshot of my chart from the Chani App.

Since then I’ve been lining my eyes with smudges of black, not caring if it was expertly applied or smearing by mid-day, channeling eyeliner muses like Claudia Winkleman and Vivienne Westwood. I continued to stomp around in my heavy boots, wearing them with everything, even if they didn’t quite match. I didn’t smile for anyone unless I felt like it, I didn’t perform. Ironically, in bearing that face of makeup I gleefully applied like a child who has just discovered her mother’s vanity, my clothing like soft armor, I felt safe and held enough to unmask completely and untether myself from “traditional” feminine obligations. If I must be perceived, I wanted it to be on my own terms.

I had a fairly untraditional upbringing. I was born to anarchist-atheist teen parents and fed a consistent diet of books I was technically too young to read, films I was too young to understand, and very angry music. My childhood was soundtracked by Nirvana, the Smashing Pumpkins, Tori Amos, Alice in Chains, Nine Inch Nails. A healthy expression of rage was welcomed, and I was encouraged to question everything. But even those raised among radical teen punks are susceptible to the heavy-handed conditioning of society at large, and somewhere along the way I learned that in order to be loved and accepted, I had to be quiet, tame, and pleasant. This is what Carl Rogers called conditional positive regard or simply conditional regard, meaning the acceptance and approval we gain from someone based on whether or not we meet their standards.¹ These can lead to learned behaviors and characteristics that are incongruent with our authentic selves.

Being an elder emo in my kitchen.

I have been slowly unlearning this behavior piece by piece, chipping away at the hardened earth and excavating the parts of myself I expertly hid away from the world in order to be “loved.” The older I get, the more I realize how absurd these conditions are. So, with the fire of Leo season behind me and the themes associated with Black Moon Lilith that continue to surface, I am leaning into the anger I’ve been conditioned not to express. The anger that so often curdles and seethes beneath the surface. How many times have I received the covert messages from society at large that I must be soft, agreeable, and lovely? That all of my wishes and desires are burdensome, I must always put myself last, and that rage is unbecoming, unloveable, and unforgivable?

Rage, when used correctly, is a lot like fire. It can light it all up violently and chaotically — or it can be controlled, like the Indigenous practices of land stewardship that clear away the tangled underbrush choking our native plant life, making room for new growth. And what better time to practice that than at the height of summer, in the throes of fiery Leo season?

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A Collective Reading for August

For this I drew a simple three-card spread, asking: what is the energy of August, what actions can we take this month, and what are the results of those actions?

The Energy of August: Six of Cups

The Six of Cups invites us to slip into the bath-like waters of memory and remember what is essential to ourselves. Six is the number of harmony and equilibrium, and the suit of cups speaks to our inner world: the realm of feeling, intuition, soul.