jo, son of neill

astrologer, writer, big tolkien nerd, dwimmer-crafty

[masterelrond]

MIDDLE EARTH MEME  ↳ [1] One movie - The Two Towers

It’s like in the great stories, Mr. Frodo, the ones that really mattered. Full of darkness and danger they were, and sometimes you didn’t want to know the end, because how could the end be happy? How could the world go back to the way it was when so much bad had happened? But in the end, it’s only a passing thing, this shadow. Even darkness must pass. A new day will come, and when the sun shines it will shine out the clearer. 

[ceejoules]

not writing, not not writing, but a secret third thing

[lotrscenery]

Ithilien - Wailua Falls, Hawaii

[christophernolan]

TOLKIEN WEEK 2022 | Favorite Location | IMLADRIS (RIVENDELL)

Such was the virtue of the land of Rivendell that soon all fear and anxiety was lifted from their minds. The future, good or ill, was not forgotten, but ceased to have any power over the present. Health and hope grew strong in them, and they were content with each good day as it came, taking pleasure in every meal, and in every word and song.

[mercuriusgeorge]

reflections on twitter, the sun, saturn in aquarius, and the coming pluto in aquarius years

seeing twitter slip into a kind of solar death spiral, after falling into the hands of a single hyper-egoic figure, is making me reflect on the past couple years of saturn in aquarius, and the impending ingress of pluto into aquarius.

if leo is all about the symbol of the king, the figurehead around which all things organize, then aquarius, the sign opposing leo, is all about decentralization. it's still "concerned" with the individual, but rather than a single, elevated individual, it's the abstracted individual — seeing the value of each unique spirit that comprises the collective.

the past few years with saturn in aquarius have challenged the structure of social media platforms. if they are centralized entities with executive decision-making, then those decision-makers have to grapple directly with paradoxes and take on responsibility for their choices. the best example in the past few years might be vaccine disinformation. do you prioritize the individual right to free speech or the collective responsibility to save lives by restricting misinformation? either way you are upholding an aquarian ideal, but in so doing you are disregarding a different aquarian ideal. there might be ways to thread the needle with compromise, but ultimately you not only can't please everybody, you can't really do "the right thing," because there is no single right thing, it's just a question of setting priorities according to your own executive, solar authority.

the challenges of the pandemic forced these platforms to make tough decisions which in some ways entrenched their institutional power but may ultimately lead to a reduction in their autonomy, whether that comes through regulation, reduced popularity, financial challenges, etc. (we'll see, it will probably be a combination of all these things.) if nothing else i think these years revealed that it's tough to position yourself as a principled tyrant in a hyper-democratic space like the internet. you may be able to hold onto power but you won't be very popular.

pluto enters aquarius next year just after saturn leaves for pisces. surely pluto's 20 years in aquarius will bring radical new developments in this paradoxical space, the tension between centralized authority and decentralized, democratized social organizing. lest we forget, this is the transit that brought us the US constitution (i don't mean to deify that document, but it is nonetheless a huge and noteworthy development in our history).

the chaos at twitter is fueling an interest in decentralized social media platforms such as mastodon. and i'm finally coming around to seeing that twitter was always a strangely solar platform. as much as each user's timeline was individually crafted by elusive machines, and there have always been various subcultures and communities gathering on that platform, at the end of the day, the whole appeal of twitter was that we were all in one space talking about the main event of our respective sphere. there's even a whole joke about how the goal of twitter is to avoid becoming the main character of the day. hell, the chart of the very first tweet has the sun exalted in aries in the 10th house.

whether or not twitter dies, or we all get comfortable on some other platform, perhaps it's that solar impulse that we need to think more critically about. do we all need to be watching the same channel? why do our eyes drift so compulsively back toward a single point of visual interest? there may be a loss if we congregate in the "silos" of decentralized servers, but surely we've already lost something of ourselves by surrendering to the gravitational pull of The Timeline these past however-many years.

just an initial foray into this somewhat obvious line of thinking.

[alyssiaofcups]

I'm a long time organizer (15 years) who recently moved to the Bay Area and became an organizing director for a local housing org. I was let go from my position in mid-September in the midst of a medical/dental crisis.

I'm organizing a raffle to raise funds and the prizes include life coaching, jewelry, handmade silk pillow cases, a custom crochet blanket, books, and astrology readings. If you, or someone you know, would be interested in participating, please share!

Raffle can be found here: https://forms.gle/xmD3kBftCXeVBit16

Gofundme can be found here: https://www.gofundme.com/f/alyssias-survival-fund

[clareyrobwrites17]

Do you ever simply cry bcos you’ve been seen too clearly?

[cryptonature]

I am endlessly broken and

endlessly healed.

One uninterrupted scar.

A Ship of Theseus.

My mosaic,

shattered, patched, replaced,

without pause.

Somedays,

it feels like insight.

To give up on being whole.

To not be the work,

but the worker who repairs and reimagines.

My own author.

[eli-fs-world-deactivated2023020]

[maegkeane]

Fennel and Listening

Fennel is a plant of between, of translation. To translate is to listen and makeshift, substitute, rearrange, improvise. To translate is to listen with the next listener in mind. Fennel is beloved by gods who go between, who have been to otherworlds and return to tell the tale.

Fennel befriends god-thieves who steal cattle, steal fire, steal into nooks and crannies of the world. Fennel loves torchbearers in the dark. Fennel allies with the gods who fetch powers, gifts, and other god-people from unreachable places.

Prometheus, Hermes, Dionysus. Gods of substitutes, gods who transmute, translate, take-across. Prometheus who descended from Olympus to Earth with sacred fire. Dionysus who descended from Earth into Hades and fetched Ariadne and Semele.

And always, ever Hermes.

I’m writing this on Mercury’s day. That whisking weird planet is leaving the heart of the Sun in Scorpio. Scorpio is an astral environment of fixed water. Held water, still water. But a gateway like the swamps of Lerna, through which Dionysus entered the Underworld.

As I think about Mercury in Scorpio as Mercury in Lerna, I am thinking of fennel. This particularly psychopompic plant tells stories of listening and telling that trespasses, transmutes, retrieves, and otherwise otherworld-travels. Speech that goes in and comes out as a kind of fetching.

Questions I’m asking: in how many languages, verbal and nonverbal, do I listen? What trans-species translations are possible? What connections could I retrieve — to the beings around me and in otherworlds — if I improvised ways to listen I haven't tried before?

Could I steal across the boundary of my own body and into the ecosystem of which I am a part, and make my body an ear? Sipping fennel, I wonder how I can be a lake-gate, a reflection and door for more translations to slip through. How is my very breath a translation, every inhale listening to the stories of the flora who exhaled, every exhale another story I am telling them?

Listening to the myths that plants tell and what they can teach us about the astral is what I offer in my Plant & Planet Devotion work. If you’d like a guide to help you build relationships with the planet-gods and the plants who love them, let’s talk. That offering shares the heart of my practice with you. It’s too much to cover in one hour so it takes place over two sessions. Payment plans are always an option and common. Email me to talk payment plans or click here if you’re ready now.

[stellar-witchcraft]

Solipsisms for Venus & Mercury in Scorpio trine Jupiter in Pisces

Quiver: the heart as a tender seismograph/archivist of all the tremors which/cascade across its warm red tongue.

Devour: the psyche as a carapace/haunted shell, sweet conduit of phantoms/which spectral epithets self-eulogize within.

Sigh: the lips as Orphic tunnel/that estuary of ossified dreams which/inherit immortality within the waters of the Lethe.

Melancholic choreography//Desires exiled underground.

How many snakeskins have you swallowed searching to be sated by the identities which others outgrew?

How does one let go of ephemera, of that which is intangible, to begin with?

[filmreel]

PRINCESS MONONOKE ‘もののけ姫’ dir. Hayao Miyazaki

[jomakerofways]

My punchy twitter thread era might be over. I think it has been over for a while.

*Galadriel voice* My world has changed. It is slower, fuller, and richer. Not unlike the complete meals I eat now, my life has taken on a wholeness that asks me to sit down and really enjoy it, then take the time to let it digest. I would like my internet life to reflect the same.

I do love grazing: a bite here and there is fun and convenient, and feels a bit like fun cheating. I’m a grown up and I can eat how and when I want! But unfortunately, I have found as I age that too many snacks does have a way of spoiling dinner, especially when the snacks aren’t very satisfying. Twitter feels like the stale leftover Halloween candy nobody chose, or the small batch food truck that sold out and became a chain.

Goodness, I’m old— but twitter doesn’t taste the same anymore. I’m not tossing it in the trash yet, but I reach for it less and less with so many more satisfying options around.

I love cooking like I love writing. And I think I am realizing that twitter has been spoiling my dinner for a while. I’m craving more substance, more sustainability, and something to sit down and really enjoy and be nourished by. I want to recalibrate the way I digest, and lean into the way I already love to write AND cook: consider my ingredients with care, and celebrate each one as I combine them to create something that is worth the time and energy. Something to relish in.

I’m sure I’ll still spoil my dinner sometimes. I’m an adult, after all— sometimes I need and want convenience or a quick fix. Sometimes I want a spicy snack bc it tastes good and that is a good enough reason!! But the more I listen to my body, the more I trust it, and the more I want to keep trusting it. And it is not nourished by my current habits.

*NOTE: I am absolutely not asserting moral rightness or healthfulness to “”healthy food”” or certain social platforms or ways of cooking or anything of the sort. I just love food and analogies 😭

If you feel similarly, I’d love to hear about how you’re shifting what you consume and how. I don’t have a solid game plan right now aside from deleting twitter from my phone and seeing what tumblr is about. It’s a work of exploration and curiosity and it is in progress.