In which I discuss the energies of Sagittarius and read the poem-scopes for the month. I talk about wisdom, visionaries, Jupiter, meaning-making, and words from famous Sagittarian writers and musicians.

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photo credit: Meg Puckett

Dear friends,

It’s that time of year again. No, not that time of year. But yeah, that too. It’s the time of year our sun’s in Sagittarius and we remember that we’re visionaries. Social media hot takes aren’t enough for our vast and ancient appetites to get schooled in the Meaning of Life. The Sagittarius archetype, Jupiter-ruled, is a philosopher. It was Pythagoras who coined the term PHILOSOPHY, meaning, LOVE OF WISDOM.

How can I best serve wisdom by loving it, asks the beating&searching heart of our Sagittarius Sun. It’s that time of year wherein we remember the epics of India and Greece and Rome, recall that The Bible is actually a radical work of experimental literature, remember that we landed earthside and were set to a task, not to gather as much 411 as possible, but to find/make Meaning. Pythagoras said:

“Silence is better than unmeaning words.” And also “The oldest, shortest words — yes and no — are those which require the most thought.”

And from Sag poet Emily Dickinson, “‘No’ is the wildest word we consign to language.”

That the planet is a school and that we are students of the celestial realm is the Sagittarian way. Sag reins over philosophy, religion, travel, and higher education and the centaur, half-human, half-beast, is hybrid-y and wild, made of matter and spirit, wisdom-hungry and poised to burst forth. A little sexy, sure. A little, at times, bloated with brevity and arrogance. But first and foremost, a seeker. A traveler. An arrow shooting into galactic consciousness. In short, a writ large badass. (if you missed the Sagittarius poem-scopes and season intro, here it is)

Sagittarius is ruled by Jupiter and we currently run, charged from the new moon, on the fuel of Jupiter, as Jupiter has been tasked with the sempiternal duty of caring for his Sagittarius temple. Jupiter fuel is optimistic, bombastic, and waxing rhapsodic toward the heavenly sphere, searching, searching, growing, growing.... Jupiter fuel is best used for trusting in universal law and divine righteousness. So…

QUESTIONS FOR SAGITTARIUS SEASON

How do I make/find meaning?

In what larger, more powerful force do I place my trust?

What’s up with the difference between knowledge and wisdom?

When/where do I travel to the outer reaches of my consciousness or out of my comfort zone?

What do I believe in?

STAR REPORT

November 27th, Neptune turned direct. This isn’t exactly a feel-the-earth-move-under-our-feet moment, but it is a slow shift into the more intuitively aligned. Your psychic downloads might feel a little clearer. Those hypnagogic moments infused by the direct motion of all that the dream weaver grants us — access to abyssal imagination and the spine of the sea.

On November 30th, the moon moves from Capricorn to Aquarius, and we get a little mental energy in our collective chart and the crisp, cool air of midwinter infuses the moon with objectivity and an almost metallurgical precision.

Jupiter is at a culminating point. The 29th degree of its home sign, Sag, before entering Capricorn, which won’t be an arms-wide-open atmosphere for Jupiter. The ingress happens on December 2nd, when Jupiter’s boundlessness enters the house of Saturnian boundaries and deathstyle reality checks and our task, should we choose to accept it, is to find what Helene Cixous called, “immense limitless life hidden behind restricted life.” What house is ruled by Capricorn in your chart? It’s about to get some expansive Jupiter fuel for about a year. More on this important ingress later.

As always, thanks for reading. These weekly updates are usually only for paying subscribers ($5/month) — which go to support this astrology-art work and the Avant-Galaxy Podcast. If you’re into it and are not already subscribed, please consider:

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Lastly, as a thank you for your incredible support and attention to this cosmic experiment and because this is a wild time of year, here’s a discount code that will work through Monday, December 2nd: FIFTY. You can use it on any astrology reading and get 50% off.

THANK YOU and please reply with your thoughts/questions. I’m recording a Sagittarius season podcast episode very soon! <3

yours,

EMMALEA

IMAGES:

Jupiter (NASA)

Twittering Machine, Paul Klee

Strong Dream, Paul Klee

I had the distinct pleasure of chatting with the writer Sarah Rose Etter. In this episode, we talked about:

• her writing process & the origins of her new novel, The Book of X

• surrealism

• breaking from the “traditional novel” and the form of The Book of X

• the internal safe space of creation & the space of engaging with the public

• the need for holding space for more innovative/experimental writing

• the letter X

• Sarah’s experience on book tour

• what Sarah’s currently working on

• & more…

Sarah Rose Etter is the author of two books, most recently The Book of X (Two Dollar Radio). Her fiction, essays, and interviews have appeared or are forthcoming in VICE, Guernica, The Cut, Gulf Coast, Philadelphia Weekly, and more. She is the recipient of writing residencies at the Disquiet International Program in Lisbon and the Gullkistan Residency in Iceland. She has served as an arts columnist at Philadelphia Weekly and The Austin Chronicle, as well as a contributing editor at The Fanzine.
Website: www.sarahroseetter.com ||| Instagram + Twitter: @sarahroseetter

Order The Book of X here

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Emmalea’s Website || Avant-Galaxy Newsletter || Astrology Readings || @emmaleaxrusso

Dear trusted and cosmic readers,

This Sagittarius newsletter is kind of a kingdom. Let’s journey, shall we? As always, please write back with any questions for the upcoming podcast episode on this new season. In this newsletter kingdom, you’ll find: my take on Sag / Jimi Hendrix / Jupiter / Helen Frankenthaler / the poemscopes for every sign / some new offerings with a discount code / my most Sagittarian poem / The Doors.

VISIONARY MATTER / HYBRID CREATURE

Our sun is catapulting into Sagittarius from the Scorpionic depths and I do mean catapulting. Sagittarius is depicted as a centaur — a half-human, half-horse hybrid creature reckoning with a primary question: how to be both spirit and matter? How to be an animal, fully entrenched in that which ignites the senses while also having a human consciousness which asks the capacious, upward questions: Why am I here? What’s up there? What does it all mean? What is spirit, anyway? This is a very WILD HORSES COULDN’T DRAG ME DOWN and, to borrow a phrase from Austin Coppack, TONIGHT WE RIDE energy. Sagittarius is where knowledge transmutes into wisdom, where we travel to the far reaches of our mind and cosmos in search of truth, where we make meaning, and translate the divine. This is why Sag is often associated with the visionary, the wanderer, the adventurer.

Sagittarius reminds us that seeking truth and meaning-making is necessary.

Words often associated with the Sagittarius energy: hedonistic, jovial, jubilant, life-of-the-party, wisdom-seeking ramblin’ person. In the quest for Truth, our bodies need tending to. We must capitulate, again and again, to our senses while maintaining a connection to the more ethereal realms. This is a wild reckoning, as the centaur bursts onto the scene with animal and person parts like WHOA. Something like, as Rimbaud said, “I’ve just taken a delicious mouthful of poison” and also “I became a fabulous opera.” Or from William Blake, a Sagittarius: “The road of excess leads to the palace of wisdom….you never know what is enough until you know what is more than enough.” Hmm. We’re human creatures. So now what?

SEE ALSO: Sagittarius Jimi Hendrix’s soul-shaking guitar skills and immortal mojo, which streamed down bombastically from some super hot Jupiterian god on high. On high, on high….

To make art, to make otherworldy art that fluoresces deep in the body-spirit and roots and shoots is to shoot one’s proverbial archer arrow into the wisdom-ripe, enthralling, scary, wild horse’d space to see what rains down so that you might reign, sovereign and ever-reckoning, in the weird spirited world. In the world we traverse with our spirits and bodies, there is also candy. And drugs. And guitars. And other instruments for transcendence and annihilation. Having a body ain’t easy and boundary-testing is an ongoing course in the school of being human.

Jupiter is the ruler of Sagittarius, known for its jubilance and super-expansive luck. Jupiter says: More. Jupiter says: Yes. Jupiter says: Make it bigger. Be a planet. Keep going further. But there is no Jupiter (boundlessness) without Saturn (boundaries).

“To be in the world but not of it….”

We need only to look into the most giantess planet in the solar system to understand the Sagittarian archetype, its many-hued nuances, and ever-revolving storm. The eye of the storm of Jupiter is seductive and centuries-old — there’s no land to stop the maelstrom. In the eye of the storm king, we bear witness to chaos and cosmos and the abstract questions of our dear centaur, whose aim is true, if sometimes obscured by clouds. One cannot land on Jupiter. One falls through the center of Jupiter in a windswept frenzy we cannot on earth know. Except for in the mind. Except perhaps via….spiritual transcendence, our material addictions, our auras. What is unutterable…..

SEE ALSO: HELEN FRANKENTHALER, Sagittarian:

SEE ALSO ALSO: THIS DREAMy one from Mr. Mojo Rising aka The Lizard King himself, another Sagittarius. Recommended, perhaps, as freaky backdrop to the poem-scopes for the season (below).

POEMSCOPES FOR SAGITTARIUS SEASON*

*I’ve crafted these little poemscopes for you using the words of Sagittarian musicians, writers, and poets. It’s an experiment. I hope you like.

SAGITTARIUS

California is a place in which a boom mentality and a sense of Chekhovian loss meet in uneasy suspension; in which the mind is troubled by some buried but ineradicable suspicion that things better work here, because here, beneath the immense bleached sky, is where we run out of continent.

Where I Was From, Joan Didion

CAPRICORN

Purple Haze all in my eyes,
don't know if it's day or night,
you've got me blowing, blowing my mind
is it tomorrow or just the end of time?

Purple Haze, Jimi Hendrix Experience

AQUARIUS

Love, she thought, must come suddenly, with great outbursts and lightnings, a hurricane of the skies, which falls upon life, revolutionizes it, roots up the will like a leaf, and sweeps the whole heart into the abyss.

Madame Bovary, Gustave Flaubert

PISCES

No live organism can continue for long

to exist sanely under conditions of absolute reality.

Shirley Jackson

ARIES

Oh tell me where your freedom lies
The streets are fields that never die
Deliver me from reasons why
You'd rather cry, I'd rather fly

“Crystal Ship”, The Doors

TAURUS

Perhaps all the dragons in our lives are princesses who are only waiting to see us act, just once, with beauty and courage. Perhaps everything that frightens us is, in its deepest essence, something helpless that wants our love.

Letters to a Young Poet, Rainer Maria Rilke

GEMINI

So it's time we take a ride,
we can cast all of your hang-ups over
the seaside.
While we fly right over the love-filled sea
Look up ahead, I see the loveland, soon you'll understand.

“Have You Ever Been (To Electric Ladyland)” - The Jimi Hendrix Experience

CANCER

I’m obsessed with

becoming a woman

comfortable in her own skin.

Sandra Cisneros

LEO

A good local pub has much in common with a church, except that a pub is warmer, and there's more conversation.

Exuberance is beauty.

William Blake

VIRGO

Nature is a haunted house —

but Art — is a house that tries to be haunted.

Emily Dickinson

LIBRA

Well, I taste the honey from a flower named Blue,
Way down in California
And the in New York drowns as we hold hands

'Cause I'm a voodoo chile
Lord knows I'm a voodoo chile

Voodoo Chile, The Jimi Hendrix Experience

SCORPIO

Artists can have greater access to reality; they can see patterns and details and connections that other people, distracted by the blur of life, might miss. Just sharing that truth can be a very powerful thing.

Decoded, Jay-Z

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As always, thank you for reading and please write back with any questions or experiences. More to come this season if you’re a full subscriber: Emily Dickinson, more on Jupiter, Joan Didion, etc. etc. etc.

FINAL ANNOUNCEMENTS

I have some new offerings on the site, especially for those working on creative projects who want some astrological guidance. Browse here.

If you’re based in/near NYC, I’d love to see you at this event tomorrow night on the Lower East Side. A super fun evening of poems and chat.

If you want to support this work and receive weekly astrological updates from me, it’s $5/month for the full subscription, all of which goes toward the creation of this work and the podcast:

or:

Give a gift subscription

in gratitude,

EMMALEA

P.S. I end this newsletter with a gift (Jupiter loves gifts) which is my own most Sagittarian poem I could find, straight from my phone to your eyes, in vulnerability and forever gratitude. XO

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LAND OF DREAM SYNTH

I required –

I knew –

A thing –

More calorically dense –

Than my prior unit –

Of measure –

Which had been –

The phoneme –

Or even the air –

Around the phoneme –

I was a dense bud and had to solicit

Emanations from Jupiter who withstood

See-through and gaseous asteroid hits

Which saved us before we were born

Which continue to save us but Jupiter

Can only do so much

Reserves of jubilance so bombastic

That I can’t with a phoneme grasp

Its nutritive splendor I can’t with a

Phoneme or a fork or a screw

He liked the part with the music best so

I wanted to be music so I made it more like music

Every time I hear music I want to quit/write

Poetry and enter the phoneme and find

Jupiter and find the eye of the king of the storm

And churn with all the Jupiterians

I made rhapsodic prayers to whatever was above me

In this new land of dream synth and all the dudes

With zippered passageways to a weird world I only semi-

And reluctantly “got” they could just keep eating they were

The mouth of the snake that downed knowledge and cereal

And I forgot how to be the mouth because I was the thing

That was tight enough to slip through it

To grow fat with Jupiter sentences and sludge my own

Demiurge protruding from my middle space unzipped and glimmering

A woman for whom I worked was so obsessed it frightened me

But here I am, sidereal-combusting “love” must mean

That the smell of the person can clear your nerves of their previous

Surges and lay before you a new route into the curtained

And sibilant zippers of devotion               I started to get real fed

And thick with the sentence and the paragraph and the slurps

And gurgles and the asteroid hits inhaled like candy drugs

Your full-fat sentence and sweet protective layers

Wrapping the damaged and combustible moons

Rolling toward my crevices with nebular accretion

First the primordial atmosphere, then the ocean

And the 79 fanatical moons suckling at the ataxic

Wisdom around the eye of a sovereign cloudburst

Europa and Lo and Leda and Himalia and Kale

Toward my crevices and nerves still smeared

On the ground soliciting your open-mouthed

And mean-headed needs how to be less abdomen

And more thorax how to be more like the largest

Ethereal planet which is now getting dunked in

The original ocean-murmur of this world which

Was never ours

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