Reminders:

September Consultations are open! Book here

SONGBIRDS: On the Oracular Practice of Sounding Siren, Live class in LA, 9/9, tickets here

Hey {{first name | Reader}}

I write to you on the eve of the eclipse, struggling to sleep, sweltering in this extreme heat. The air conditioning broke in my home for a few days and I attempt to evade. Wake up early, camp out at a coffee shop, seek sanctuary in a theater, take a long walk in the frozen section of the supermarket. Buy a box of popsicles, suck them slowly. Wear next to nothing, take it all off and let the shower run cold for a long, long, time. Turn on every fan, off every light, open every door, and only from 4am to 7am will there be relief.

Its’ all been a delirium.

How does one relate to the heat? It’s so easily destructive, so immediately overwhelming. Leo season is over, but the tail of the dragon has firmly entered the domain of fixed fire. Heat, the desert, these are hard relations. While I was hosting my monthly Cartier Club, a feature of a Vault membership, we focused on Joseph M .Pierce’s book Speculative Relations: Indigenous Worlding and Repair, a book you should absolutely read! And meditating on this stunning work together, I was trying to emphasize to the members that a red read emphasizes speculative relations, as an epistemology ( a form of knowing), an onotology ( a form of being), and methodology ( a way of “doing” relationships in an ethical way).

Our relations are more than human, and as fire is so fundamental to existence, one of the oldest ancestors, I am often challenged by this relation and its expressive corollaries. Then, today I drew this card:

The guidebook relates: “The fire of life force. Flame out of flame. Source of fire. A force blasting through shells, capsules, buds, frames, and boundaries. The might of inner forces. That which has been gathered, incubated and heated now wants to break free. The past and the future have been burned. The only thing counts is the present. Being present and aware adn making instant decisions.”

The past and the future have been burned. A burning present, melting time like a waffle cone. A heat that is insistent. One which will not be ignored. In a house on fire, I hold a flame between my fingers. A fire that will not be forgotten. A home that did not burn with the the foothills. Protected by a morning pyromancy, divination by fire. Light a vela, burn a puro, watch how the smoke unfurls, see how the flame spins in the cast iron, how much soot is left at the bottom of the glass. Into an opaque unknowing, the flame speaks, cleanses, clears and calls.