I got home from a photoshoot today where I was dressed up as my interpretation of Cupid/Eros, which was me acting out an idea I got excited about a little while ago. Today was the appointment. I actually already did the Psyche concept photoshoot with the same photographer Mason Rose a few weeks back. If you’ve been following my work for a bit, you may know I’ve done a lot of research and teaching on Psyche and Eros, the myths, and I incorporate them into my chart readings.
(Image: Psyche, shot by Mason Rose)
I almost wanted to cancel the photoshoot when I thought about putting on the wings earlier today – honestly wasn’t sure if I had it in me to cosplay Cupid! But as soon as I opened the sealed box the wings were in and tried the wings on and looked in the mirror, I saw one of my blue lights (these lights I see that look like little stars that validate resonance, part of my psychic sight) and knew it was on.
(Image: me getting ready before the shoot)
When I got home post-shoot, after making delicious tacos and having a fun phone call with my ECSTASIS collaborator and dear friend Karla, I ended up making some IG stories about the ritual of adornment and why it’s actually a magical act. This download is coded with the current transit of Venus in Leo and its square to Jupiter in Taurus and upcoming square to Uranus in Taurus. Venus and Uranus will square throughout the upcoming Venus retrograde. At a really basic level to me this reads fashion makeover, but you know me – I like to take everything deeper – so I have some thoughts on fashion, sex, power, magic, and audacity, and I hope that even the people who don’t consider themselves fashion-interested will continue reading.
You can watch the stories on my instagram (@sabrinamonarch, do not interact with fake account impersonators with similar username) if you catch it in time, or read my (lightly edited) transcript of it below.
Being in costume today was everything. The way that I feel like a costume infuses me, and sinks into my body, and becomes an altered state — it’s a very original part of human ritual and religion and magic, really. I need to integrate this way more frequently into my life and I remembered that today.
Part of my Venus retrograde ceremony – so I think we’re already in the ceremony of Venus retrograde, even though she retrogrades July 22, she’s in Leo now – I’m really thinking about fashion and putting together looks. The way my mind and artistic side is thinking about clothing and outfits – it’s like that’s what we’re doing here. It’s Venus in Leo square Jupiter and Uranus in Taurus — it’s about fashion!
There’s a lot we could dissect here and one of the threads I’m thinking about is: when does the appearance, so our wardrobe – offer access to a certain feeling state or a certain embodiment, a certain way we hold ourselves — and can you have it without the outfit? And is the argument that you should be able to have it without the outfit somehow an invalidation of the material realm, the sensual, the feminine – the way that fashion is regarded as frivolous? So there’s that, but you know adornment and fashion is something that one can — well okay, a few parts.
So we’re clear, I am naked wearing this flower crown and that’s how I’m delivering this message to you. But when it comes to adornment, there is a material/financial consideration or a class/status consideration, in that we all have access to adornment but we don’t have access to the same. So adornment, actually reclaiming or having relationship to fashion and adornment at whatever financial and creative scale you have access to – can be incredibly healing to the Venusian area of life, our relationship with beauty and self-esteem.
In addition, adornment is a choice. It’s a creative expression, we take what we feel inside and what we resonate with and we put it out externally. Whereas our appearance, our actual physical lot in life, is something that you can argue we chose at a soul level (and I tend to think that way) yet, appearance is confronting in the sense that you can’t – you can alter it, you can get fit, you can get surgeries, you can do different things, but essentially you have what you have. And I feel the cross between adornment and the physical what-you’ve-been-given-in-life, there’s something really interesting to me at that intersection.
A part that I want to share here is that I have throughout my life struggled with different periods of hating my appearance – focusing on certain features I wish I could change, wishing I could look different. It’s actually been quite painful and I’ve alchemized a lot of it, and have done a lot internally and then in terms of getting to know my features and how to work with it – I’ve transformed my relationship with appearance and had different seasons of life where I’ve actually felt very beautiful. But I vacillate between how I feel in that way. (You can listen to a podcast episode of mine from a few years ago called “Lessons about Physical Beauty”. Listen here or find it episode #97 of Magic of the Spheres where you listen to podcasts.)
I track that sometimes I put fashion or adornment on the back-burner because of a subtle thought thread that “I’m not hot enough or not pretty enough to dress like that.” That’s what it comes down to. So it’s like this weird not letting myself have fun because I don’t believe I deserve it.
So when that thread comes up what I’ve noticed is that when I put that aside and care for myself in the way of dressing how I want to dress and playing with my creativity in that way, and I put together fashion that I really love, that my whole being comes to attention and rises to the occasion of the artistry I’ve set out on, and I that have a drastic change in how I feel about how I look. If I’m waiting to feel better before I get creative, that’s a sticky spot – but if I just get creative and make art, I open to my own embodiment, pleasure, sensuality, and end up having a good time.
This essentially affirms my understanding that costume is a ritual mask, that adornment is magical, that it is an altered state of consciousness, that it is not mundane. And the argument, the putting it down, the criticizing people for it, the “you shouldn’t care so much about your appearance” “don’t take so long to get ready” “it’s not really important, it’s about who you are on the inside” — NUANCE.
It reminds me of this thread I came across by Carolyn Elliot:
(The above images are from Carolyn Elliot – her images and words.)
I’m inspired by this post in the sense that – I was just talking about how fashion can begin to transform how you feel about yourself. But adornment is something that you can control, or alter, or have creative agency about, whereas our appearance — you can alter your appearance but you have the body matrix that you have – and the way that being attractive or increasing one’s attraction is very connected to being desirable and then to experience the intimacy and the creativity and everything that opens up through sex, right? And the way that it’s been colluded or put together that you have to look a certain way in order to experience the erotic.
(The above images are from Carolyn Elliot – her images and words.)
Ultimately below the embodiment layer of the costume and the ritual art of putting something on, there’s also the layer of how we wear our own skin and how we inhabit and fill ourselves. And the message of this sermon is ultimately: Venus is no fucking joke! Let’s consider our capacity to feel beautiful, to feel worthy of beauty, to feel pleasure, to feel worthy of pleasure, to feel the audacity where it feels audacious to actually step into that – where you haven’t been granted permission because of a way you don’t fit a mold of what is the beauty standard.
Have the audacity to feel hot. I mean it.
Lately, I’m working on my posture – I’ve actually done so much to have better posture at a transformative level but now it’s just the habit of bad posture I’m trying to kick. I full on built upper body strength to fix my posture & also literally wore a back brace as a teenager to straighten my spine. Lately, I just have to pop my heart forward and choose the posture. Since this goes against my habitual body, remembering to pop my heart forward is challenging. Every time I do it, I feel almost cocky, but I see myself in the mirror and it just looks normal. So I realized I have to own that feeling of pride, heart-forward-ness. I have a new mantra, “I walk like god is moving through my body” because now it is only my attitude that will save me 😇
The deeper mysteries of Venus are that she’s an inner-game. Yes there is an external side of Venus, there is the way we look ‘objectively’. But you can see people’s energy radiate through their presence too. These are some of my emergent thoughts on the Venus retrograde ceremony, and I hope you’ll apply it liberally to wherever it is you could use more audacity in your expression and worthiness around expressing. I hope you enjoyed and please feel free to write back in the comments.
A delicious adventure in Crete, Greece is just days away! June 21-25th. Together with embodiment guide Karla Palomino, we are embarking on a 5 day ceremonial immersion – a Dionysian Mythopoetic Ritual Experience. We are working with the myths of Dionysus, Semele and Ariadne to explore the mystery of PEAK EXPERIENCE and open to the party within, through our bodies. It will be life-changing. Contact me asap (sabrina@monarchastrology.com) to join us at ECSTASIS.
We are calling you in…
If you are ready to open to greater expansion and ecstasy in your body
To awaken to the Dionysian forces within you that shake loose the crusted layers you’ve built over time that suppress your fully animated expression
To make way for a rippling current of life-force and aliveness that is an echo of your original yes to life & then some
We are here to stir a collective dream of revelry and celebration that will reverberate into our futures
We are opening doors of perception and sensation in service of living a bigger life
We are calling in peak experience as something we innately know how to generate from within
We are re-membering how to ride the emerging somatic wave of life that wants to move through us
We are inviting you into a Sacred Archetypal Realm to awaken the party within
with love,
Sabrina Monarch
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