New moon in Leo August 18 8:41 pm trine Mars in Aries

These three days, August 17-19, are a lovely little burst of inspired mental and creative energy—and a breath of fresh air from the intensity of 2020 (before it ramps up again in September). So please, take the time to check in with your creativity and your creative goals and projects, and allow yourself to find the joy in the process: the activity and the lulls, the surges of inspiration and the moments of the mundane.

Mercury “passes through the heart of the sun” (makes its superior conjunction) in Leo (ruler of the sun) on Monday, bringing a moment of connection between our minds, our hearts and our life force.

Revel in moments of inspiration and breakthrough—remain open to the muses funneling through you.

This feeling of channeled information or inspiration carries through into the new moon the next day—sustaining the warm sunny energy of Leo’s bright light and big heart. It’s a time for big dreams and vision—and of course, drama.

Take the Lion’s expansive energy and vision and couple it with the Mercury-infused mental energy to plant seeds and set intentions that really lean into the next level of your creative imaginings and plans for possibilities. This is the time to re-envision what the possible is. What it can be and what it can contain—on the personal and collective levels.

The moon is also trine Mars in Aries (the sign it rules, and is very powerful in), bringing a nice aspect of ambition and grit to any intentions set here.

Then on Wednesday, Mercury enters sign of its rulership, Virgo—more auspicious energy for creativity and communication. Bringing strength and vitality to the work needed to bring those castles in the clouds down to earth—or to build the ladders to reach them.

Virgo is the sorter—separating the wheat from the chaff, organizing and planning and then doing the work. Mercury in Virgo will find satisfaction in the labor, will sit at the table and do the work and bring your inspired plans to fruition.

So seize the inspired, productive energy of this month—cling to the breaths of joy that you can in these difficult times.

And encourage and allow yourself to dream into new levels—for yourself, for your work, for our world—and then begin the plans and effort that will carry you there.

The ritual and prompt for this month is making a vision board (or many) for &/or related to your book (or other creative project).

Vision-Boarding Your Book

A vision board is a way of capturing and expressing the goals, dreams and plans you want to bring into being in the physical world. It acts like a ladder step between the mental/emotional plane of the idea and the material plane of this reality. Like a blueprint, or an outline—but one step removed from logical, organizing brain—a vision board uses images and disconnected words and phrases to plant itself directly into the subconscious and imaginative mind.

I love the idea of using vision boards to envision and engender the worlds and characters and narratives of our books. It can also be easily adapted for any creative project, or for your relationship to the creative process in general.

Use vision boards to explore the aesthetic of your book and world, to better imagine place and setting, and to really allow yourself to step into and inhabit the narrative on a deep sensorial level.

Meditation & Ritual—Envisioning Your World

Gathering Materials

Below is a meditation/visualization I designed to perform before making your vision board. I tend to work on these boards over days or even weeks, so you may want to perform this meditation each time you work on the project, or just once at the start.

I recommend gathering materials before the meditation, and adding to them as you feel inspired. I like to use any/many of the following: a large piece of cardboard, posterboard, paper taped together, wood, mirror, or any material that feels inspired for the board itself; magazines, catalogs, newspapers to cut up for words and images; photographs; markers, crayons, paints, pastels; fabric, cloth, yarn, thread; flat pieces of glass or ceramic (broken pottery, etc.); glue, tape, superglue, pushpins, nails; pressed flowers, leaves, sticks, small stones; etc. You can really go as big and wild or small and intricate as you feel called.

I find that sifting through possible images, words and objects after the meditation has led to flashes of insight and inspiration. I had the experience of flipping through a magazine and seeing a couple disparate words and images in a row, that suddenly catalyzed an answer to a question I’d been mulling over for years (yes, years) in regards to the world of my story. Suddenly, I just knew where the creatures called the skinned that rove my world had come from. I had a sudden flash of insight into their origin story.

Meditation

1. Sit or lie in a comfortable space and position and close your eyes or soften your gaze.

2. Begin to notice your breathing. Follow an inhale from its inception, through your nose and into your trachea, down into your belly and filling your chest. Now track the exhale in the reverse direction. Notice how the body feels as the breath moves through and expands into its spaces. Breathe and know you’re breathing.

3. Become aware of your body. Feel the ground beneath you, the air on your skin, the tug of gravity embracing you.

4. Imagine yourself in a dark space, perhaps a cave or tunnel, held by the darkness. On one edge of this space is a door. See or feel the light at the edges of it. Move toward the door.

5. On the other side of this door is the world of your story, your art, your current creative project. Prepare yourself by thinking: when I pass through this door, I’ll be met with the images, sounds, smells, tastes, thoughts, sensations and/or felt sense messages from and about my project’s world, spirit and/or being.

6. Open the door and enter the space. Remain open and see what arrives. You may have visuals or images; you may enter a world entire; it may be a blank space and words or other sensorial messages come through. Perhaps people or creatures will approach you, perhaps not. Perhaps they’ll be characters from your world, perhaps not. There is no right or wrong. If nothing comes, that’s okay. The idea here is to open the portal, the channel between yourself and your creative world. The guidance may come through later, as you work on your board, through dreams, etc.

7. Stay open. Stay in this world as long as you desire.

8. When you’re ready, come back through the door and into the dark space. Close the door behind you, knowing you can return here any time you feel called.

9. Feel yourself return to your body, in this room, our world. Feel the ground against you. Feel the breath as it enters and leaves you. Wiggle your toes. Open your eyes.

10. Go the materials you’ve gathered, or gather what you now feel inspired to, and begin work on your vision board.

11. See if a specific shape or structure of plot or movement begins to emerge in the arranging of things on the board. It may, it may not. See what images and words and aesthetics you feel called to now; maybe it has shifted since the meditation, maybe not.

12. You can make the board more about inhabiting your world and story, or more about your goals and visions for working on or completing the project itself. Or combine them into one. Or make two boards. A student of mine made a board with the images and movements of her story, with a place in the center that held removable index cards to contain her latest goals and intentions for her progress. This is a basic recipe; you can design and complicate it as desired.

13. Keep working and enjoying the process as long as you feel called or until it feels “complete” in some way to you.

My personal intention is to begin mine after the new moon today, when the moon is again waxing (getting bigger), and to complete it by the full moon on September 2.

Photo by Riccardo Annandale on Unsplash