Thinking Through Celestial Systems
Learn how to align your workflow with the stars. as ara Rin Burke (Saku Creative + Dreamscapes Academy)guides us in making a professional routine support a thriving life. By day Notion chart included.
Happy August Cosmonauts and Cosmothots!
Today I bring you a bite to improve your workflow, but for real.
Tara has been in my magical sphere as a coach and colleague for many years (wow I can’t believe I can say that). I’ve always admired Tara for their way of working that is always FOR THEM-based in both love for the community and self. The embodiment of The Star card in tarot imo. I’m proud to offer this article and intention guide that Tara did for us. I hope you learn from this piece as much as I did!
XoXo, Kieu
Thinking Through Celestial Systems
When I thought of this issue, to be honest, I could not get out of the realm of Toy Story and the multitudes my spirit took from inner child work, the ability to witness the importance of spiritual silliness and not taking oneself to seriously, and the reality that the first Toy Story was released when [I was fucking 8 years old during Sagittarius Season.
In the age of the internet, AI sentience, and the possibility of performative potency existing within the collective cauldron of platforming all our magical oddities on the internet, there are moments where imposter syndrome may feel like the bite or the poison that gets us hoisted off the Trail of our True Nature.
Imagine traversing the vast landscapes of the Wild West, where rugged trails and untamed frontiers call to the adventurous spirit within (without the Manifest Destiny bullshit plague by puritanical whiteness and indigenous erasure).
As we are allowing our spirit to truly experience the unknown, we’re also honoring that we don’t have to know it all. This article is about doing what you want and letting the rest go.
It’s about learning something new, and further more integration. The learning of something doesn’t happen overnight and will not just happen within this issue, yet my intention within this article is to infuse the reader with an approach rooted in systems theory, and express the importance of animist/elemental magick.
As a note, Spiritual Citation is an ethical discipline for my practice.
I want to first bring us to the present of how I have come to this knowledge through my decolonial authority1, lived experience, deep study of animism, and theology of the tarot over the last 15 years.
I am going to be using my recent passion of decanic astrology and planetary productivity as a calendar to support any type of project, planning, or purpose driven work you may want to uncover over your week.
I will be using definitions brought through the help of AI sentience to further explain my concepts, exercises and processes. Lets dive in!
The work I do in the magical realm is supported by Systems Thinking Theory and Animism.
We live in a world where we consistently have to navigate around systems. When reading tarot, tracking astrology or working with plants, the beauty of systems thinking is that it’s a nuanced way of looking at interdependence and the relationships of all life. The following definitions support the practice and exercise for the calendar offering below.
Systems Thinking Theory
Systems Thinking is a holistic approach that considers the interconnectedness and interdependencies of various elements within a system. For example, when applied to learning tarot and the decans in astrology, systems thinking can help us understand the intricate relationships between the cards, the decans, and the broader symbolism within the tarot system. It allows us to perceive the tarot as a complex web of interconnected meanings rather than isolated symbols.
🧠 "Systems thinking is a discipline for seeing wholes. It is a framework for seeing interrelationships rather than things, for seeing 'patterns of change' rather than static 'snapshots'."
Peter Senge, The Fifth Discipline: The Art & Practice of The Learning Organization
The calendar offered below is designed to show you practical magick. The beauty in the mundane of Spirit is how we are able to authenticate our autonomy within the process. We are able to see how planets shape us even from hundreds of thousands of miles away.
I also deeply appreciate the connection of Animism through the process of Biophilic design and connectivity.
Animism through Biophilia
Animism is a belief system that attributes spiritual essence, or souls, to all living beings, as well as natural phenomena and inanimate objects. Shintoism, the indigenous religion of Japan, holds a strong animistic worldview, considering the existence of kami, primordial ancestors or essences that inhabit various elements of the natural world.
Biophilia refers to the innate human tendency to seek a connection with nature and other living beings. This connection is rooted across magical cosmologies - and within my personal relationship to Shintoism. Shintoism and animism share common elements and beliefs, which contribute to their connection.
In the context of learning tarot and the decans, biophilia can be applied by recognizing the natural and organic elements present in the symbolism of the cards. It encourages us to perceive the archetypes, landscapes, and creatures depicted in the tarot as symbolic representations of our deep-rooted connection to the natural world.
"The more clearly we can focus our attention on the wonders and realities of the universe about us, the less taste we shall have for destruction."
Rachel Carson
We are not the top of the food chain, and within this great discovery of the cosmic joke that is the hierarchy of needs we recognize that spiritual technologies* and mixed-method divination can all be presented to us not to make the magick more complex, but to in fact make the magick more accessible and intuitive to our current circumstance.
Throughout the Astro Attunement Calendar, there is a strong encouragement to get away from screens and do this magick. The calendar does just that - it supports daily check ins for your work, and then allows you to flow into the day, not pressed and overwhelmed about the entirety of doing all the things all at once.
*first heard through lecture and workshops with Jade T. Perry
CLICK HERE TO DOWNLOAD/INTERACT WITH THE CALENDAR FOR FREE
This article is the “Trail Blazers of the Wild Wild Web”- the new edition of $HMEDIUM. If you’d like to access the rest of the mag, subscribe for $5 a month here or grab just this issue here.
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