Solaria Divina

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  • Femininity uncaged 

    We are not dolls. We have divinity within us. We are not flawless, but we can embrace the freedom that comes from vitality, from expression, and from a deep connection with our bodies and our power. Luxurious is the life filled with rich experiences, love, self empowerment, learning and creativity.

    The first cage is a cage of refinement. On the outside a refined woman looks composed, like she carries power well, like she handles all of life’s challenges gracefully while retaining soft edges. What you don’t see is that she is forced to be extremely self reliant, to keep pain and anger on a short leash, to repress emotions in order to manage the emotions of those around her. It takes constant monitoring and very narrow, very heavy psychological controls to do this. Some of us are brought up to feel this is natural, but on some level it hurts all of us.

    The second cage is a cage of commodification. Aesthetics like clean girl, tied to conservative concepts of femininity and traditional wifehood, coquette which leans into girlish and playful sensibilities, and cottage core, our designed to force us into categories. Brands lean on these trends to sell, and many of us feel uncomfortable if any part of our aesthetic doesn’t match a currently dominant trend, so we end up feeling pressured to alter our presentation. This makes it hard to be totally genuine. Compliance is packaged as creativity and we lose our input.

    The third cage is a cage of performative desirability. Your mother told you to wear the shapewear, never leave the house without a bra, keep your skin flawless, never have visible body hair. Then society gave you tight skimpy clothing, but contradicted with a message to never sit with relaxed legs. They gave you diet culture, spiked heels, and a million products to keep you looking like you are as close to 17 as possible. Make yourself pretty, be available but not too available, keep silent and flawless. Within this cage there can be a sense of power. You can use looks to game the system. But again you cannot make a mistake. You cannot have slightly stained teeth because you enjoy your morning coffee, chipped nail polish, or eyebrows that aren’t a perfect match. You can’t enjoy food because you are always chasing social approval of your body.

    The fourth cage is a cage of denial. It’s the last one that can appear when the other three have been intentionally evaded. They don’t just shrug off the suffocating strictures of the cultural definition of femininity, but the joy and power that can come with it as well. A commanding feminine presence can transform the energy in a room. She’s not just pretty and polished. There is a clear and personal art to her beauty. Maybe she goes in for 20s style crystal jewelry, sequined dresses, and detailed sparkly manicures. Maybe she’s the girl in the dark red lipstick and the gold silk wrapped dress who doesn’t bother to modulate her laughter. Maybe she’s the girl who can handle herself in a fight but shows up in a satin dress under a leather trenchcoat. She’s the warm, living, sensual woman who actually embodies her power. In the cage of denial, you miss out on all that in an effort to avoid suffocation. To me this looks like functional baggy clothing, utilitarian footwear, no aesthetic instinct. There is relief in absence which is understandable.

    All of these cages have an insidious trick, like the food in a mouse trap. They temporarily let you feel really good if you succeed within them. But they cut you off from your real power, your goddess energy. You are not weak, passive, receptive, or purely ornamental. You can be strong, outspoken, warm, vivacious, and sensual. You can enjoy all that life has to offer. But if you don’t know what you are giving up, the prizes within these cages can seem like the best thing possible. Respectability, social approval, power without apparent aggression, or just the peace and relief of the seeming absence of a cage. You don’t have to sacrifice the feminine power with an all of us just to shrug off the various methods of containment that have been devised for you.

  • Spirit of a dress

    I thoroughly believe that objects, buildings, and things we find in nature can have either organic or aggregate spirits. The ladder especially applies to things that people create: clothing especially if made with natural fiber, glass and ceramic pieces, wooden furniture, buildings. Metal and gemstone jewelry, leather goods, and artwork also do this. The spirit of the creator, the energy of the materials, and the experiences that object goes through, create sentience. For instance my old college dorms, which were active for 50 years, probably had massive, well developed personalities thanks to thousands of students and visitors, many of them there for long periods of time. It’s really tragic in my mind that no one took last pictures or created a memorial archive of stories from people who lived in those dorm towers before they were demolished. I’m trying to do something in a smaller way for a much more personal object.

    Part of how I self identify is usually wearing a dress or a skirt and top combination. Many dresses and skirts come and go. I wear them out or I resell them because they didn’t work for me or I was just over them stylistically. A few stand out. A sleeveless sweater dress I had for a few years, had a really beautiful ivory and black snake print and a full skirt without any annoying seam at the waist. I wore this until it developed a very strange white stain that we couldn’t get rid of. I was sad to see it go. Another that I wish I could have memorialized but was actually stolen was a short sleeved oatmeal sweater dress, with a skater silhouette and brown button appliqué. I meant last summer to create a photo shoot with it before retiring it as the buttons were coming unstitched. But someone took it from the dryer. There have been others. The oldest, and the one most deserving of memorialization, I purchased in the spring of 2010 from Lane Bryant. It had a beautiful floral print, a relaxed waist, long skirt, and a double layered bodice giving a graceful layered texture in the front. This dress was with me through multiple moves, service trips in college, parties, moments when my life collapsed or dramatically shifted. I started noticing signs of where seven or eight years ago and decided to cut back on how often I wore it to preserve it. Last year I took a photo of it folded up with a note card giving the date I bought it approximately, and then the date of the photograph. A series of things are about to happen to this dress, which feels like a friend, feels like it has its own spirit, but feels like something that has reached the end of its life cycle. I’m going to take one last photo wearing the dress, with full hair and makeup, even though the dress is clearly falling apart. A piece of the dress will be cut out to be framed on my aesthetic archive shelf. And then the dress is being cut up into ribbons and turned into a crocheted basket. There is an actual grieving process for me with this. But I am trying my best to translate the memory and the energy of this dress into something that still lives beyond its original purpose. This has seen multiple versions of me, and it has all of those contained within it, from festivals and shopping days to days when I was really sick, to days when I was working for good or just having a good time. It has seen beer spills, paint splatters, endless crumbs, dirt and blood, long bus rides on hot summer days. Yet it always made me feel like I looked great. I didn’t decide to completely take it out of rotation until I noticed one of the shoulder straps was coming apart. Not when the little bead that kept part of the front weightted so it folded down disappeared. Not when I noticed minor separation in the seams under the arms. So now it gets a new job, a new life cycle, because the one thing that this dress does not deserve is being discarded. I’m not going to discard a dress that felt so light on hot summer days, that looked amazing when I wore my hair down my back, the summer sun turning it red. It had a soft silhouette and a skirt that actually moved with your body, and got me so many compliments. Sometimes the things we own integrate into who we are to a point where they are no longer just possessions. They become complex pieces of us and everything we’ve been through, and I belive their next life should honor that. 

  • My holiday season

    In many Pagan and folk traditions, the end of April and early May is almost like a second Halloween, a threshold season. I’ve never really been into the hype around Halloween and the cultural wave of witchy kitsch that rolls through. I mean the pumpkin spice and the chocolate is nice, but I’ve always been frustrated by everyone wanting to pretend to be a magic practitioner or an entity from folklore, and then mocking people who believe in these things the rest of the year. I feel like I’m the only one who identifies this way, but I have this intense need for celebration. Very akin to how I feel going from Halloween, which I have mixed views on, to Thanksgiving, and then into winter solstice season. The drag for me when it comes to Thanksgiving and Christmas is that I am usually mostly on my own. But the transitional period we are in right now heading towards summer solstice doesn’t carry the same weight. It does however carry a parallel celebratory energy. And the fact that I’ve been feeling it lately in my bones tells me one thing. It’s time to lean into this. If only there were summer solstice decor widely available.

  • Cat on the altar

    The photography and figurines are mine. This is just something fun I wanted to share. 

  • Sacred service Pt 2: civic responsibility

    I touched on this a little in my peace about sharing beauty with the world around us. We create that beauty through supporting libraries and museums, patronizing small businesses in our areas, participating in neighborhood cleanup projects and public art. We have in my mind a moral responsibility, without regarding those we are assisting as lesser, without seeking attention for our good works, and without burning ourselves out screaming about issues, to make our little corners of the world better places. That energy flows outward. We can do this as acts of devotion to our gods. Life is interconnected, even our planet has body, mind, and spirit just like we do. from the sun to the gods to the spirits that inhabit blades of grass, down to Adams with their electrical currents, everything is sentient.

    We can witness the social trials of the world without dissolving into them. We don’t need to exist in a constant state of burden and burnout. Instead, we can have space for our own happiness and exercise our agency in a real way that counts on a local level.  If the first part of the series was about nourishing our inner flame, this is about taking that warmth into the world around us physically. 

    I sat on the front steps of an old house many years ago, listening to the story of one blended family across multiple generations, hearing about the compounding circumstances they had had, the challenges they had faced. I was with a group that was engaged in cleanup in the neighborhood of Evergreen bottom in Birmingham Alabama.  We were sweeping sidewalks, cleaning up overgrown brush, removing trash. When I compare this moment to the performed distress online, I feel like we give ourselves emotional exhaustion without really changing anything these days. Another moment that gave me immense joy was working in a high school in Leland Mississippi. We washed windows, dusted books, repainted movable stage walls, and talked with the students who were there participating in the work. One moment I remember clearly was cleaning up an old water fountain that no one believed worked, and it actually did.   I think seeing their school renewed maybe gave those kids some hope, some sense that the world could actually be a better place. What we got in return, as college kids from a nice school in Illinois, was a different perspective on life. Things weren’t easy for them, but they knew how to connect with each other in positive ways. And they wanted the world to be a better place for everyone.  Despite their own difficulties they were willing to step up and work to better their own community.  I feel like now, we spend so much time being angry, burning ourselves out, and maybe that communication gets more of us thinking in the right direction, but how does it actually turn into real world change on a micro level? Because that kind of change comes from small acts with consistency. There were many other projects but another that hits close to home for me philosophically is working in a cemetery, where the last burial took place in 1984, on the side of a steep hill in Weston West Virginia. I could feel many individual energies of people who were there. So cleaning off their gravestones, getting rid of old brush, washing the steps that climbed the hill, felt like honoring them.  We should honor the places we live in, and the people we share those places with, as we are all divine. 

    I feel we could step back from the cycles of performed distress, and instead create cumulative change through small consistent actions that honor ourselves, the Earth, humanity and our gods. They’re absolutely must be spaces for anger, empathy, grief and joy. We do not have to sacrifice who we are, doing what we love, or taking care of ourselves. We just have to step up.

  • Sacred Service pt1: rituals of self-care and love

    Many traditions contend that we have divinity within ourselves and I fully agree. These rituals are comforting, indulgent, and personally devotional, and for nourishing our inner flame. Nature and the gods live within us, and through them we have inherited a divine spark.

    Keeping a small altar to self, and incorporating elements of who you are into a larger spiritual shrine are good ways to get started. On my altar there are candleholders, offering cups, and crystal plates assigned to the divine feminine side, on the left, and divine masculine side, on the right. But the elements that are there for me are a third centered candleholder, a small heart shaped jewelry box for love manifestation, and another rectangular small box for money manifestation. The overall color scheme is warm and inviting. I chose materials like bone, crystal, ceramic, cut glass to fit my aesthetic. Then my nightstand is somewhat of the altar to self. You can put a favorite scented candle here, a photograph of yourself from a moment that makes you proud. Mine currently has my favorite hand lotion, a vintage glass dish in a warm amber color, and a jewelry box where I keep my spiritual pieces. The glass dish frequently holds crystals I’m working with, a few pieces of chocolate, lip treatment.

    Taking care of your body is an ongoing act of devotion. Working out releases hormones that make us feel good. Even just a meditative walk can do this. Consuming foods that nourish our bodies, as well as those that help us emotionally regulate, or just enjoy the day, is also part of this. Bath products with fragrances you enjoy for your shower, daily skin and hair care, fragrant body lotion, even your initial morning cup of coffee, are ways to physically nourish that internal divine spark. Sing in private to your favorite music. Dance for fun.

    Ritual baths, with relaxing music, scented candles, fragrant bath products, water safe crystals for energy work, and a lack of distracting phone notifications, are one of my favorite ways to work on myself. this is about giving yourself a safe space focused on nothing but your sensory indulgence.. some people bring in a glass of wine. I like a bottle of Perrier mineral water or a thermos of hot chocolate. I will often play an instrumental harp or piano playlist on my phone, which has been set on do not disturb so no one bothers me. The candles or wax melts I choose are usually scented with things like oak, cedar, suede, and musk. My bath products usually have things like sandalwood, Amber, vanilla, sugar and caramel. I turn off the lights and distractions, use the stones I’ve brought with, which are personal favorites, to do cleansing and recharging work in the water, and just enjoy the ambience.

    Another specific thing you can do for yourself every morning is a glamour ritual. This doesn’t have to mean makeup although for me it does. I want to encourage you to read into color psychology and color theory, how it has been observed that colors affect the mind, and how colors are actually scientifically defined. The thing is, you should wear colors based on how they affect you. I tend to choose softer or more mellow colors when I’m in a cozy but functional mood. Deeper more vibrant shades and black come out when I have bigger social engagement to deal with. Your wardrobe choices should first, be physically comfortable for you to wear. Second, they should suit your aesthetic mood and how you want to project yourself to the world around you. You build from the baseline outfit with jewelry, bags, favorite perfume or cologne, and makeup if you wear it. This is emotion based dressing, with an eye toward the kind of power and influence you would like to have that day.

    Let’s talk about your morning coffee ritual. More often than not for me this is a cup of hot chocolate, or a cup of cold sweet tea. Take your time with this. Sit by a sunny window, acknowledge the positive things that you look forward to in your day, maybe give thanks to your God or gods for what you have been given. Even just that moment of peace is valuable. If you are inclined to Journal, this is when to do that. If you want music, it doesn’t have to be the soothing reset music you used for your bath, it should be something that reflects your current mood in a stabilizing way. I really like acoustic singer songwriter type music for this, which I often find on unplugged rock albums. Depending on my energy and the atmosphere of the day, this can shift from thoughtful melancholy to warm and relaxing.

    We forget to love ourselves. That’s how the world is designed. But we can reincorporate this in everything we do. That’s why self-care becomes sacred service.

  • The Solar Feminine

    The sun is a source of feminine power. She is a source of life, of courage, of warmth, of joy, of generosity. She does not need to be the receiving vessel or the reflection of the masculine. She is her own force. And the power of the sun is also cyclical I would point out. The cycle of day to night and back to day. The solar cycle of year over year.

    Feminine identity is lived in and not performative. The light side of femininity is warm, inviting, elevated, nurturing, and generous. I invest in this side of her power, my power, through self care rituals and style. Through how I decorate my home, and how I interact with others. The dark feminine is strong, protective, creative, indulgent, and wild. I invest in this through community service, being honest even if it’s not pretty or sugarcoated, being there for people I love, allowing my anger to exist, and my magical practice.

    Both the sun and the moon can be viewed as either feminine or masculine. I find the masculine in cool restful energy. Which is why my system is inverse of what is currently popular. I’m not here to justify this. Only to open the door to this possibility.

    You can connect with this power using a piece of citrine. When I did this working I dressed it with a drop of my blood. go outside on a warm sunny day. Hold the stone up to the sun and ask her to fill you with her power. It should feel as though a ray of light flows through the stone to you. You should feel calm, warmed from the inside and empowered. If it is a safe space to do so lay down in the grass and place the stone over your heart. Just live in stillness with her. Note, the blood I used in this working is for creating a physical link but you do not have to do this. You can visualize filling the stone with a deep crimson energy instead. When you are done and return inside, place the stone on a windowsill the sun regularly hits and allow it to continue to charge, and then use it anywhere you engage in self-care or creative rituals.

  • Music, makeup, and mental health

    Part of the reason I tie beauty in all forms, from body art to architecture, music to fine art, sculpture and photography, poetry and the beauty of the natural world, to my spirituality, and particularly to the divine feminine, is because music and makeup were the two things that helped me hold on to hope for many years. And I will always be grateful for that. Music was an outlet. I have a massive library that is primarily rock and metal, with some alternative pop, industrial, and electronic mixed in. Also some world folk stuff the last few years. Playing music while working out, writing, or just trying to think through whatever might be going on, has given me a sense of calm and personal power. If I’m upset it gives me a feeling of strength, and if I’m in a good place it just adds to that. I will share a little secret with everyone. Alongside digging up information on dark or overlooked female spirits and gods for many years, I have also enjoyed really searching the depths of the Internet for women in the underground music scene, especially frontwomen of rock and metal bands. Not very long ago I realized these two pursuits were spiritually connected.

    When I fell in love with make up back in 2015, it opened a door for me. It gave me a reason to get out of bed, brush my hair and take care of my skin, and generally set my spiritual focus on my own internal goddess energy. I had always enjoyed pretty and elevated, with an edgy artistic twist. But for a long time that became central to me. It was a little sidetracked as I tried to break into the beauty influencer game, but without enough technical skill in either editing or the looks I was creating, I couldn’t succeed. Which is why I’m here now, creating content on my own terms. I still love fragrance and body care, though I’ve scaled back on how much makeup I own as I’ve really narrowed down what I like. But I still find spiritual investment in my appearance, and how I feel in my body, valuable every day.

    If you want to check out my beauty and style content, and also Spotlight pieces on various music artists and bands, check out this blog.

    http://diamondserpentine.wordpress.com

  • Cultivating beauty in the lives of those around us

    I have a powerful belief in our individuality, and that we should always prioritize our happiness as well as our growth. But we have in my opinion a moral obligation to be there for our families, whether blood or chosen, our friends and our communities. Cultivating beauty in the lives of those around us starts on the simplest level, but amounts to being continually considerate of the happiness and well-being of others. Without crossing their boundaries.

    1. Support libraries, museums, and your local music scene. Our depths of creativity and intelligence are priceless. Donate. Encourage people to visit and invest in these things. And as part of your own self-care and growth, take on intellectual pursuits, learn your local history, discover a new creative hobby that you can share with others.
    2. Participate in local cleanup projects, and this might be controversial, but positive public art where aloud. A cleaner, more intentional environment just makes us all feel psychologically better, and more inclined to care about the world around us. I have seen for myself how removing trash and debris from a neighborhood, helping to repair homes, putting up murals and chalk art, can be a breath of fresh air for everyone who lives there.
    3. This starts at home. Be kind to your neighbors, take care of your property, clean up trash in your environment, be kind and validating to your children and respectful of your pets. And remember to do these things for yourself so you have more to give to those you actually care about. You can only control your own actions, but projecting genuine positivity only gives everyone around you an emotional boost. Everyone has to individually choose to care about making things better. But when someone does, it spreads.
    4. Respect the boundaries of others. This is about allowing everyone to have a sense of peace, which does not harm you. The whole neighborhood doesn’t need to hear the music from your car. People having a religious service you disagree with on their own property deserve their space. Neighbors should not have to put up with trash or overgrown vegetation from your property.
    5. Show kindness and hospitality to strangers of all backgrounds, so long as they respect your space and who you are. A healthy community is one where diversity is accepted, and where people can feel welcome no matter their religion, ethnicity, orientation, gender, or whether or not they have body art and crazy hair colors. No social division defines whether or not someone is a good person. Economic status, religion, job title, none of that matters. So some of those people you might be judging are probably amazing.
    6. The last thing I believe should be part of this equation is interspiritual work. Whether you walk with one God or many or just the concept of fate, spiritual belief gives beauty to life as long as it is not being used to negatively impact people who disagree with it, and can open doorways to knowledge and personal connections we otherwise might not receive. 

  • The value of beauty for humanity

    We have always valued beautiful things. People traded for visually stunning materials to make their tools out of, discovered pigments in nature for body decoration, spirituality in everything from the fragrance of flowers to the shapes of mountains. We have landscape photography, perfume is an industry that brings in billions of dollars, and people feel healthier living in places where aesthetic detail matters. Social elites have tried to define what is truly beautiful and some people out there would argue that beauty in life does not matter. I say it does.

    A basket of makeup beside two jewelry boxes, several perfume bottles, a decorative dish, gold tray, and a small pile of headbands

    A little about me. The early beauty YouTube community helped me start to learn to love myself. It was easier to get out of bed when I wanted to put on a nice outfit, do my make up, take care of my skin. Gradually over the years I linked this with my spirituality, which has a divine feminine focus. now I encourage people to care for their spirit by dressing in ways that make them feel both beautiful and comfortable, and creating an aesthetic environment that nurtures a sense of peace and contentment.

    A black cat rests on one of two velvet cushions, which are pink and yellow, in front of a wood and glass piece of furniture used as an altar. The altar holds several handmade God and goddess statues, offering cups, plates holding crystals, and several other symbolic and decorative objects.

    The copper plates, ceramic espresso cups, and many other items here were created by small business owners online who have a great sense of aesthetic. I created the statues by hand, though I wish I could have done more detail work, as a self-taught amateur sculpter. The photography is also my work. The layout is meant to be visually aesthetic with balance and symmetry. I really worked to choose colors that I find inviting. There are also some vintage items such as the two jewelry boxes I use for long-term spells, and the two candleholders on either side. I chose natural materials wherever possible as a connection to the Earth, which is why I also included the photography. And most of us appreciate the feel of luxurious material on our skin, such as velvet or silk, which is how I decided on my floor cushions.

    Luxe magic is intentional living for the purpose of being happy and fulfilled. This means self-care, cultivating beauty in your life, doing the same for others around you and being involved in your community, actively choosing intellectual pursuits and experiences that change your perspective, and above all, taking care of the divine aspect of yourself while having a strong relationship with your higher powers. Over the next several months I plan to chat with you on the various aspects of this practice. Subscribe if you are interested.

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