My Last Offerings (Of the Year)
I shall return in 2025!
Hello Darling Beasties,
Since I began The Magick Artist in August 2023, I have sent you at least one letter a month full of divined insight, life updates, art, speculative fiction, erotica, and more.
Today, I admit that the proverbial cup that is my capacity is not only empty but being slowly and ornately obliterated.
The renewable resource of Virgo shame and the orchestral conductor that is my anxiety disorder hold hands to empower me to write this letter to you.
I am nearly incapable of “ghosting” because I would only THINK about how I was not writing to you, which doesn’t help either.
I am working on letters to you about finding your life’s purpose (I have found mine), the spirituality of crabs, the desperate fester of masculinity, and the liberation of sexuality. Nothing is ready to be seen, not even close.
I will not detail what environmental and external factors have been draining me—not yet. I firmly believe that they have a purpose in the narrative of my life. I may tell you if what I suspect becomes true (or clearly doesn’t).
This will be my last letter of the year, and I will return in the early turning of the Gregorian calendar.
Don’t worry, paid subscribers. I have not forgotten about your end-of-season tarot reading. All in good time.
Before you congratulate me on “taking space to rest,” I’m not doing that *nervous laughter* I simply have too much to do, so something has to give; what’s giving first is my writing, my writing to you—at least JUST until 2025. I’m sorry about that.
HOWEVER
I am still myself. I have not lost myself. Though my capacity is at its lowest, my path forward has never been clearer. I will not forsake you. That is not my way.
Instead, I have compiled a series of gifts for you to engage with over the next month or so until I return out of the solstice darkness reborn.
Remember, you can always book a sliding-scale Tarot Reading with me.
60 min for paid subscribers. 30 min for Free subscribers.
I love you, and I hope you enjoy them.
On the first day of Chi’s rest, my true love gave to meeee! (Don’t worry, I’m not gonna do all that HA!)
Winter Writings
In this newsletter, I did a divination reading solely about communicating with depression as an energetic force with its own consciousness.
In this letter, I reflect on my relationship with labor (I did not know how much this would foreshadow the purpose of my existence). Labor is not inherently wrong. It has been abused.
Here, I focus on the force of human collective consciousness that I love the most: monsters. It feels like a critical time for us to understand who monsters are.
Children of the Deep Sleep
Now, I usually re-edit my seasonal playlists every year, but last year’s winter playlist absolutely ate. I’m not gonna lie lololol
But on a serious note, I don’t know if I can ever change this playlist because it was loved by my dear friend who left this earthly plane this past spring. It’s his playlist now. I probably won’t share it again after this.
I communed with him post-exodus in late spring, and he’s permitted me to tell his story. Not the story of this life but a parallel reality of his death. We were/are both death doulas, and death does not frighten us, but there needs to be a rewriting of the ritual around his death.
That is also something I’m working on, at least just in my soul for now. It might be the closest thing to memoir I’ll ever write.
Anyway, here’s Lluvia’s playlist, Children of the Deep Sleep, and the contextual writing I paired with it last year.
In the ancient germination of civilization, gold was not the most prized compared to the resins of frankincense or myrrh. However, gold has certainly been the most lasting in its fame and glamourous drama. I give you malleable, colorful, conductive music.
The winter playlist goes slower and deeper than the autumnal one I offered you.
Once again, it is a helix of genres. It is dominated by sultry alternative RNB, hauntingly ethereal folk, chilling electric pop, moody lofi, and sorrow without limitation. It’s not all gloom on the winter playlist because what is winter without cultivating warmth and light?
There’s light in the distance, waiting for you to approach. Will it warm you, or is it a will-o-wisp whisking you into another dimension?
The Mythic and the Erotic
Finally, I want to share a short story I wrote for a new erotica magazine called Eros Study by Cy, who runs a substack of the same name.
I have a feeling that revealing this story to you will not deter you from buying an entire magazine dedicated to the majesty of HOLES. That’s right. The theme is holes. Doesn’t get much better. I will let you know as soon as the magazine is out. I might create an illustration for my story as well.
If it wasn’t obvious, this story is EROTIC. It is SMUT. However, if you are someone (hi mom) who feels like they shouldn’t read my smut, I feel attuned with this story in a way that I may never have felt about my writing before, and I give you full consent to read it if you want to.
This story depicts mythical bodily mutilation or liberation derived directly from the creation story of the Dogon people of Mali. While the augmentation is accurate to the myth, I, with some influence from the original text, reinterpret the emotions, implications, and consequences of this act through a trans lens of Western understanding.
The original myth also depicts a sexual assault that is not entirely removed, but rather, the power is redistributed and recontextualized. Other content warnings are extreme size difference (as the god Amma is described as being so small he cannot be seen), genital reshaping/sex change, insemination, sounding, discussion of identity as connected to genitals, insects, and other intense nature imagery.
While I have some familial connection to Mali, I was not raised in the Dogon culture. I have been communing (unconsciously and now consciously) with the entities they call the Nommos since I was a young child, and the Nommos have chosen me to depict them and their stories specifically. I have no comment on the people and their spiritual, religious, or cultural beliefs. We are vessels chosen to interpret the Nommos’ stories. I’m a new vessel, nothing special, nothing more than that. To be clear, I’ve communed with other spirits from Western Alkebulan (Africa) who have rejected me as not their child, and I will never write or make art about them. Nommos, however, are my kin. I know this with certainty.
The Birth of the Nommos
I have sculpted the sun. I have molded the moon. I have scattered the stars in burning choreography. But I am alone. I am the only fixed point of the universe. I am the pinpoint on which all things rest. But I am alone.
“Then do not choose loneliness.”
Who has spoken in my universe?
“I am here. Do you not know me? I thought you crafted all things, tiny Amma.”
You have spoken my name. Now, I follow.
He was a speeding molecule through the infinite body of the universe until he found her.
You are beauty. I made you?
The god orbited the celestial body. Her skin moved in patchworks of whipping sands, rumbling soil, sprawling forests, encompassing waves, and swirling clouds. One arm extended as she traced the stars with her fingers. Her right leg draped over her left, so her spine arched to display and extenuate divine curves. Her other arm was tucked under her head like a pillow, and her curls fanned out around her as atmosphere.
Her eyes crossed slightly, staring at the tiny god, so he backed up so they could regard each other.
“You made me too much like you.” She uncrossed her legs, revealing a termite mound taller than her mountains. “This is in the way of my visions. In my dreams, my children use language to write poetry and their hands to sculpt clay just as you do. In my dreams, my children dance, ask questions, and chart the stars to find the meaning you imbued in their design. I need your help to make these children. I need your spark of creation. But I cannot do it with this.” She crossed her legs, ashamed.
Amma rushed to her, pressing his whole body into her massive thigh. It was warm. Below, he saw wildebeest chase a shifting rain, bellowing lover’s calls.
You are perfect. You are like me. He flew up and spread his legs to show his wand and vessel. All things are perfect when they are balanced, are both, are all.
“The termites made me unbalanced. They will not stop. My body is no longer in our control. I belong to my children now, so we must create stewards to tend to my land and keep the great balance in our name. The termites build so high and vast they collapsed my opening. I only have one of two.”
Then I shall make you two again.
“No, you are too fixed. Yes, I began as your design, as did all my children, but like them, I have become new—always becoming new. You made me angry, primordial sea. Now, I have become many at once. I am land and sea. I am ice and fire. I am predator and prey. I see their bodies, their roles, and their forms. There are mothers with wands and fathers with vessels. And fluid bodies that shift between both. I want to be only vessel for my children. I need you to make my truth.”
You catalyzed anger into beauty. I am in awe of what you have become. I shall sculpt your body to take me in and birth these children of question and craft. They will be the most like me.
“Yes, I hope so.”
Let it be so.
She uncrossed, spreading her thighs wide. Amma could see volcanoes ooze. Migrations take flight. The first hatched tadpole of its season.
We must use the mound against the termites to flood them out so my way is clear.
She nodded. Amma closed his eyes and placed his hands against the mound that towered over him. The mound shook, a mere tremor, as Amma sent vibrations through his hands and into the mound.
She threw her head back and moaned, covering her eyes with her arms. Somewhere, an avalanche. Somewhere, thousands of monarchs emerged from hibernation—painting their sky in delicate fire.
He increased the vibrations until the mound was a blur. She screamed and failed her legs, but his little body had the power to hold her down, steady. Somewhere, a mantis ate the head of its mate, mid-insemination. Somewhere, a tsunami.
A great river, long secret underground, burst open and flooded the mound, surging upward into space, carrying millions of termites that glittered in the stream like gold. Amma flew back, opened his mouth, and inhaled. He sucked every drop of the river of termites down his throat. He licked his lips.
Now, my way is clear.
She panted, hands squeezing her breasts for comfort, “My Amma, I cannot believe we have just begun.” Somewhere, a tornado unwound itself into a breeze. Somewhere, a kangaroo fetus climbed up into its mother’s pouch.
Amma kissed up the mound until he was at the top and smiled.
Now, we begin.
Though the mound stretched into space, its opening and tunnels were narrow for termite navigation. He massaged the top opening of the mound, reaching his arm inside to make her used to his presence.
She shivered. Somewhere, deer shed their antlers in bloody sloughs. Somewhere, a stoat’s fur shed from white to brown.
Was that a good sensation? Do you want to proceed?
“Yes!” she shouted with such conviction that Amma jumped. They both laughed. “I startled a god this day.”
An impressive feat. Allow me to reward you with more shivers.
He slid headfirst into the opening of the termite mound, allowing the darkness to swallow him. He was both smaller and larger than a termite. He chose to be squeezed for his pleasure and hers. She gasped and rolled her head back and forth, moaning again. She pushed her fingers deep into her hair and gripped, releasing the urgent, musk scent of every beast in heat. Somewhere, tectonic plates rubbed against one another, casting tremors far and wide. Somewhere, a serpent swallowed the eggs out of a bird’s nest.
He undulated down the canal. The soil was wet from his flooding, allowing for a slick descent, but he did not permit himself to move too quickly. He wanted her to feel every note of pressure. He would stop and knead into the side of the tunnel or spin his body, expanding his limbs on all sides. Though muffled, he could hear her ecstatic yowling.
When he reached the base of the tunnel and looked up, the opening looked like a blinking star far in the heavens. This is where he began his world, his work. The wetted mound had become a pile of clay eager for his bidding. He had never felt more himself. He wound his arms inward, calling the top of the mound downward to him. The clay of the mound folded, and as it did, the hole at the top became wider.
She gasped, moaned, wept. “My Amma, you are making me, myself. Amma. Amma. Grasp me, grasp me. Melter of limbs. Stir me, stir me.” Somewhere, cells divided in a bear’s embryo. Somewhere, a pride of lions broke open a ribcage—mouths wet in thanks and blood. “My unimaginable creature steal me in and return me new. I’m yours becoming mine.”
Amma pulled the clay down until he stood in a crater that looked crafted of meteor rage but was soft, breathing. He took the supple clay in his hands and called it to drape over him in veiled layers to protect this new hole.
I shall dig now.
His hands, affixed as in prayer, pierced the center point of the cater that folded in on itself. She screamed as he tunneled. It was tearing. It was glorious.
He burrowed into her molten core and kissed the metallic heat lapping at him. He whispered into the center of her being.
You are now fire and womb
He crawled out of this canal and into the shaded enclosure that was once a cater. He climbed up to a peak in the clay and bit it. As he held it in his teeth, he pulled, and she shrieked in pleasure over and over. Somewhere, lightning set a solitary tree on fire. Somewhere, hundreds of cats in the dark of the world howled in embrace.
I have made you a small mound—my hidden ode to true balance.
“If it makes me feel this way, I do not care what it is; I love it.” They laughed again, and he kissed each new fold between her legs. He extended his arms, and the clay obeyed, unfurling to show the pulsing opening of her hole that led to the center of the world. It oozed lava that became islands as it hit the sea.
Amma became enormous, but his size didn’t shift. He was massive and molecular. She was still caught in laughter when he penetrated her in a new way, with a new force.
“Ah!” She cried. “That was painful.” Somewhere, a pale, white jackal was born hungry, never to be sated.
Forgive me beauty. My aspects of creation were replaced by my aspects to conquer, and I became too hungry for what I had created.
“You may have made it, but it is now mine. You will follow my rhythms.”
Yes, my beauty.
He entered her slowly. Her tunnel squeezed against him, and she shuddered.
“How can you be so small and fill me so?” Somewhere, a spider’s wrapped prey liquefied in her venom. Somewhere, two swans skimmed a lake’s surface in perfect unity.
Remember, I am all things. All matter is under my dominion. I called density and mass to fill every groove and twist I crafted in you. Is it good?
“It is good! Amma, it is good!”
So Amma gave her more, expanding in all directions, shifting angles, speed, temperature. He was reading her body, watching desert antelope leap over dunes and cicadas emerge after decades of pupation.
“Amma, I want you close. I want to feel you everywhere. Do not pull away from me.” He called gravity down so it would feel as if his body was laying on top of her, arms enfolding her into his chest.”
I have you.
“You have me,” she nestled her face into the gravity.
My beauty, I’m burning, I’m ready.
“Fulfill your promise, my Amma.” She watched above her as star systems collapsed and blossomed. Black holes ate their fill and then themselves. Sibling planets swirled with new rings, and moons upon moons were born from the ecstatic release of the Amma into her body. She wrapped her arms around the weight that collapsed against her until the gravity reformed into the shield membrane around her. She extended her arms, and Amma lifted himself to rest in the palm of her hand. “I’ve not made life in this way before. What should I do?”
Amma laughed. I have not created in this way either.
She snorted, clasping her other hand over her nose and mouth, “I thought you knew all things.”
I make all things. I craft. I feel the creative impulse in my body and follow. I do not know much.
They laughed, and she pulled her hand to her chest so he could rest between her breasts. He watched the salmon swim upstream to lay eggs as eagles clung their talons together and dived in devotion, while an octopus gave her last breath to her young as they hatched around her.
“I guess we wait.”
At the end of the gestation, holes opened all over the surface of her body. The earth split into undulating pores. She was birthing. She was birthing from everywhere. She cried with every creature in labor on her planet.
Two bodies for each hole struggled first but then burst with slick freedom. While born of molten earth, as their skin cooled, it was clear they were beings of water. The twins stood tall, holding hands, both strong in their prime. Their eyes were large and red, with long features and limbs. Their skin was a shifting green-blue scattered with the grace of fish scales. Their jointless arms allowed their hands to stay clasped as they turned to look in all directions. When each set of twins saw its first body of water, they dove in and swam in destined delight.
“My Amma, they are like you! Each perfect with vessel and wand.”
My beauty, they take after you. As you are mostly water, they were born to exist in as much of you as possible.
“They are my primordial waters.”
They are Nommos.
“They are Nommos.”
They are perfect.
Somewhere, for one moment in the universe, all was perfect.
May you carve stillness in the stone of existence. May you listen to the thrum of the truth in your heart and follow it dearly.
This was one of the most beautiful, juiciest stories I’ve read. Just wonderful. So layered. I will be thinking about this for a long time! 🤎
Wow what a powerful story with equally powerful imagery