No!

This container is built to be precisely that: a container. A cloister. A place for rest. You get to tap in and out at your leisure, doing only what you want to do.

I’ve endeavored to offer options for different kinds of folks — if you like live conversation, there is a weekly office hours/Q&A. If you live online or love chatting with folks, there’s a Discord. If you’ve been wanting a summer book club, we’re doing one! If you just want to listen to messages and read poetry and set up a Venus altar in the comfort of your own home, you don’t have to talk to anyone the entire time. 

The point is for this to be a space for recovery, while acknowledging that recovery doesn’t happen right away. 

No!

While this container is informed by astrology (obviously — we are doing this during Venus Rx!), it’s not about astrology, in that the point is not learning about astrology, but rather about our own relationships to our creativity.

For the astro inclined, there are sections of the container that will feature astrology, to supplement your creative recovery. 

But the vast majority of this container requires absolutely zero astrological knowledge — it is more based on the mythology of Venus and especially that of her own ancestor, Inanna of the Sumerians, and what those powerful, millennia-old stories can show us about rediscovering ourselves.

I have an absolute zero tolerance for bigotry of all kinds in the discord, and in the live office hours on Zoom, which will result in immediate removal from the course with no refund and an auto-ban on all of my future offerings.

You should also know that I have absolutely zero tolerance for COVID denialism, anti-vaxxers, and the “it’s 2023, COVID is over” folks. My partner is immunocompromised. One of our best friends was one of the first Long COVID cases diagnosed here in New York City. Another dear friend has been at the vanguard of COVID and Monkeypox activism for our queer community, also here in NYC. My own creative life has been enormously impacted by COVID — most especially getting to see the impact of the Omicron surge on our healthcare system and providers up close and personal during my extended hospitalization (for non-COVID reasons) in late 2021/early 2022. I will absolutely not indulge any so-called “debate” on a pandemic which is still claiming lives simply because some folks find masks “uncomfortable.” 

I say all of this because, in a cloister where we are focusing on creative rest and recovery and re-examining the "before" and "after," the things that have brought us to the brink are bound to come up. And the pandemic is, however directly or indirectly, one of those things.