Fixed water: petrichor, deep wells, decay

The sun doesn't disappear. We just can't see it as much as in the height of summer. There is treasure in the void. There is gold in the dark.

Mutable water: illusions, hopes + fears, unknown pleasures

A snake isn't worse than a rose if you are looking for a way to kill a character. A jewel isn't better than a tornado if you want to move the action of your story somewhere else.

Mutable air: research, reflection, voice

You unearth your work like an archaeologist discovers treasures, or a farmer pulls up crops.

Fixed air: hacking, repurposing systems, linguistic play

Berg’s collection offers this small hope, this tiny act of witchcraft in a collection that both reproduces and interrogates patriarchal violence and its necrotizing effect.

Fixed earth: wild animals, practical witchcraft, poetry

Rathore’s poem ‘Alison Device (1594-1612), named for a Pendle witch, is a beautiful meditation on mortality and desire.

Cardinal earth: rapaciousness, growth, deep roots

Hedges, like lawns, are of no use to the witch unless they are overgrown, wild, and generative.

Fixed water: unfinished business, deep emotions, divination

We record this by leaving the work unfinished and unresolved. The absence is a space for grief.

Mutable water: the unconscious, hallucinations, psychic plane

Rachel Pollock writes that “in divinatory readings the moon indicates an excitement of the unconscious.”

Fixed air: systems, ancient wisdom, collective practices

This can become the container for all of your rituals, devotions, and divinations, and a space to process what your subtle body is experiencing when you generate, edit, and share creative work.

Fixed water: working through, deep release, breaking open

You can work with this ritual to come back to creative centre whenever you are feeling blocked.

Mutable earth: mycelial networks, field notes, fungal categories

In The Museum of Atheism, each chapter begins with a description of the fungus that has taken over the town of Rosewood, where the action happens. These descriptions act as field notes about real and imagined fungal forms

Fixed air: future visioning, collective energies

What happens if you think about your projects not in terms of word counts, but in seasons? Could you be guided by a full seasonal cycle, from solstice to solstice, or Samhain to Samhain? Or could you work with your solar return?

Fixed fire: alchemy, energy, creative flows

Have you been feeling like you could use a change in your writing routine? Perhaps you would like to find a regular weekly slot to work? Or even something more drastic like a complete change in direction?

Fixed air: portals, balance, opposition

How do you build rest into your writing practice? When do you let the field lay fallow, and when do you let it grow wild?

Cardinal earth: ambition, architecture, boundaries

When we read a story, temptation only works when we agree to it. Like the two figures here, we must submit to story.

Cardinal earth: cathedral, winter, resources, the unknown

The Five of Pentacles appears to be about stuckness, and scarcity, but it can teach us a lot about the luminous mysteries.

Fixed earth: receptivity, plenty, earthly pleasures

If we keep frenetically trying to force our way through the world, we will lose sight of the luscious opportunities being handed down from the clouds.

Mutable water: confusion, hidden meanings, the moon, intuition

In this card, the figure doesn't notice the moon, and doesn't seem aware of how its guiding force is helping them on their way. The moon in the Eight of Cups is at once a sliver of waxing crescent moon and a full moon, or perhaps it is an eclipse.

Mutable earth: late summer, sexuality, harvest

Her serenity is apparent, the bird sitting peacefully on her head, the armful of produce, her calm view of the field, and a gentle hand on the pentacles, as though she isn’t too attached to them, doesn’t need to control them. There is plenty, she seems to tell us, there will be enough.

Cardinal fire: heat, fire opals, intensity

A story is about the moment of unstoppable inevitability of knowledge or action: think of Greek tragedies, folk tales, revolutions, mysteries. Humans are wired to be hungry for these kinds of stories, because they help us to understand a chaotic and sometimes brutal world.