My and Crystal’s Wedding Party. Carolyn was her matron of honor.
As many of you know already, one of my oldest and dearest friends, Carolyn Elliott, tragically and suddenly passed on Sunday.
For a lot of reasons, this full moon felt especially full of pain. Full Moons are usually considered chaotic and unstable, and Aquarius is not a comfortable placement for the Moon. But this particular lunation happened shortly after mercury stationed direct, and while saturn was stationing retrograde in Aries, which is his fall.
It was also during Saturn's retrograde station that Carolyn passed away.
For those of you who don't know, Carolyn was a very well-known, sometimes controversial public figure in the occult and western magic. She wrote the best-selling book Existential Kink, created and edited the popular online magazine Bad Witch, and personally helped thousands of people through her mentorships, online community, and in-person retreats.
I was first introduced to Carolyn over 10 years ago by my now-wife Crystal. We met at a vision quest, and immediately hit it off talking about the mystic practices of ancient greek philosophers, talismanic magic, all the points of overlap between hermeticism and tibetan tantra, and so many other juicy topics that could only interest nerdy occultists.
One of her greatest gifts was seeing the light, goodness, and talent within other people, and then encouraging them - even goading them - to shine their light and use their talents. She saw the guru within everyone. She truly believed in people.
I personally wouldn't be making my living as an astrologer and a magician without her encouraging me to take up space and share my gifts. Though by nature I'm quite shy and private, she helped me see that the life of a recluse wasn't in line with my dharma. She gave me a platform within her own community to share classical astrology and astrological magic.
In memorializing someone, I believe it's important to not exclusively focus on the good. I know that she could also be controversial. Some of her business tactics and marketing strategies certaintly weren't ideal. And the containers she held could be unsafe at times.
On that note, I think it's important people know that the brash public persona that she cultivated was only one facet of her personality. She was also an incredibly soft, soulful poet, artist, and literary scholar. Some of the happiest times I've seen her was when she was belting out songs by Bowie and Prince, sleeping on her punk friends' dirty couches, and picking mulberries with her beloved pittsburgh community.
In brief, she was so much more than her online persona.
And that's a big word of caution I have for everyone here with this: to not be seduced by online personas anywhere.
To recognize that, behind all all the online influencers who seem to have everything together, is a regular human being who is just as complex as you are.
That no one is one dimensional.
And sometimes those internet personas have no basis in the real person at all. Especially if the person appears to "have it all together."
And for those of you who do have online platforms, I ask that you please never feel trapped by the personality you put online. Don't be afraid to let yourself evolve and change from who you used to be. You don't have to be perfect.
And this finally brings me to some of my reflections for this full moon...
The full Moon in Aquarius, when the Sun opposes Leo, highlights the contrasting and sometimes dissonant relationship between self and other, part and whole, microcosm and macrocosm.
Leo privileges the self and its perception. It lives in the truth that can only be accessed through the first-person experience. It lives in the now, fuolly embodied in the present moment.
In contrast, Aquarius privileges the whole. What is true, for Aquarius, must be true for everyone. It lives in the timeless halls of objective principles and ideals, as opposed to the rawness of the present moment.
As I have been grieving the loss of Carolyn around this time, one of the things I have circled back to again and again is the dissonance between the masks that we put up to the collective, to our communities, on social media, to the whole of humanity....
...and the real people behind those masks.
The dissonance between how we present ourselves to the whole of humanity, and who we are actually are.
We create these masks, oftentimes in service to others, to share with the parts of ourselves that we feel they need.
But those masks become prisons. They isolate us. They hide the parts of us that need healing, so that we may never become whole.
This is weighing on me very heavily now because so many people are chronically online. Social media masquerades as authentic connection while isolating us more and more. We have tremendous contact with the whole of humanity, but spend more and more time alone.
By curating ourselves for the community of all humanity, something authentic, genuine, and even messy that is unique to you is lost.
And you know what? That messy, raw, person that you truly are is far more beautiful than some curated, sanitized, digital fiction.
So let yourself be messy. Don't paralyze yourself with other people's expectations. Don't let yourself be frozen by what you think the whole needs from you.
To truly honor the whole of humanity, what you can do right now after this new moon is just be you. Be unapologetically you.
It's what Carolyn would've wanted.