Welcome to the third entry in my Capella series! We are now midway through the process of figuring out how to work with a fixed star in a way that combines devotional and talismanic rituals.
I have to acknowledge that my plan did not survive contact with reality - my Jupiter window passed before I could act. I’ll try to keep things labeled so you can come along with me in the passage of time.
Previously in this series
Capella 1: https://articles.planetarycrafts.com/p/first-contact-prep-researching-capella
Capella 2: https://articles.planetarycrafts.com/p/meeting-capella
The Tea: Sunday, August 9th
I blended my tea today. No special time, just when I finally got my shit together. 1 part milky oats, 2 parts chamomile, 2 parts lemon balm. Smell - bright, sweet, comforting, grassy. Boiled some water to give it the taste test, had a single spoonful of the brewed tea and went YESSS. Taste - delicious, delicious, delicious.
The Tea Blend:
Delicious, yes, but herbally what does it do, and how does it connect with Capella and how she wants to work with me? Milky Oats: in herbalism, very good for the nervous system, especially when battling anxiety or stress. Metaphysically it is similar - good for soothing the mind and self care rituals. It’s watery, so it naturally relates to Venus and the Moon. I picked it because it’s something a goat would eat, and because it’s Lunar. Chamomile: also calms the nervous system and inflammation, and helps with digestion. A solar herb, it’s about prosperity, protection from curses, and peace of mind. I picked it for solar clarity of vision. Lemon Balm: a nervine relaxer, helpful for digestion. It’s a Jupiterian plant, good for joy, friendship and harmony at home. I picked it because of the Jupiterian connection, and because it’s one of my favorite plant spirits. I didn’t look at the herbal properties until I was done. Interesting, huh? Heavy hitters for anti-stress, pro-peace. It feels like this tea is for rituals where I need the eye of the storm, or need a moment to recuperate before heading back out into the field. This is respite, not life, and certainly not battle.
The tea hit so hard I immediately checked prospective ritual timing. Solar day, Lunar hour, within 10 minutes of Capella setting. Sounds good! I poured some tea in a mini cup, lit a candle, got her chosen jasper rock next to the candle, and immediately forgot everything else I was supposed to be doing - including how rituals worked.
An Unplanned Ritual
The joy of impromptu rituals, aka ‘I don’t know what to do with my hands’. What to invoke? What am I doing here? Do I have enough of an offering?
After a moment of panic, I settled on ‘Capella, I invoke thee’ because hey, sometimes you have to be straight and to the point.
Ritual Visualization
I closed my eyes, tried to get comfortable, and imagined Capella, the woman I had met before, alighting to earth. She sat down at a table with two cups of tea.
She looked similar to last time, although this time I noticed horns curled back on her head, and longish hair on her arms. She told me that as she sets she goes from divine to animalic. In the future, unless I want to listen to goat bleats, call a little sooner.
The tea is still excellent. She asks me again what I want from her; what do I want the work to accomplish? I waffle a bit, about my business, about wanting to step up into success and prosperity, and she seems to get a little impatient. It’s not what she does, and it’s not true enough.
And here’s where I followed my own advice about asking spirits to help and got to the vulnerable heart of things. At our core, our wishes for ourselves are selfish, and many of us are conditioned to hide that from others.
I’m one of those people who feel that shame, so I’m going to leave that part of the conversation private.
But she does approve. She asks me if I am ready for that, and makes sure I understand that while she can get me to my destination she cannot keep me there. I will need other allies, and whatever Titanomachy is coming will require help.
This echoed the previous tarot reading, where she gave The Emperor as her strength and the 5 of Pentacles as her weakness.
Titanomachy, aka the war with the Titans, who fought Zeus and his siblings as he fought for the throne. Loss led to punishment - Kronos (Saturn) spent time in the underworld, Atlas was ordered to hold up the earth, and so on. Atlas’ punishment was eternal, but Saturn was eventually released and given other work.
The Readings
Am I ready?
I pulled out the trusty tarot deck to ask - should this be a period of nourishment and preparation, or was I ready for the Big Ask?
Answer: 3 of Pentacles. Time to build a cathedral, but it’s a group project. Welp. There we go.
I’ve been a tarot reader for years, and a professional reader for five of them. I am still pleased when the cards answer me directly.
Who are my allies?
Second question, feeding off the first answer.
Temperance
7 of Pentacles
The Empress
This matches the mood of what I’m trying to accomplish, and the methods by which I want to retain it. Who are these people?
Finding the Suitors
Well then. My first assumption is that these would most likely reference ‘starry suitors’: a group of hundreds, if not thousands, of celestial spirits willing to help in magical work. Working with them requires a lot of filtering, and it sometimes ends up feeling like a season of The Bachelor when trying to figure out who is the right fit for you in the moment. Time to narrow down the options to figure out who Capella is pointing toward. I talked a bit about these techniques in my Finding Starry Patrons talk (note, this is a link to a talk listed in sched - it has a pdf of the slides, but an article on the talk itself is coming later this year). Here are some real examples of technique.
My first nature is always to think Zodiacally - I am both a tarot reader AND an astrologer, after all. Looking at the astrological connections for the cards, I get the 7 of Pentacles as Decan 3 of Taurus, because almost all minor arcana are connected to at least one part of a sign. All majors instead represent either a planet or a whole Zodiac sign. The Empress is Venus, and Temperance is Sagittarius - Sagittarius is ruled by Jupiter, though, so I’ll keep an eye out for both.
Let’s start with The Empress / Venus.
At the time Venus was in Libra, which she rules, giving her a modicum of power. However, she was double-afflicted by Mars and Saturn in that position - both are malefic planets, and both were making a negative aspect with her (you can read my Mars in Cancer article if you want some details on how badly they can behave). Therefore, I didn’t want to call on ‘Venus as she transits’. Additionally, she’s fallen in my chart, in Virgo, so I wanted to avoid her ‘Venus at my birth’ aspect as well. There is also the idea of ‘Venus in her purest form’, and I have worked with her successfully before, but with so much negative energy in the way it didn’t feel worth the effort.
On the other hand, the star I first met to do ritual work with is Alkaid, ecliptically conjunct my Venus; I call her Bear Mom as she’s part of Ursa Major. Alkaid and I have an open line of communication, especially during ritual work, so I don’t need tarot cards to reach her for confirmation. Once I realized that the cards were pointing to her, I asked her directly - and yes, of course she would help. She’d been waiting to teach me more ‘claw’ work, anyway.
So that’s The Empress.
Next is Temperance, as Sagittarius or Jupiter. I’m going to start with Sagittarius. I checked my birth chart, and Antares is conjunct my midheaven, which is a good sign (pun intended).
Inset: Antares is in Scorpius (the constellation), but due to precession he lives ‘ecliptically’ in the sign of Sagittarius now. Precession is an interesting topic, and worth researching if you’re curious about intermediate astrological topics.
And who is Antares, exactly? He is another one of the Behenian (major) stars, so we have a lot of resources available about him. He’s the Heart of the Scorpion and he protects against evil spirits, helps with intelligence, memory and wisdom. Beautiful. I’ll have to meet with him to be sure, but this seems like a good ‘new’ candidate for an ally.
I do feel a bit like I’m collecting animals so far. Goat, Bear, Scorpion.
And finally, let’s go back to the 7 of Pentacles and the decan.
Most of the fixed stars in Decan 3 of Taurus are part of Perseus, including Algol, who represents Medusa’s head in his constellation. Now, Algol is a star that we warn newer practitioners against, and I’m not ready to start a relationship with her at this time. However, I have a ‘sort of’ connection with Medusa, the mythological figure attached to Algol.
This does pull me out of the stellar realm; I am primarily an astro-witch, but as an animist (and a practical person) I work with other spirits as well. If the sky says work with a non-celestial being, I listen.
I haven’t worked with Medusa directly, but through her sisters, the Gorgons. She was mortal, her sisters are not, and mourning her was part of the ritual process I engaged in with them. I felt a little weird about going back to the Gorgons after so long apart, especially because I had met them through Hecate. Even worse, I had also not worked with Hecate in an even longer while. I was struggling to separate ‘human social anxiety’ from ‘official permission’, so I ended up chewing on this overnight.
If this sounds over-complicated, I agree. This is the first half of a lesson I hadn’t learned yet.
Hecate - August 10th
I discussed my conundrum with a friend, and she immediately said ‘Why isn’t it Hecate?’ I felt like this could be right, but it made me nervous. I do owe Hecate a debt. This could fit in with the reading, as I sometimes read the 7 of Pentacles as a need to rebalance the scales before starting new work - 6 of Pentacles + 1 of Pentacles, because the coins are split that way. I first worked with her through Miller’s Sorcery of Hecate series, and she does come with a host of allies.
Under Miller’s framework, she has a LOT of aspects - many tools, many faces, many spirits she can introduce to you. She’s a new moon goddess, and the next one was August 12th; sometime in the next few days would be a fine time to talk to her. I planned to go find my mala, boil some eggs, apologize and see what would work for her.
Those paying attention may note how this might connect with Justice - the card I felt most uncertain about in my first reading. Right now my opinion is Yes, and more than just this particular debt. But we’re in spoiler territory now.