Many women have a “her”. She is the woman they strive to be — the woman that they are but that they do not know how to fully embody. This her haunts her. She dreams of her, she reaches towards her, she wants to be her.

In the women’s part of the internet and popular culture, as well as in my personal correspondences with women, there is a very consistent group of women that inspire and move them: Marilyn Monroe, Sade, Monica Bellucci, Josephine Baker, Carolyn Bessette Kennedy, Audrey Hepburn, Brigitte Bardot, Maria Callas, Carla Bruni, Dita Von Teese, Lana Del Rey, Anita Ekberg, Elizabeth Taylor, Princess Diana, Marlene Dietrich, Bianca Jagger, Amal Clooney, Greta Garbo, Diana Ross, Anna Nicole Smith, Donyale Luna, 1990’s models like Yasmeen Ghauri, Eva Herzigova or Naomi Campbell, as well as the women of the Swans circle (Babe Paley, Slim Keith, C.Z Guest, Lee Radziwill). Among authors we consistently see Anais Nin, Sylvia Plath and Clarice Lispector.

They are omnipresent in women’s media. You may see these women on Pinterest, Instagram, on TikTok, on Youtube — women create moodboards about them, explore their lives, their biographies, relationships, dissect and analyse their archetypes, astrology, aesthetics and more. I am sure you have seen the Sade moodboards with felines, coffee, tortoise print and Narciso Rodriguez “For Her” somewhere on it. Or the aspirational lawyers and political science students with their Amal Clooney moodboards. Or the mystically & intellectually inclined, pilates girls who do their Brigitte Bardot moodboards with luxurious ballet flats and niche butter brands. Our modern day Bohemian has Diane Von Frustenberg, Cher and Bianca Jagger on it paired with eclectic literature, 1970’s folk music, crystals, and cigarettes.

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A friend of mine who has an Algerian father and a French mother remembers her mother once chiding her for wearing too much make-up. Her father, on the other hand, coming from a culture in which make up is regarded as a protective mask, had quite the opposite view: the more make-up you wear, the more you are shielded from malign spirits and psychic forces. ‘I notice’, my friend observed, ‘that I wear very little make-up when I am with friends I trust.’

Many of us understand this feeling of being protected in some nebulous way after we have taken special care in applying cosmetics. This is particularly true in the world of work, where women often have to display much greater energy and confidence than their male colleagues in order to succeed or, sometimes, even be taken seriously.

Beneath the mask, beneath the veil, our essential being is hidden and inviolate. As a dancer, I know that when I am on stage, especially if I am giving a solo performance, I am vulnerable to the psychic feedback of my audience. The ritual of putting on make-up before going on stage is an important one and I like to take my time over it in a quiet atmosphere which helps me focus my mind on the performance to come.

— “Beauty and the East”, Wendy Bounaventura

Make up has been part of my life ever since I know of myself. There are videos of myself, around one year old, applying lipstick to my lips while wearing huge sunglasses, demanding of people around me to address me as: “Her Ladyship.” I have experimented and played with it ever since: first borrowing my grandmother’s and mother’s make up and eventually buying my own. I still remember the initiation of buying the first high-end, for me a “grown woman” lipstick; a Shiseido Perfect Rouge that I had saved for from my pocket money. I felt like a woman rather than a girl and I always wanted to be a woman: bodied, mature, sovereign, generous, open and unafraid.

I experimented with looks and techniques, finding out what works for me. The journey included coming to my classes in a look that made my peers giggle. Sometimes it was too strong and I was told by my teacher to go wash my face in the bathroom. I would wash the excesses but would still use my lipstick as a blush, cream eyeshadow and tint on the lips. Being naturally blushed, it was barely noticeable to the outsiders. I could keep my shield on. Years of practice and many awkward experiments taught me from experience how to create different looks.

[Another article on a similar topic, but from a different angle, free for everyone to read, can be found here]

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A late pulling together of old ideas, the twins represent two powers: Apollo the power of the protector and the rational mind, and Artemis, the power of nature. Personified in Artemis are the nature powers that inform the whole natural world.

Artemis is associated with the bow and consequently with the hunt, and in this role the death that she deals is sweet and swift one. The Muslims have a wonderful saying about the Angel of Death: in his approach the Angle of Death seems terrible, yet when he has arrived he’s sweet.

Originally Artemis herself was a deer, and she is the goddess who kills the deer: the two are dual aspects of the same being. Life is killing life all the time, and so the goddess kills herself in the sacrifice of her own animal. Each life is its own death, and he who kills you is somehow a messenger of the destiny that was yours from the start. So it is with the animal and the deity. If the animal kills the deity as the boar killed Adonis, or if the deity kills the animal as Artemis hunts deer, these are two aspects of the same life mystery.

Actaeon was out hunting stags with his dogs and followed a stream up to its source, and in the pool at the source of the stream was the goddess Artemis bathing naked with her nymphs. Actaeon, the poor chap, saw this glorious naked body and looked at her with eyes not of worship but of lust. Seeing that look in his eye, Artemis simply splashed him with some wanter and he was turned into a stag, and his own dogs then consumed him. The dogs themselves are representations of the lower appetites, while the stag represents his lower, merely animal nature: that is really what consumed him when he was in the presence of the Goddess.

The varied powers that have been brought together in Artemis are indicated by various images and associations. We’ve seen her as a deer and we’ve seen her bathing in the waters as the water nymph, which brings us back to the Old European fish goddess from 6000 B.C.

In Sumer, we saw the Goddess in her role as Lady of the Wild Things. In this guise, she is the World Mother—that is to say, the whole world is of her, and all are her children. And in Greek myths too, the Mistress of Beasts appears in the avatar of Artemis. As Baring and Cashford point out: ‘Artemis became the Goddess of the Wild Animals, a title she was given in the Iliad—Potnia Theron—inheriting her role from the Paleolithic Goddess of the Wild Animals of the Hunt.

— Joseph Campbell in “Goddesses: Mysteries of the Feminine Divine” (X)

On Volupta, we often talk about the significance of the animal or the instinctual life, juxtaposing it with the more cultivated and civilisational parts of ourselves. The animal is not separate from our cultivated part, but in fact, protects us against neurosis, delusion and false complexity that the civilisational alone can take us into.

In her imagery around the world, the Great Goddess or the Feminine is commonly associated with different kinds of animals: lions, leopards, boars, pigs, cattle, stags, hounds, wolves, bears, serpents, crocodiles, cats, peacocks, doves, magpies and more. In her aspect as the Lady of the Beast, she represents both the nurturing and the destructive aspects of the Goddess. She is a consciousness and awareness that controls beasts but is also a beast herself. Capable of containing them all, she is the supreme beast.

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We all know the song and we all know the feeling. The very unique flavour of the summertime blues. Your friends post Instagram stories from beautiful locations, lounging, limbs stretched, offering their bodies to the warmth of the Sun, freshness of lakes and the sea. They dance, they kiss, they have sex. They wear beautiful dresses, drink beautiful drinks and live beautiful lives. Maybe there are weddings, graduation parties and large communion tables. Only you, it seems, have nothing. The summer becomes long and lonely and you look towards October for when life will return.

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The external light and vibrancy polarises against the heavy stagnation and darkness that we carry within. It is the infinite dance between Sun and Saturn, the luminosity and the dark. Their polarities most observable at the most polarised seasons: winter & summer. In winter, the outer world is dark, Saturnine, and so the light shines within during our holidays and gatherings; in summer, the outer world is bright, and the internal darkness and passivity increases. This passivity manifests in the positive associations with summer as well: the lounging, the slowness, the basking in the Sun, like reptiles by the bodies of water, on the rocks with warm sun above. But if there is any melancholy, sorrow, loneliness, these will become very visible to us too. The Sun shines upon our sorrow, grief, betrayed hopes, tender dreams and desires. Perhaps shame from all of it being the way it is. From being left behind.

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Among Volupta’s most beloved articles are those that speak of men & sexuality and the way to relate that still does not sacrifice neither your sovereignty nor your desire to experience relationships.

Today’s article will be dedicated to these themes as well. The topic is once again, inspired by my intimate conversations and correspondences with women. For many women that I spoke to, the exciting man that she instinctually enjoys and the good man that she feels safe around are not the same. This eventually leads to the “bad boy” vs the “nice guy” split. It is difficult for women to speak of these things publicly, honestly and openly because people are very reactive and upset about it. The men are upset and the women are upset. The clarity never arrives and so we are prevented from develop a conscious relationship with the serpentine intelligence that still so potently runs our lives.

I would dare call the bad boy vs the nice guy a women’s version of the whore vs the madonna split. It is not identical but it shares an undercurrent. The undercurrent is in the fact that it involves similar separations of sexuality, libido or power from what we consider to be good character or the traits that allow us to bond from our heart as well. The libidinally exciting and the emotionally safe exist on two different frequencies in both cases.

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Women’s tastes in erotic literature are regularly a part of the internet and wider cultural discourse (which in our age is primarily the internet). Beasts, monsters, abductions and millionaires as the most extreme examples get the largest bulk of attention. It is causing both disturbance and fascination among the audiences. We of course, have many examples of the softer versions that still broadly carry the same essential qualities of intensity, polarity, adventure, love, desire, sex and transgression — the Harlequin romances with their iconic covers, the romances about strong and sturdy Highlanders or Vikings or anything similar.

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In our last few articles we touched upon how to redeem our deep wounds as well as ways to connect and relate in different types of relationships. As you may know, Volupta loves to combine the deep dive topics with lighter topics about archetypes, beautification, glamour and the similar. Not that they are disconnected — it is only the incorporation of both that leads to a life that is complete and in every aspect beautiful, abundant and voluptuous.

Today we will explore archetypes through our four tarot queens. You may have some ideas or know them well, but here we will explore them through elements and give you ways through which you can embody them. I will also draw my inspiration from three tarot frameworks: Marseille, Thot & Rider-Waite. They have many things in common of course but they also differ. Instead of giving an analysis of images or symbols (which is easily found online), I will bring them all together to craft a unified story for you to explore. You can use them for your personal or professional life but also for glamour, seduction or just about anything you want since they are applicable across domains of life.

If I find that my readers enjoy this article, I will happily expand on it and give the feminine Major Arcana their own articles.

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[This article is open for everyone to read. I will not be adding my own read aloud as a little extra for the paid subscribers since Substack has been doing their own for a while. Unless you really prefer to hear it in my voice, feel free to let me know if you prefer a human voice over the automatised one!]

In a story “Babette’s Feast” (there is a movie too) by the Danish author Karen Blixen we meet a French refugee from Franco-Prussian war who finds herself working as a servant to two sisters who are part of a very strict religious community in Denmark. She is also an extraordinary chef. When the French maid Babette wins a lottery she decides to spend all of her money to prepare a feast for the sisters and the community. The feast is elaborate and huge. She says, I paraphrase, not directly quote: “Like every artist, I had but one prayer: God give me a chance to do my best.”

General Galliffet, the host of the dinner made an observation that this woman had the power to transform a dinner into a love affair. This love affair, according to his words, made no distinction between spiritual and carnal pleasure, between the appetite of the body and the one of the spirit. Her art made everyone’s juices flow and the feast was accompanied by mystical theophanies and confessions of love.

The reflection resonated with me, since for me as well, throughout my life, there was no separation between the two. My bodily hungers were spiritual ones. The joys of the flesh were also the joys of the spirit. The compartmentalisation just never registered.

God or Divine is often equated with food because food is that which both sustains life and offers pleasure. Food also has that which corresponds to the spirit since it is the heart of any communion — sitting at the table together, we share our food with others, which is akin to sharing one another in Divine/God. There is no holiday or celebration without food. The periods of fasting always end with a holiday that involves feasting. The dinner table is a holy relic.

This orientation towards pleasure of body & spirit, has also made it that my nature is the nature that tends to fall in love. Or rather, one that is constantly in love. My love affair is with life itself. If I move to a city or visit it, I treat that city like a lover. I seduce him and invite him to give me what he wants to give me, to expand me and unlock a door within me that I am curious to explore. To learn of an ingredient, I make love to the ingredients — I want my senses so refined, so subtle and particular that I can notice every little trait and that is only possible through making love and allowing myself to be affected by it. The many varieties of tomato become distinct because I seek to know each one of them as a lover.

You can [correctly] then guess and assume that the same spirit followed me in my relationships with men. My drive towards love and falling in love was not sentimental nor was it about seeking security from a man, it was about knowledge. Not information but knowledge. A gnosis. I wanted to know — him, myself through him and cosmos, reality, God. Practically, it meant that I allowed myself to be affected. I allowed him to make me happy and to make me sad, to have my face lighten up if I see his name on my phone’s screen and to frown if it has been absent for a while. I enjoyed every sensation and I enjoyed every face of myself. I was cruel and heartless but I was also the waiting and devoted Radha. I was Circe who did not hesitate to reduce him to his beastly form and keep him a slave to my erotic power but I was also Beatrice who lead him into a world beyond this one. I loved being Shakespeare’s Venus, insisting on affections against an Adonis of lithe limbs who plays coy while enjoying and wanting my violations and I also loved being the woman delightfully overpowered by some Conan the Barbarian.

I was all the women and every mistress. What it did, however, was that it made me love and know myself. I could witness myself, through him, as this infinite vast. It is like witnessing the vastness of Creation — of space, ocean, earth and you are this vast and every being in it and every flavour.

The orientation towards love, gnosis, experience is also what made me not really evaluate men according to status or security or even looks as such but by the essence they carried and that I wanted to commune with and know. I could love young and old, a dwarf and a giant, freakish and handsome and everything in between. There was love for the broke poet, the blue collar and the king on his throne. Among prophets and holy men there are broke poets, carpenters and kings. I wanted to know them. Just like felt myself a lover of cities, mountains, rivers, seas, animals and produce, I felt myself a lover of all men. A while ago I wrote on X: “Every man is my husband.” I was one with all of them and all of them belonged to me — the ones I nourish & the ones I kill equally.

You the sea princess who has loved all men
and loved no one
slept with all men and slept with no one
you are the Bedouin woman who went with all the tribes
and returned a virgin

— Nizar Qabbani (X)

Just I could be Radha or Venus or Beatrice, I could just as easily leave, end things and let the man be free. It was about the experience, the taste, the play, not duration. The experience I had and the sensations I experienced will forever be mine. My love is mine and belongs to me ultimately.

And if he is mine and I am truly his in some eternity or cosmic identity, then he will find his way back to me even if he is out at the ocean, lost & clueless. If he is not, the strongest chains will not and cannot keep him bound. He will escape, if nothing, into his imagination, dreaming of his true lover and freedom. My chains would only ever feed his desire for this.

When you approach life as something to fall in love with, not only as an abstraction, but as particulars as well (places, people, food, wine, poems etc), if you can hold it within you, what you will come to have is a world within you. Instead of extending outwards towards the world, the world collapses within you. You contain it. Vagina and womb are inwards & never reach out towards anything while everything reaches out towards them and collapses into them. The inside of her cannot be seen with a “naked eye”. Only that which is hidden has the capacity to hold life. Without the interior, there is nothing to hold life. Everything becomes not even the dead but the “unborn”. The unborn cannot experience death because death itself is part of birth (and both form the unity that is life). It is a pure spirit that never gets a chance to incarnate/become flesh. Such a world becomes a realm of hungry ghosts who seek to feed on the souls of others since they cannot eat the actual food — the spirits or ghosts do not have stomachs or what some may call the lower energy centres.

This capacity to contain and to hold life in all its forms, is crucial for living a life in which you allow yourself to fall in love (with anything you want!). Only so do you cease fearing. If you are afraid, you cannot be open. If you try to open while afraid you will be defensive, which means any attempt at it will turn into a war between yourself and the other, the yourself and yourself. Life, love and delight will agitate you. You will experience them as forces that seek to annihilate you, not fill you up.

Refer a friend

What you are afraid of is pain and hurt. When you fear pain and hurt, you seek to control the other. In this state, your attitude towards life or love is not: “Come towards me and delight me!”, it is “Please do not hurt me. Please do not hurt me. Please, please, please do not hurt me.” But if pain or hurt are just one of the sensations among the many that you can contain, it all ends and you are free. What does it matter if life or love hurts me? What in this world is vaster than me? What is there in this world that I cannot transform it into wisdom, poetry, beauty, depth?

Today Volupta will give you little tips on how to develop your capacity to contain, free yourself from fear & allow yourself to fall in love. Love is the most beautiful sensation and wine. And it is also freedom.

1. Allow Yourself to Be Affected, Moved & Impressed - You do not have to do it with men at if it is a little intimidating! Or at all if men are not your thing. Begin or do it with everything else! Do it with places. Or food. Or wine. Or with a woman. If you still want men, try it with them once you grow more comfortable. Let yourself truly be affected and moved. Let something impress upon you by creating sensations inside of you. Feel them. Do not fidget and resist. You are strong. Why would you feel defeated by a smallest sensation and by the smallest drop of the Other within you? Allow it in and let it delight you. Digest it and know it. Learn about musical chords by knowing how each feels inside of you. You will see how easy it is to remember a C Minor on the notes sheet if you know how it feels and if you have it inside of you. Everything is music.

2. Be Empty & Hollow - To move freely & openly, you have to be empty. Empty of prejudice. Empty of ideas and ideologies. When you are empty, you absorb & respond. When you are empty you cannot be “triggered” because there is nothing to trigger. You do not have rigid identifications that can come unstable. Rather than “I am”, your posture is the one of “I am not”. “Are you red?”, “Maybe, indeed, I have capacity for red inside of me, but I am also green & blue, white & black, which means I am at the same time red & not red.”
   
   You do not reject quality or attribute either, but you remain vaster. A part of you is always “empty”, which means growing in spaciousness. As you grow space, it means you can contain even more life and substance. As you contain more life and substance, it means you become ever more complex, nuanced and subtle.

3. Contain & Hold - Empty & hollow have two modalities. One is in letting things just pass through you. This means that they do not take hold within you and they do not grow. You just destroy & dissolve them. It is kind of like a black hole. There is another modality which is more akin to holding a breath inside of you. When a sensation moves inside of you, you can choose to hold it. When you hold it, it becomes a part of you and of your inner life. Which means you can nourish it and grow it, develop it and have it become something entirely unique and different than what it originally was. This is how a poet transforms tragedy into a beautiful piece of poetry.

4. Strengthen Your Container - To hold a lot and much, your container must be strong. Which means it needs density and pressure. Think the pressure inside of the ocean or earth’s core or in the atmosphere. Earth's gravity pulls everything towards its centre. The pressure in the inner core is so immense that it keeps the core solid despite the extreme heat. The same principle applies to water, gravity pulls it downward, and the weight of the water column above creates increasing pressure at greater depths. Atmospheric pressure works in the same way.
   
   Nature teaches us that a container becomes strong and stable by pulling its energies inward and downward. This may be a little tricky because for many the pull may be inward and upwards towards the heart and mind which manifests as thinking, analysing, and interpreting.
   
   Let’s give an example that illustrates the difference for us: A man “ghosts” you. Inwards and upwards: you psychoanalyse, look for signs, study his patterns, consult oracles, devise strategies. You move inside (reflection) but this energy goes up towards the mind, so you think and study. You turn inward, yes but the energy rises toward the mind. This tendency is not wrong and it can bring us genuine insight and self-knowledge. But it is a different circuit entirely.
   
   Inwards and downwardsis sensorial and feeling-centred rather than mental or analytical. You may simply feel sad, or that you miss him, or a quiet longing to connect. As you bring that energy down, you may simply feel sad, or that you miss him, or a desire to connect with him. Without the mind layering judgement over what you should or should not feel, you feel fully and without needing to act. Inward and downward does not propel you toward action because there is no will, there is only sensation. In that stillness, the container grows stronger. It is a bit like a muscle and it develops over time and with practice.
   
   This is also connect to our very first point here. Beginning with the small containment of pleasant sensations is a natural and gentle way to start this training.
   
   When a strong container is combined with expansiveness, something extraordinary becomes possible: you become at once elastic and strong. True flexibility is only possible from a place of strength. Without it, what appears supple is merely fragile and will break easily.

5. Play - Be playful! Play with reality. Play with roles and masks. Play with friends. Play with lovers. Play with ingredients. Play with musical instruments and notes. Play with nature and cities. Play with ideas. Simply play. Your playfulness is not separate from the qualities of gravity, pressure and density. These are the crucial parts of your capacity to play. It is when you are “too light” and without the downwardness that anxiety and concern creep in. That which pulls everything inward into herself by her own gravity, as the Earth does, can never be anxious or concerned. Full of pressure and density in her depths, at the surface she grows mountains, flowers and trees. Her oceans sparkle blue under the Sun. Her outer beauty and magic, whether in its gentler or more macabre expressions, is inseparable from her heavy, dense, hollow and dark depths. One is the condition of the other. Everything is her child. And can mother not play with her children?

This is all for this Venus Day! I pray you fall in love!

With Love,

Volupta

A common sentiment that many women express in confidence and one that they may not feel so comfortable sharing openly, is the feeling of being repulsive and ugly. As an outsider, you may perceive the woman as beautiful and pleasant, yet inside, she feels monstrous and distorted.

This inner experience and orientation will be accompanied by a palette of feelings. The core feeling that emerges from such an orientation is shame. Shame is the core negative emotion around which women tend to spiral. Shame then will guide our actions even when we don’t think that it is what guiding us. Talking of action here is rather comedic because what shame cause is more likely inaction. Or inauthentic action.

What it will make you do is hide your light, brilliance and capacity, both from yourself and the world. And what it will make you present as to the world will be layers and layers of personas and defences that serve no other purpose than conceal the person inside who is hiding in the dark dungeons, depraved of air and sun.

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Very few know how to talk about female relationships without succumbing to cliches and stereotypes which often reveal nothing about the female relationships as much as they reveal their own lack of subtlety. If one is not subtle and sensitive to what is ambiguous, one simply cannot come to know anything about inner or outer female worlds. Its subtlety easily deceives and overcomes anything that is crude. Like most cliches that touch upon women & their worlds, the common ideas swing between describing female friendships as relationships of pure harmony in which conflict & negative feelings never occur or as something that never has any kind of sincerity, genuine feeling & affection, reducing it to malice & manipulation. Neither version can hold women as humans capable of all the human contradictions.

A couple years ago, books & TV show “My Brilliant Friend” became a hit for their deep and refreshing depiction of female friendship. It showed the friendship in all its complexity — it is the friendship that holds deep affection and intimacy as well as competition and betrayal. Still, nothing prevents it from being a long communion; the bond of friendship stands stronger than all the weather around it. It depicts the friendships’ development over a period of time which is always crucial in depicting any female experience of reality. One only knows her through time and memory.

In my articles I referenced the novel “The Art of Joy” by Goliarda Sapienza (X) — it too contains the element of time. Another one I can think of that does the same is the Scandinavian epic Kristin Lavransdatter. A long list could be made! Volupta touched on this topic earlier which you can read here:

Friendship is one of the most meaningful relationships that we can experience. Genuine and deep friendship is also incredibly rare. How impactful friendship can be is seen in the popular meme of “friendship breakup” where parting with a friend or end of friendship is experienced as deeply painful, often even more painful than the end of a romantic relationship. It is commonly said that one expects betrayal from a lover, thus it is not a large shock. But one never expects it from a friend — even if we know it as a possibility, we hope that we are proven wrong.

A lot of women reach out to me telling me that they crave female friendship and that they often feel lonely and alone not having true friends. Co-workers and acquaintances are not friends. But in this day and age, especially for younger generations, it seems difficult since everyone is terrified of proximity and the consequential loss of control over self-image. There are also no other women who can act as mentors and initiate others into society. Women are the connective tissue of life and if they do not actively create this tissue, the relationships, individual or collective, will simply not happen.

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In many cultures there is a variation of a colloquial wisdom that teaches us not to trust a person without small vices. A good person has some: alcohol or cigarettes, maybe shopping, perhaps he or she likes an extra serving of a dessert or the fatty part of a roast even if the doctor said otherwise; perhaps he is a womaniser or she is a flirt who cannot help but pull her shirt down a little when talking to any man.

Refer a friend

The core idea is that the person without small vices carries a deep and serious corruption inside. Small vices are viewed as broadly innocent. They are an expression of humanity’s infinite, complete and whole nature, of its taking upon both the devil and the angel.

If you had lived or grown up in cultures in which women are not so deeply identifying with the outer (politics, ideologies, theologies etc) and therefore live more instinctually, you will understand with every part of your being that woman is a creature who does not live by moral norms or laws. She obeys a law, for sure, but it is not the law most know or recognise as correct. In music, in stories, in legends, in telenovelas and cinema, just like in physical life, she comes to embody reality that is beyond simple moral categories.

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A while ago, I entered a series of dreams that included little quests. The dreams were constant and progressed from one to another. These quests were about finding pieces of my own self that were scattered across time and space. I had to go on adventures, dig deeply and outwit all kinds of gatekeepers and tricksters in order to access them. Sometimes a part of me would be an animal, sometimes a young girl or a young boy, sometimes a caged beastly man and sometimes a gemstone.

According to Lurianic Kabbalah, the divine vessels that were supposed to carry light were unable to contain it and broke into pieces. The light from these shattered vessels fell into lower worlds, trapping them into a mundane matter. Human beings are tasked, among other things, to gather these scattered, tiny pieces. These tiny pieces are called nitzotzot.

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Human dignity is something we commonly hear of in all kinds of conversations. It is recognised as a recognition of worth of human life and such, its request and need to exist outside of the conditions that humiliate the human person. The erasure of dignity is akin to erasing someone’s personhood.

If we look at the dictionary meanings of the word dignity or dignified, we will see that this word is commonly associated with concepts such are nobility or stateliness. Something dignified is something that is worthy of honour, respect and recognition. In this web of meaning, it is conceptually connected to majesty, regality, grandeur (read about the Queen Archetype here).

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I often dream of delivering speeches, singing or being an animal producing primal sounds. One recent such dream was that I had a tiger walk by my side. The tiger felt like a part of me rather than something separate — and while we were taking a walk in this area that looked like a boundary between the civilisation and wilderness (the forest was behind me and the city in front of me), I made primal sounds. Eventually, the entire domain started to vibrate with my voice, I could see the patterns of the vibrations as well as the frequencies that my voice produced. The area shook, the animals came out of their hidings and humans too outside of their dwellings. I woke up feeling powerful and energised, motivated to be even “louder” than I had been (it seems that there is no limit to how “loud” one can get) — loud without screaming or proving something, but rather, as a part of my nature. I felt like the raw vitality and power of the tiger was inside of me.

I bring the topic of voice because it is one topic that consistently comes up in my work and conversations with women. In fact, I do not know if there was a single woman I intimately spoke to over a period of time that at one point did not have dreams, visions, hallucinations and insomniac episodes that in one way or another involved their throats and voice.

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I have always loved it when a man is a little shy in his approach towards me. I loved it when he’d carry himself with a degree of restraint. Most men in my life have been so (and all with whom I developed significant relationships) — these were also not diminutive men lacking in virility at all. Assertive, virile, strong, capable, interesting but when it comes to drawing near to me, there is a shyness and restraint.

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I love it for many reasons but I will name the two main ones: one is that it shows his chivalry and respect towards a woman. Consciously or unconsciously, in this, there is a recognition of both the sanctity and the danger of a woman; and the other reason is that being so, he summons from within me a desire to invite him in. It is an act of “lowering the gaze” — looking down until I permit him to look up directly at me. His reverence and “the bend of the knee” makes it so that I do not have to be severe. I do not need to fiercely rebuke his misplaced audacity. Since he does not go to war with me, he ends my war. He lets me know that he has not come to take — the one who wants to take needs me and wants me, but is too weak to acknowledge his need and want of me. The noble one acknowledges the power so the power does not turn against him. The Earth, so used to decaying and destroying, for once, can allow someone into her gardens and orchards. She can show him the beauties and delights.

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I can also see that such a man does want to be invited. He does want to interact with me and experience me, but he does not want to be an intruder — he may knock at the door but he will not slam them down.

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How many of us stayed in a relationship or a situation because we were enchanted by our dream of it? Probably each one of us, whether a man or a woman experienced it at one point — that dream could be something personal and not necessarily relational, for example a personal goal or a version of ourselves. Volupta focuses on women’s experience, so this topic will be addressed from that angle as well, but far from it that it cannot resonate far and wide.

We will begin this topic from the contrasexual perspective because it is through them that the dynamic becomes the most clearly visible. This is due to the polarisation that occurs when encountering the contrasexual. Once we can see the dynamic clearly, then we can apply it to different situations, adjusting to their respective nuances.

When a woman loves a man, she does not love only the actuality of who he is in the present, but also the potentiality of who he can be in the future. Within this vision, there is also a vision of her future self. Unconsciously, she sees the man as someone who can help her create this particular future for herself as well; hence why she can sometimes dwell and even violently insist on its realisation despite the resistance. This intuition is not incorrect — anything “male” or in other words, active and phallic in Nature is a Nature’s way to actualise some part of herself. She is already that albeit latently and potentially, so she needs an electric current to activate it. The man’s potential is also her own and vice versa.

I am not building an erotic relationship with you so that we could produce children, we need an erotic relationship so that we can discover from each other everything, as well as that which we ourselves didn't know about own selves, and wouldn't have found out, for it is only through total erotic relationship that it can be known.
— "The Shahriyar's Ring", Dževad Karahasan

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[Today’s article is free for everyone to read! The little paid note next to it is simply because the paid subscribers get a little extra — my personal reading of it, intended to give a more personal element to the articles and publication.]

Volupta frequently writes about the ways to exist and act in the world, giving you tools to root yourself inwardly and act out outwardly in a way that is powerful, coherent, true and well of course, beautiful. Social skills, seduction, confidence, stability and self worth are very much necessary to exist and act in the world, but we also have those days that we want to spend indoors surrounded by that which cocoons us and soothes us.

This topic was also something my readers asked about — the conversations and requests came in many forms, but usually in the form of wondering about how to spend a day indoors that will not turn into a day of infinite scrolling, Netflix watching or the notorious “bed rotting.”

A day at home can very much be as lush, as beautiful and as “eventful” as a day spent in action of going from a restaurant to a theatre to a cocktail bar.

Our home is our sanctuary. It is our home that we decorate with our fascinations and those things which relate to us — books, photographs, paintings or items brought from travels. Our home, ideally, tells the story of us and our life. It reflects us. This is why we need it. There is also a very delicate and beautiful dance between the home and the public forum. The two domains are very much inseparable. The more we nourish our inwardness, the richer our outwardness; the deeper our midnight, the brighter our noon. It is in this domain that we nourish and enrich ourselves internally. Carrying this inward abundance into the public forum, our presence is radiant, generous and enriching for everyone. A simple example — if privately, we cultivate our intellect or speech, once we go to the public forum, the public forum will become more beautiful and meaningful as well.

Since this is a rather practical topic, we will move straight ahead to our ideas, tips and ways you can have a beautiful and rich day at home. Like all Volupta’s advice and ideas, take those points that call to you and feel like a part of you. Those which are not, feel free to leave out. Nothing here is an absolute. Imagine it more like a banquet, and you are free to take from it that which you love and enjoy.

1. Give it a Story - Not a presumptive narrative. Do not start with a list of what you “should do”. Rather, create a story based on your desires and goals for the day. As you look at your desires, the theme of your day at home will begin to emerge — maybe it is a day of study and exploration in which you dedicate to the topics you are passionate about or maybe it is a day of slow rest where everything is languid and unhurried. Or just about anything else.
   
   Your studious day then itself can get more detail and nuance — what is it that you will study and dedicate to and what books or articles are you going to read? Is it esoterica with a bit of anthropology? Or fashion and art history? What does the languid day include? Stretching? Dancing? A slow tea ritual with some incense, candles or poetry or a novel? If poetry or a novel, which poet or novelist would fit the story you are willing to tell and create today?
   
   If you love cinema, you can include watching a film a part of your day at home. If you love music, choose which albums or playlists are you going to listen today — you can match it to your mood, a theme or desired atmosphere. Allow yourself to be creative with your day.
   
   You get the core idea. By giving it a story, an atmosphere, you give it gentle structure. Nothing stiff or rigid, but just a container so that the energies can flow and you go to sleep feeling truly nourished, not sluggish. Of course, the story can include chores as well — for them, you can invoke your inner Vesta and make them a meditation on slowness.

2. Avoid Sluggishness - One trap we can easily fall into when at home is to become sluggish and immovable in a way it just turns into numbness and death. This will have us feeling horrible at the end of the day. We will have felt devoured and drained because we existed as an automaton, not a person.

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   Movement and action does not have to be intense or fast, but there must be a movement. Even if it is reading, working out, stretching, preparing tea or coffee or anything else. You have to give yourself something to do or engage with otherwise, yes, the day will be nothing but scrolling and streaming services.

3. Indoor Glamour - Beautiful loungewear—whether you love a lounge dress, a robe, beautiful camis or comfortable sweats—are going to immediately elevate your day at home and yes, prevent you from getting sluggish. Get yourself beautiful clothes to wear even when at home. Do your hair in the morning — it does not have to be anything excessive, but you can brush it nicely, put some oil, let it down or in a simple but beautiful up-do or half-do. You can use beautiful hair accessories as well. Put on some perfume or fragrant oils. This way, home is truly a sanctuary, a place where you live, not merely rest from work.

4. Little Rituals - Habits are automatic and often lifeless, chores are dull, but ritual is what infuses things with meaning. Difference between each of these is simply presence and the state of mind with which we approach an action. Our intent determines the quality and nature of the experience. For example, it is the intent that makes a difference between fasting and starvation. Intent will make a difference in how each of our acts feels.
   
   Let food preparation be a ritual of sensation and scent, feel the textures and scents, enjoy the alchemy of food preparation, of taking raw materials and making them into a meal. Let bathing or showering be so as well — even if it is a simple and quick shower (maybe you are a mother with young children and cannot afford a long bath), let it be an inward moment, feel your body as you spread soap or shower gel over it, feel the water, let the intent be care and love of your body, nourishment of yourself without any guilt or shame.
   
   For ideas on bathing rituals, you can read this Volupta article.

5. Beauty - Very few things are as nourishing and as soothing as beauty. Introduce beauty into your daily life and that alone, just like glamour at home, will be the incentive for making a day beautiful rather than sluggish. Have your plates, bowls, cups and mugs be beautiful or resonating with your personal taste and aesthetic preferences; have flowers in your home at all times; have fruit in your bowls and make it a small still life arrangement; fill it with beautiful decorations. Another important element of this is also to remove what is ugly — plastic containers, random branded or corporate items or anything such. Let your home and inward domain reflect who you are and let it be intentional, not random.

I hope you enjoyed and were nourished by today’s Volupta. Do not forget the February discount (my birthday is on February 19th and I offer a discount during the entire month as a way to celebrate with you!) in the link above. Or if you are too lazy to scroll all the way back, here it is for you again:

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It is very often that I get inquiries about where I get my inspiration from and about my creative and intellectual processes and life. Last week, it was lovely who reached out to me with a request, giving me a little prompt for this article. Since I get similar questions in my private messages and letters as well, I have decided to formulate into an article.

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This week Volupta will explore ways to cultivate your creative and intellectual life, nourish your inspirations and give them a concrete form. I will also share my personal experience and the little things that I do. You can use the wisdom below for writing or contemplation, but also for any other creative or intellectual process.

Before we begin, I will share an excerpt from Anais Nin’s diaries as it offers a feminine perspective of the creative process. You may have seen parts of this here and there but I am sharing it fully as it appears in her 1934 - 1939 diary.

It takes a step back from the “do, delineate, establish, map” that may sometimes feel “too dry” of an approach for us as women. We can do it, of course, but I am sure many of you will agree that it is all just much better when there is a juiciness to it.

As to all that nonsense they talked about, the necessity of "I am God" in order to create (I suppose they mean "I am God, I am not a woman"). Woman never had direct communication with God anyway, but only through man, the priest. She never created directly expect through man, was never able to create as a woman. But what they don't understand is that woman's creation far from being like man's must be exactly like her creation of children, that is, it must come out of her own blood, englobed by her womb, nourished by her own milk. It must be a human creation, of flesh, it must be different from man's abstractions. As to this, "I am God", which makes creation an act of solitude and pride, this image of God alone making sky, earth, sea, it is the image which has confused woman.

Woman does not forget she needs the fecundator, she does not forget that everything that is born of her is planted in her. If she forgets this, she's lost. What will be marvelous to contemplate will not be her solitude but this image of woman being visited at night by man and the marvelous things she will give birth to in the morning. God alone, creating, may be a beautiful spectacle. I don't know. Man's objectivity may be an imitation of this God so detached from human and human emotion. But a woman alone creating is not a beautiful spectacle. The woman was born mother, mistress, wife, sister, she was born to represent union, communion, communication, she was born to give birth to life, and not to insanity. It is man's separateness, his so-called objectivity, which has made him lose contact, and then his reason. Woman was born to be the connecting link between man and his human self. Between abstract ideas and the personal pattern which creates them. Man, to create, must become a man. Woman has this life-role, but the woman artist has to fuse creation and life in her own way, or in her own womb, if you prefer. She has to create something different from man. Man created a world cut off from nature. Woman has to create within the mystery, storms, terrors, the infernos of sex, the battle against abstractions and art. She has to sever herself from the myth man creates, from being created by him, she has to struggle with her own cycles, storms, terrors, which man does not understand. Woman wants to destroy the aloneness, recover the original paradise. The art of woman must be born in the womb - cells of the mind. She must be the link between the synthetic products of man's minds and the elements.

I do not delude myself as man does, that I create in proud isolation. I say we are bound, interdependent. Woman is not deluded. She must create without these delusions of man, without megalomania, without schizophrenia, without madness. She must create unity which man first destroyed by his proud consciousness.

They tried to lure me out of the womb. They call it objectivity. No woman died the kind of death Rimbaud died. I have never seen in a woman a skeleton like Fraenkel, killed by dissections of analysis, the leprosy of egotism, the black pest of the brain cells. Man today is like a tree that is withering at the roots. And most women painted and wrote nothing but imitations of phalluses. The world was filled with phalluses, like totem poles, and no womb anywhere. I must go to the opposite way from Proust who found eternal moments in creation. I must find them in life. My work must be the closest to the life flow. I must install myself inside of the seed, growth, mysteries. I must prove the possibility of instantaneous, immediate, spontaneous art. My art must be like a miracle. Before it goes through the conduits of the brain and becomes an abstraction, a fiction, a lie. It must be for woman, more like personified ancient ritual, where every spiritual thought was made visible, enacted, represented. A sense of the infinite in the present, as the child has.

Woman's role in creation should be parallel to her role in life. I don't mean the good earth. I mean the bad earth too, the demon, the instincts, the storms of nature. Tragedies, conflicts, mysteries are personal. Man fabricated a detachment which became fatal. Woman must not fabricate. She must descend into the real woman and expose its secrets and its labyrinths. She must describe it as the city of Fez, with its Arabian Nights gentleness, tranquility and mystery. She must describe the voracious moods, the desires, the worlds contained in each cell of it. For the womb has dreams. It is not as simple as the good of earth. I believe at times that man created art out of fear of exploring woman. I believe woman stuttered about herself out of fear of what she had to say. She covered herself with taboos and veils. Man invented a woman to suit his needs. He disposed of her by identifying her with nature and then paraded his contemptuous domination of nature. But woman is not nature only.

She is the mermaid with her fish-tail dipped in the unconscious. Her creation will be to make articulate this obscure world which dominates men, which he denies being dominated by, but which asserts its domination in destructive proofs of its presence, madness.

My own creative, contemplative and intellectual process has always been rather similar to what is described above. Womb. Flesh. Body. Milk. Blood. Communion. Fish-tail dipped in unconscious. Birthing life. Let these words be the reminders as to where the centre of your creativity is.

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Many women tell me that they have ideas and insight inside but that they struggle with the output. To articulate, to shape, to give form and to bring to full fruition. Everything is kind of in the shadows and non-differentiated. When she tries to express it, it comes rather messy or amateur because these internal sparks have not been nourished properly and the many different aspects within herself have not been brought into a harmony. She may try to bypass herself and try to create via abstraction but then it all feels separate and “dry”.

Once you access the night sky and start creating bonds between the many separate stars (suns!), your intellect will show itself to be so vast and so rich that the separative abstraction will feel so small that you will not even want it.

It is ignorance that is separative and knowledge that is unifying — the more we truly know, the more harmonised and unified our vision of reality becomes, and the more ignorant we are, the more separate and absurd it appears to us; our thoughts then are full of false complexity without any depth or true insight.

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Today’s topic we begin with a few quotes by Fatema Mernissi, a Moroccan sociologist and feminist writer who gave unique perspectives on women’s experiences:

“A woman could be totally powerless, and still give meaning to her life by dreaming about flight.”

“There are two prerequisites to growing wings: the first is to feel encircled and the second is to believe that you can break the circle.”

“Her message is simple: a woman must lead her life like a nomad. She must always stay alert and ready to leave, even if she is loved.”

The first two are from her “Dreams of Trespass: Tales of a Harem Girlhood” and the third is from “Scheherazade Goes West: Different Cultures, Different Harems”.

Fatema’s quotes, while describing a very specific sociological and cultural context, do speak to something that can be fairly universally observed in women. Women everywhere dream of flight and of running away. This also manifests as her love of the life of a nomad, of travel, of adventure, her fascinations with the [albeit mythologised and romanticised] stories of the Romani people, the Bohemians, the rock stars, the “bad boys”, the wind in the hair on an open road and much more. Seen in its essence, all of this is simply her love and craving for freedom and free movement.

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Marianne Faithfull also sings of it in her “The Ballad of Lucy Jordan”:

“The morning sun touched lightly on
The eyes of Lucy Jordan
In a white suburban bedroom
In a white suburban town
As she lay there 'neath the covers
Dreaming of a thousand lovers
'Til the world turned to orange
And the room went spinning round

At the age of thirty-seven
She realised she'd never ride
Through Paris in a sports car
With the warm wind in her hair
So she let the phone keep ringing
And she sat there softly singing
Little nursery rhymes she'd memorised
In her daddy's easy chair

The evening sun touched gently on
The eyes of Lucy Jordan
On the roof top where she climbed
When all the laughter grew too loud
And she bowed and curtsied to the man
Who reached and offered her his hand
And he led her down to the long white car
That waited past the crowd

At the age of thirty-seven
She knew she'd found forever
As she rode along through Paris
With the warm wind in her hair.”

“She knew she’d found forever” says Marianne, suggesting that it is not a mere distraction that the woman is looking for. It is not an avoidance or a symptom of an avoidant attachment that the therapeutic perspective would quickly jump to define it as — she is seeking “forever”, something real. In short, she is looking for a god, if you are a believer.

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Volupta likes to begin her articles with reflecting on women in art or literature, for the reason that it is there where we so clearly see what fascinates us about women and their lives. A woman at her vanity is that one art theme that stretches across time and space. Venus and Oshun gaze at themselves in the mirror and so do women, be they mortals, demigoddesses or goddesses, in the art from India, Japan or anywhere. She may be applying her make up, brushing her hair or just admiring herself.

Women love looking at themselves. Even if they do not like what it is that they see. Even if the gaze they cast towards themselves is critical and harsh, they still look. They love to take selfies and photos of themselves in order display them before the world or keep them in some hidden folder of self-admiration. There is even that meme in which the way women take photos of objects is poked at — pointing that women often photograph themselves next to the object.

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It is not just the physical image that women enjoy looking at. They also love looking at themselves in a myriad of other ways. Women’s love of astrology, of archetypes, psychology, of personality tests, of finding their equivalents in flowers, animals, perfume, or even other women are all different expressions of this unique reflective consciousness.

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We began this year with an existential and psychological topic that shall help us take care of our inner life via bringing us into deeper awareness of ourselves. This week we balance it with a lighter topic and a topic that focuses on the external domain — seduction, allure and social skill/competitiveness.

Vixen and minx (to whom we will dedicate her own article, for she deserves her own space!) are two common terms used to describe types of women. And while we may hear the terms often, it may have passed our attention or focus to notice what kind of woman is called each and what are their subtle differences. Both vixen and minx come from the name of an animal — one is a fox and other comes from the name of minx or mink belongs to the weasel family. In this we may also notice a greater tendency to compare women to different types of animals — felines, snakes, foxes and minx are only some to name. But of “woman animal” and freedom to be an animal, we shall also speak in another article.

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To get to know the vixen, first we go from the basis, her dictionary definition. Merriam-Webster tells us that she is a shrewish, ill-tempered woman and a sexually attractive woman, quoting: “In this spy spoof, our hero, aided by a sexy vixen, … saves the world from a power-mad despot...”. Cambridge Dictionary defines her as “an unpleasant woman” and the American Heritage Dictionary as a “woman regarded as sexually alluring” & a “woman regarded as quarrelsome or ill-tempered”. Wiktionary adds a “racy or salacious woman who is sexually attractive; any attractive woman” while Thesaurus adds that she is a “promiscuous woman” and a “vamp”.

We could look for more dictionary terms or descriptions, but it all narrows down to two: vixen is a woman who combines sex appeal and glamour with her rather quarrelsome, fiery, feisty and difficult character. Temperamental and sharp tongued, she is unafraid and bold. She is seductive, alluring, sly, glamorous, formidable with a strong personality, and just like the animal she is compared to, she is clever, cunning and predatory.

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