thedivineerotic

[thedivineerotic]

(Don’t) Look at Me

Penmanship #4

I feel humiliation from never-ending ostracization

No group, no partner, no chance at relations

They make me feel like watching me is a chore

Expressions lazy, tired and bored

The odd woman out, the unsightly eye sore

Alienated cause I'm a walking understatement

Hesitation from being underestimated

Eliminated, so constantly counted out

With me, it seem they can do without

Easily ridable, she’s the renaissance without the visuals

They see right through me, it seems that I'm invisible

I need the eyes off of me

Please look somewhere else

They’re only here to hurt me

I’d rather be by myself

The object of ridicule

The one stuck playing the fool

The object for rejection

Still starving for affection

Get your hooks out of me

Don’t look at me

[thedivineerotic]

Look at Me

(Penmanship #3)

I stand out with the wrong foot

The right face with the wrong look

The right song with the wrong hook

There’s colorful pages when you open the book

But ain’t nobody checking it out

...Check it out

I need a celebration, fainting and adulation

Applause and a pause for congratulations

Outside validation for conformation

That I'm the next sensation sweeping the nation

I need acknowledgement from an audience and appreciation

The fans, the fawning and the adoration

To be the living, breathing revelations

The cause for speculation, the center of conversation

The object of your desire

The one who you admire

The object of your focus

The one who goes unnoticed

I want you hooked on me

Please, look at me

[thedivineerotic]

The 9th House Experience Pt.1:

(Come Share My World)

Case Study: Celine

“If there's any kind of magic in this world it must be in the attempt of understanding someone sharing something.” - Celine

The 9th house is a very interesting house in astrology, sitting between the famous 8th House with its notoriously dark themes of the occult, transformation, ups and downs, death and the depths of sex and the 10th house, the final angular house that is representative of themes such as career, reputation, society and fame. Being wedged in between two extremely popular houses in astrology discourse, often times I find some of the depth of it slips between the cracks, in many ways like the 4th house being relegated strictly to “lighter” topics such as travel, religion and higher-learning. But being the bridge between the murky swamp that is the 8th house and the towering highs of the 10th house, its importance and depth cannot be understated. 

The 9th house takes us out of our comfort zone, without it we would never open up and face our fears, and without facing our fears our dreams would never come true. 

And most of all the 9th house is where we share ourselves with the world and the world shares itself with us. 

Without the 9th house all of our experiences up to the 8th house would be kept solely between our immediate circles and ourselves. 

The 9th house is the bridge between our personal worlds and the world at large

In many ways I assume why, in comparison to my first two house and character case studies (Rose DeWitt Bukater from Titanic and the 8th House and Lilo Pelikai from Lilo and Stitch and the 4th House respectively) this is my first case study done on a character that I did not grow up identifying with and loving and a movie that I did not watch until I already familiar with astrology and the same age as the character i’m writing about. But the minute I first finished watching it, the first thing that came to my mind was the 9th house, and the first character to relate it to came from the female protagonist I initially misjudged (a result of my own inexperience with people of other cultures) but came to become a reflection of my own soul.

 A soul that is adamant on getting out into the world and letting the world, or at least one small piece of it, back into hers. 

From the very beginning Before Sunrise seems to personify themes of the 9th house, opening with the main characters Celine and Jesse reading books on a train while another couple argues in a foreign language. After Jesse asks if she was able to translate what the couple was arguing about, Celine immediately presents him with a theory of of married couples losing their sense of hearing for each other, which could possibly be the reasoning for the couples’ argument. It is not the first and far from the only time in the movie where Celine expands upon abstract concepts, theories and ideas as an explanation for the world, fitting considering the 9th House rules philosophy.

In the next scene where they move to the dining car, we not only learn that she is traveling back home to Paris to continue her studies (the 9th House representing higher education) but we also get insights into her personality. She expresses her feelings towards her family and father, stating that in her passions to be a number of things (a writer, open a refuge for stray cats etc.) that can be considered abstract (the 9th house representing abstract concepts and ideas) have always been conceptualized into realism by her father who suggests more concrete career fields (a journalist, or veterinarian etc.) for her (the 10th house being 2 spaces from the 9th house, speaking to the tendency of 9th housers to feel forced to put turn their often abstract ideas and aspirations into resourceful, solid, concrete things, or in her words “practical, money making ventures” relative to the sign of Capricorn and the 10th House).

In deeper conversation with Jesse exploring their opinions on death, she admits that despite being a frequent traveller she is “afraid of death 24 hours a day,” (fitting considering the 8th house of death is 12 spaces away from the 9th house, the 12th house being symbolic of fears). In fact, her fear of death is the reason she is on the train in the first place as she could have easily flown to Paris. Despite her fears and the fact that even he acknowledges she could be a a psycho, she accepts Jesse’s invitation to accompany him in an impromptu day-tour of Vienna as the fear of missing out ultimately conquers her fear of death, as it does with many 9th housers.

The excitement of sharing the day with Jesse overtakes her fear of the unknown.

Her adventures with Jesse finally lead them out into Vienna, first taking a bus where where Jesse insists on them having a “Q&A” with each other as they have already gone over introductions. After describing the subject of her first sexual feelings of course abstractly as a “dolphin”, she goes on to answer what she hates. She mentions that she hates men on the street telling her to smile, the lack of concern about war rampaging through cities and towns all around them, the attempts of the media to control the masses, describing it as a “new form of fascism” and she hates the French stereotype being infringed upon her (particularly by Americans) for seemingly normal behavior.

In just that short sequence we are able to see two key 9th house themes in her personality, a concern for the world over especially war (Sagittarius being the sign of war) and her dislike of attempting to be controlled and defined. While 8th housers fight for self-control, control over their emotions and environments, 9th housers fight against control and for self-determination, self-definition. And in that they fight for others, they embrace conflict if it is for the truth as it is she admits it is perhaps her primary usage of her higher education when she says “maybe that’s why I’m still in school, it gives you something to fight about.” Something to be angry about.

Her fear of death and penchant for self-definition also comes up when she takes Jesse to one of her favorite places she remembers from the last time she visited Vienna, the “Cemetery of the Unknown” made up deceased people that washed up from the sea a century ago. In it, she is especially drawn to the grave of a thirteen year old girl, the same age she was when she first discovered the grave. She says that with a death in which none of your family or friends knew you died “People can invent the best and the worst for you.” The 9th house, coming right after the 8th house of death. exemplifies that death can be a gateway to stories, journeys, even post-mortem.

Beyond death, especially compared to Jesse, Celine is a believer. 

Most of all, she is a believer in things that aren’t obvious, things that can’t be seen with the naked eye, things that aren’t spelled out easily and that can unfortunately be lost in translation very easily to those who aren’t able to read between the lines and beneath the surface very well. 

Many of her beliefs in the movie can be seen directly through 9th house themes, the book she was reading at the beginning (the 9th house being the house of publishing), dissecting and assessing the arguments of foreigners (the 9th house representing foreign people and things). When night time falls her beliefs are expressed through even more 9th house themes. First it is seen by a palm reader who observes that she is “an adventurer, a seeker, she is interested in the power of the woman. In the woman’s deep strength and creativity.” Even despite Jesse’s mocking and continuous skepticism, she finds truth in what the palm reader said. 

Although she is a believer we find that it can easily be turned around as like many 9th housers she is very easily believed, even when she doesn’t intend to be. In a late-night grunge bar she tells Jesse about her most recent breakup. After the breakup she told her psychiatrist or “shrink” a fictional story she wrote about a woman killing her ex-boyfriend. It turns out that the shrink actually called the police on her because something about the way she presented it made it seem so “believable”, that she was a “homicidal maniac”.

Being a believer and the power of belief can work both in the 9th houser’s favor and against them just as easily. 

Finally beyond being an adventurer, a warrior and a dreamer, she is a sharer. She believes in sharing herself with the world and other people sharing themselves with her and each other.

On a surface level this earns 9th housers the reputation of promiscuity under the guise of sharing your body with others. But as with many things with the 9th house, we see that this has depth far beyond the physical as one of the only suspicions Celine does admit to is that feminism was invented by men so that “they could fool around more, free your mind, free your body, sleep with me, you’ll be happy and free as long as I can fuck as much as I want.”

She is a sexual being but her penchant for sharing goes far beyond the physical. 

She tells of her love for dancing as a community function in life and something everyone can participate in. In a cathedral (the 9th house coincidentally ruling houses of worship and spiritual places), she admits that although she isn’t very religious she “can’t help but feel for the people coming there lost or in pain, guilt and shame looking for some sort of answer,” and that it is “fascinating how one thing can join so much pain and happiness, so many generations.” The bridge between the 8th and 9th house is articulated perfectly.

In another scene, in contrast to Jesse’s apprehension to mundanely wasting an entire life on romance, she tells the story of a old man she knew that had “worked and focused on his career his entire life and then at the age of 52 realized how lonely he was, he realized he had never given anything of himself,” another great example of the 9th house being in the blindspot of the 10th house of career.

In the 9th House both pain and pleasure, in all of their forms, are shared as crucial parts of the human experience. 

Our individual tales of the human experience are meant to be shared.

In one of her most famous quotes from the movie, Celine says

“If there's any kind of magic in this world it must be in the attempt of understanding someone sharing something.”

Dreams are meant to be shared.

And in one of the final scenes, when dawn has broken and she and Jesse share some of their last moments together before heading back to the train station where she departs, she tells her lover of their short time together,

“Its like our time together is just ours, its like I’m in your dream and you’re in mine.”

Through various conflicts, adventures, dreams and the many ups and downs of the human experience, in the 9th house we become believers and sharers, we share our world and we invite others to to share their world with us. 

The 9th house is where “others” become “us” and the power of “us” can take you around the world in a day. 

9th housers are warriors, dreamers, believers, adventurers and sharers, you fill in the spaces between us where God exists, where at its lows, hatred exists and at its best, love exists.

As in the words of Celine herself, 

So here's to fights, friends, lovers, adventures, tragedies, fears, dreams, finding a reason to love and show love even more. 

And most of all here is to sharing our worlds.

Signed, The Divine Erotic (9th House Venus)

[thedivineerotic]

What the Funk?!

Vol 1. Part 1

The Foundation of Vaporwave: SynthFunk Pioneers

Vaporwave has been one of my favorite niche subgeneres of music for years now and its easy to tell why. I'm an old soul that was born to relatively older parents who grew up in the 1970s and whose primes were in the 1980s and 1990s so soul, funk and rhythm runs through my veins in ways my peers were not able to understand and ostracized me for. Once I latched onto vaporwave, my ear was able to detect many samples from songs I had heard growing up and been exposed to new ones. Vaporwave is slowed-down (or what we in the South called “Chopped and Screwed” back in the day) synth funk and new wave tracks from the 1980s and early 1990s set to colorful nostalgic yet futurist aesthetics and anime from around that time.

It is where the past and the future meet in the middle and dance all night.

And it has become one of the loves of my life, discovering vintage music that makes you want to get up, dance and be happy.

Here are some recent favorites that I have been hooked on since the past year or so.

The System

Rhythm and Romance (1989)

Description: Coming from in my honest opinion perhaps the single most underrated act in funk and R&B in the 1980s, this album fits its title perfectly. Mic Murphy and David Frank are literally on fire in this album even though none of their past efforts left anything to be desired either. They were vaporwave before vaporwave was a thing. To me, their pop flavored, R&B blessed, synth funk sound and angsty romantic lyrics are quintessential vaporwave material. There is no way you can listen to this album and not want to move, not want to groove, not want to have fun. What they lacked in mainstream success, they more than made up for in giving us the textbook definition of a "buried treasure" in multiple projects that I feel privileged to have dug up. Though having already been making music together for the majority of the decade at this point, the duo arguably hit their zenith on this album and the groove tells it.

Standout Tracks:

Midnight Special

Soul to Soul

Have Mercy

Kashif

Kashif (1983)

Description: Here is another synth funk pioneer who didn't get near the mainstream appreciation that he should have. But being primarily a producer, its natural that he stayed relatively behind the scenes but this time he truly let himself shine through some of the grooviest, smoothest synth baselines you will probably ever hear in your life. His programming and keyboarding skills set the tone for later funkateers such as Teddy Riley and Babyface to take to another level in the 1990s. However, Kashif and this project stand as the prototype in its their own right with synth and baselines both ahead of its time and someone just right on time for his era. RIP to the Great Kashif and before falling down the rabbit hole of his productions for others, hear the man shine on his own in this vaporwave masterclass.

Standout Tracks:

I Just Gotta Have You (Lover Come Turn Me On)

Help Yourself to My Love

Stone Love

Loose Ends

Zagora (1986)

Description: In the abundant world of 1980s dance music, the Brits had something to say. And no one made it as loud and clear as the funk, house and R&B group Loose Ends. These folks produced some of the most addictive combinations of House music and synth funk ever heard on record and set the tone for House music to become the penultimate underground genre in the early 1990s with R&B House legends like Crystal Waters and Soul II Soul. Though their discography goes deep, this album presents them at maybe the height of their powers, delivering a world class synth funk album just before hip hop influenced New Jack Swing came the following year to take over the R&B music scene.

Standout Tracks:

Stay a Little While Child

Slow Down

Ooh You Make Me Feel

Shalamar

Friends (1983)

Description: Achieving perhaps the most mainstream success out of anyone on this list, it's easy to see why Shalamar is still celebrated as icons of early 1980s dancefloor scene to this day. In a time where supergroups still dominated the funk and R&B scene, these three forged their own path and released some of the funkiest grooves you will hear from around that time. What made their sound stand out came from their unique mixture of standard R&B and funk with the then-new new wave scene that was coming out of Britain. As a result, their music has stood the test of time and influenced vaporwave mixes produced by both Black and white, British and American lovers of the genre alike. In my opinion, this album is their most solid and serves to represent the danceable, funky feel of the entire 1980s.

Standout Tracks:

I Can Make You Feel Good

Help Me

There It Is

[thedivineerotic]

Hear Me Out #1:

Existing Outside of the Madonna-Whore Complex

“I don’t want to be the good girl, I don’t want to be the bad girl... All I want to be is a girl.”

Growing up in the middle of the first generation of children with high exposure to internet porn, the reemergence of conservatism and simultaneously being subject to the triumphs and pitfalls of the sex-positive movement will fuck you up a little. And I can speak to that experience personally. First being exposed to pornography as a child, it shaped me in ways that still have significant influence on me now in my 20s, for better and for worse. For better, it let me know early that I may not be as straight as my family would have liked as I gravitated towards lesbian porn. Though I had crushes on boys from a young age, the sight of their bodies, genitals and the aggressive, violent way they would have sex with women turned me off even as a child, it didn't cause the tingling sensations in my body the way watching two women did. 

As a matter of fact, their bodies and sex really scared me.

Already being a relative misfit due to constantly switching schools, being poorer than my peers and being put in the “smart girl” box, my attraction to boys waned as I got older. I couldn’t get up the excitement about boys nor join in the “boy crazy” fever that so many other girls at that age were able to experience, and eventually act on. My focus on my grades, generally struggling through life with my parents’ volatile relationship, my affinity for lesbian erotica and desire to have a strong girlfriend group like I admired in movies and television overrode any minor crush I might have had on boys by middle school and especially high school. 

By high school, I knew I wasn’t ready to have sex with a boy.

I knew I didn’t want to at the time. 

And around this time, the sex-positive movement came to prominence. I remember being a freshman and sophomore in high school and being obsessed with the website Buzzfeed because of my love of their quizzes and arbitrary personality tests. Beyond the personality quizzes and funny list articles, they were perhaps the strongest pushers of the then-new sex-positive movement and though it made me uncomfortable I couldn’t stop reading them. Their publication, along with a growing number of others around that time (2013-2015) championed the movement, asserting that sex and sexual expression should not be a source of shame and guilt for women but instead should be a source of pride. Initially, it asserted the freedom of choice: that a woman should be free to have as much sex or not have as much sex as she chooses and that that decision had no baring on her humanity nor her womanhood. It was an attempt to swing the pendulum of female sexuality from the rightist, church-influenced old world values of sex being something women should be ashamed of to a place of balance, a place that emphasized choice

Eventually however, I noticed the pendulum wasn’t swinging to the middle but to the other far extreme. 

Soon the message to a lot of young girls and women became that sex is a necessity and required part of adulthood and womanhood and that the more sex you have validates you as a “real woman.” 

There was a push for young girls and women to have “hoe phases” as a necessary part of young adulthood, grown women began projecting a fear onto girls that not having one would destine them to a lifetime of sexual dissatisfaction as result of “not knowing what you want.” They would preach that not having a “hoe phase” would leave one socially inept and unable to navigate the dating world. “Embracing your sexuality” became synonymous with posting thirst traps online. Virgin shaming became commonplace as women would accuse other women of “not knowing their bodies” as if that sacred knowledge could only come from sexual intercourse with a variety of men. Instead of taking the importance off of men’s preferences altogether, there would instead be emphasis on how a lack of sexual experience would drive many men away as most men prefer an “experienced woman”. 

The message that not being able to keep a man sexually satisfied would drive him into the arms of a woman who could became not just an unwritten rule but the gospel. Some people, even respected figures, would project that the reasoning for a woman not being sexually active, or relatively sexually conservative in general, was a symptom of repression on account of white supremacy and religion. Sugar babying, stripping and other forms of sex work became glorified professions for any woman 18 or over, and eventually those under 18 as well. Liberal sexual expression and casual sex became not just a choice, but a celebrated beacon of non-whiteness, revolution and progressivism.

There came a push for women to adopt the attitudes and behaviors of men when it came to sex: quantity over quality, disregard emotional attachment and attraction, focus on the physical and drop your partners when you are done with them sexually. 

The sex-positive movement turned into the pro-hoe movement overnight.

Soon the message wasn’t that having sex would bring you shame, but that not having sex was a shameful existence and the gateway to a life of misery. 

Sexual liberation wasn’t a choice anymore, it had been redefined as a symbol of casual sex and liberal sexual expression of your body.

The pressures of the sex-positive movement and to be “sexually liberated” eventually took over me as I prematurely lost my virginity to a boy. I set aside all of my hopes and dreams of a romantic experience with someone I wasn’t just sexually attracted to but was emotionally attracted to, and could be emotionally vulnerable with, for a mere five minute session of mediocre unprotected sex. Though he was cute and the experience wasn’t completely miserable, I still cheated myself out of the romantic experience I dreamed of, even wrote for some of my fictional characters since I was a teenager, the experience I knew deep down I deserved all because I was scared of being an older virgin. 

I let all of other women’s projections scare me into conforming. I was scared of not being viewed and taken seriously as a real adult, as a woman, as a person of color (as celibacy and sexual conservatism became associated with whiteness), as an artist (as artists are notoriously sexually liberal and promiscuous) and as a human (the message that sex is a necessary part of human life and something is fundamentally wrong with you if you don’t have or want it). I let other women tell me that any man who would still want me and accept me as a virgin in my 20s would be a pedophile or a man with looking to take advantage of me. I let other women, including my older cousins, convince me that I would not develop correctly because I haven’t had sex.

I let other women convince me that my life would not be complete without dick.

Finally breaking free from the “smart girl” box and developing, growing into my looks and now experiencing what it is like to appreciated for my physical appearance and be lusted after, I thought it would be enough, that men giving me attention and wanting to have sex with me would be enough. I thought that sex would be enough to make me finally feel like a woman, like an adult. And all it did was make me feel like I had settled, like I had cheated myself.

It made me feel like a fraud, not to others, but to myself. 

And I found out that, despite what they preached as the truth, mere dick was not enough to satisfy me. The physical was not and is not enough for me. Physical and sexual attraction, while necessary, is not enough for me. I need more than that to be satisfied. And I need more from that from my partner.

For me, physical and sexual attraction is only 10% of the sexual satisfaction equation. The vast majority rests on mental stimulation and how safe I feel to be emotionally vulnerable with you.

Strangely towards the beginning of the 2020s however, the pendulum started to switch back again in an unregulated way. Many began to notice the negative repercussions of the sex-positive movement: women forcing themselves into unfulfilling casual sex that they didn't want and “situationships” they mentally could not handle, the rise of underage girls in exploitive sex work occupations, the rise of women and girls being physically harmed by violent sexual acts perpetuated by porn-addicted men, and no attention or regard given to the massive orgasm gap. As a result, many girls and women began to champion rightist values from the past, the “traditional wife” became yet another rigid archetype for naive women to embrace in contrast to the “hoe”. The emphasis was now not on having a hoe phase that you know you don’t want and aren’t prepared for, rightly so, but securing a boyfriend or husband to take care of all of your sexual and emotional needs. 

Women began to embrace 1950s “homemaker” aesthetics, teach and enroll in “femininity classes” and adopt a sex-negative perspective while others still of the sex-positive persuasion enrolled in classes learning how to ride dick and sexually please men (of course with no mention of their own physical pleasure). Old religious values such as the significance of “soul ties” began to enter popular discourse. One side stressed “long term relationships” and championed the idea of finding romantic love at a young age and holding it down for a lifetime while the other glorified casual sex and relationships and having as much non-committed sex as you could at a young age because that is “what you are supposed to do”. One side exaggerated the importance of modest fashion and “keeping yourself covered for the one who mattered” while the other side promoted revealing attire and stressed the importance of “flaunting what you got, while you got it.” One side convinced young girls that not having a serious relationship and experiencing heart break from a man at a young age would leave them stunted while the other preached the absence of casual sex would do the same.

And to this day the two movements are still at odds somehow without realizing they are two sides of the same coin.

A very low-value coin.

As Cardi B said on the sex-positive anthem WAP,

“I don’t cook, I don’t clean but let me tell you how I got this ring.”

One side strives to earn a ring from a man through the kitchen and providing a man with domestic satisfaction while the other does the same and attempts to “get and keep a man” from the bedroom and providing a man with sexual satisfaction.

Having been an observer of both movements, and even convinced by both movements for a certain point in time, one thing became clear to me eventually.

The only person winning in this is men.

He’s the only person that has ever been winning in this. 

Imagine women, young, talented, gorgeous women by the millions competing in different ways to see who satisfies you the best in a desperate attempts to prove their womanhoods and worth as women.

While they both have triumphs and failures, a lot of what both the sex-positive and sex-negative movements, the Madonna and the whore, the good girls and the bad girls have accomplished is making womanhood dependent on male attention and men’s satisfaction.

According to both of these groups, womanhood is defined by your ability to find and keep a man.

And as a 24 year old, I don’t want any parts of that. 

I’m not in a rush to label my sexuality. Yes I have had sex with a boy. Yes I am attracted to women’s bodies as well. Yes I have bounced between a number of labels in the past from grey asexual, to demisexual, to straight, to bisexual, to bicurious and back to completely asexual all over again. And no, I'm still not in a rush to pick one. 

I don’t want to be the good girl, I don’t want to be the bad girl, I don’t want to adopt any archetype that is centered around sex and men. Yes sexuality is important and women should find it and embrace it for themselves, but there are so many other parts of womanhood, there are so many things that make you a woman other than what you do or don’t do with what is between your legs, than what you can or can’t offer in a relationship, sexually or romantically.

I refuse to have my womanhood defined by men’s satisfaction, sexually or otherwise. 

And I refuse to support any movement that treats men or their bodies as the end-goal, as the prize.

So I write all this to say to women younger than me, my age and older, don’t let women nor men scare you out of wanting to have sex. Don’t let them scare you out of not wanting to have sex. Don’t let them scare you out of discovering your body at a young age. Don’t let them scare you out of discovering your body at an old age. Don’t let them shame you out of only needing sexual and physical stimulation and attraction to have sex. And don’t let them shame you out of needing an emotional connection and mental stimulation before you have sex either. 

How you express yourself, your body and your sexuality is neither too much nor not enough.

You are just right. 

Signed, The Divine Erotic (Sexy, Celibate and Sex-Neutral)

[thedivineerotic]

The 4th House Experience Pt. 1:

(The Ugly Duckling)

Case Study: Lilo Pelekai

“Home is where the heart is.” - Anonymous

“Home is not where you live, it is where you belong.” - African Proverb

Out of all the water houses (4th, 8th and 12th), the 4th house is given the least amount of attention in online astrology circles, ironic considering that is the only one of the three houses to also serve as an angular house. It doesn’t share the dark, esoteric reputation that makes the 8th and 12th houses such popular houses, but just because it deals with relatively “lighter” topics such as family, the home, ancestry, roots and history doesn’t mean that it isn’t deep. As a matter of fact, one could argue that it is the deepest of the water houses seeing that it is the only one below the horizon. When I first delved into astrology, admittedly the 4th house was not one that garnered much of my attention and for a while I actually considered it one of the more boring of the astrology houses but upon further growth, study and reflection the depths of it became very apparent.

And they were presented perhaps no better than the little girl whose character won me over more than any Disney princess both as a kid and now. 

The movie lilo and stitch ironically starts with Lilo swimming in the depths of the ocean. She rushes from the beach to make it to her hula dancing lesson. Upon getting there she is immediately singled out for being late, being wet and the seemingly strange explanation of why she had to feed the fish Pudge a peanut butter sandwich as he has control of the weather. Her instructor nor the other girls in the class understand the reasoning behind why her routine with Pudge the fish is so important and ostracize her, with the defacto leader of the small girls’ group Myrtle going as far as to call her “crazy.”

And immediately getting her ass beat because of it.

Unfortunately Lilo is ostracized by her peers, robbed of a sense of belonging from a very young age. Aside from her sister, her sole sense of belonging comes from her doll “Scrump” whose appearance scares the other girls and further causes her to feel like a misfit. 

Later in the story we get the explanations to her seemingly strange behavior, we see that her Tuesday routine with Pudge and the importance of him controlling the weather comes because her parents died while driving in the rain. Her being nostalgic and an old soul sets her apart, her favorite artist being Elvis Presley. She latches onto “Scrump” because she is lonely and has no friends. She makes a wish on what she thinks is a shooting star and prays for a friend (wishes being an 11th house theme) and she is sent Stitch, an alien posing as a pet dog, fitting considering pets are a 6th house theme and the 4th house being 6 spaces from the 11th house. Although he too is different, something that uneases her older sister Nani almost immediately, and does not seem like a normal dog, Lilo embraces him from the very beginning, again speaking to Lilo’s nature to offer other misfits a sense of belonging like she herself doesn’t have.

The two misfits go on a series of adventures around the island, but even in that we can still see Lilo’s desperation to belong as she apologizes and still attempts to befriend the girls who have bullied her and treated both herself and Stitch as pariahs. 

Later in their adventures we see them eating at Nani’s job. The 4th house is representative of the sign of Cancer, opposite of the 10th house which is representative of the sign of Capricorn. Nani displays many themes of the 10th house, tirelessly bouncing from job to job to provide for Lilo and although she initially wanted to fulfill Lilo’s wish and give her a companion, Stitch threatens her job search and the already flimsy structure of their house so much that she can’t afford the sympathy in gifting him a sense of belonging like Lilo can. She is just about to throw Stitch out of the house when Lilo brings up a quote from her deceased parents, Ohana. 

“Ohana means family…”

Despite being a young girl, Lilo is very attached to the memory of her parents, keeping a picture of them underneath her pillow. She also keeps a physical book copy of the “The Ugly Duckling”. In it she explains the story of a baby duckling that is sad because “he’s been left behind by his family and nobody wants him. But they hear him crying and they find him and now he is happy because he knows where he belongs.”

The night when Stitch threatens to run away, he takes her copy of the Ugly Duckling with him. Lilo tries her best to convince him to stay, fearing losing the only friend other than Nani that she has ever had. When he still leaves, though disappointed she says that she will still never forget him as she “never forget anyone who leaves” before looking at the family picture with her parents again and tucking it back underneath her pillow. 

The next morning Stitch comes back, trying to escape capture. Naturally she misses her friend and helps him to evade from Jumba and Pleakly trying to arrest him, even going so far as to sacrifice her doll “Scrump” to blow up in the latter’s face. Things unfortunately go too far when their literal house ends up being blown up. When Stitch finally reveals himself to be an alien, she feels betrayed, as if Stitch took advantage of her need for belonging with his need to escape (the 4th house and 9th house themes again being at odds as the 9th house is 8 spaces from the 4th house, the 8th house signifying deception and destruction). When she is taken instead of Stitch she feels defeated, fearing losing her older sister and her home of Hawaii, she officially belongs to nothing.

Someone that gave her a sense of belonging has left her behind once again.

Finally at the end, upon being rescued and securing Stitch as her pet and best friend for good, Lilo has finally found her sense of belonging. Despite being robbed of a life with her parents, her natural family, she is able to find a family, a tribe, one made up of her older sister along with fellow misfits and aliens just like her.

No one got left behind and no one got forgotten.

As a 4th Houser, depending on the conditions of the house, your sense of belonging has likely fluctuated throughout your life. No one knows to highs a sense of belonging brings and the low a sense of not belonging brings like you. 

You may some severe abandonment issues and may have fought to be included, to feel you belong in circles where others were seemingly accepted easily. And if you have it, you fought hard not to loose it.

But in the end, you stop fighting to belong and another alien, or group of aliens, find you.

So even if people have left you in some circles, even if people have pushed you out of others, here's to finding and holding tight to your own “Ohana”.

And keeping onto those memories along the way!

Signed, The Divine Erotic (4th House Moon)

[thedivineerotic]

The 8th House Experience Pt.1:

(Don’t Bite the Hand That Feeds You)

Case Study: Rose DeWitt Bukater

“Don’t bite the hand that feeds you.” - Anonymous 

“He who feeds you controls you.” - Thomas Sankara

Two old sayings that have colored much of my experience as an 8th house dominant person for a good part of my life. Beyond the sex, occult and transformation themes, one of the most under-recognized signifiers of the 8th house is the connection to other people’s resources. It sounds mundane on the surface, and it is, but growing up and looking at my childhood and adolescence in retrospect I began to understand the depth of how it plays out. 

And one of my favorite movies and characters illustrated it before my very eyes. 

In Titanic, Rose is showered in gifts, presents and jewels bigger than she can handle. She is gifted things from other people, from a lavish wedding on behalf of her mother to the Heart of the Ocean from her fiancé down to the first-class tickets onto the Titanic on its maiden voyage. While she can play it all up and she does appreciate it, one thing is clear; She never asked for any of it. The 8th House is the house of other people resources, opposite the 2nd house of our own resources.

Rose is never consulted for her opinion, takes or even how she feels about any of the things people shower her with. Her mother disregards the lavender color theme she wants with her wedding, talking about her when discussing it but never actually involving her in the conversation. 

The 8th House is opposite the 2nd House, the house of voice and speech.

She’s treated like a child, “meant to be seen and not heard.”

Her fiancé Cal orders her food for her like a child, down to the temperature of the meat. 

Her family and friends have celebrated her engagement and impending wedding. Her mother dotes on her fiancé. Her fiancé has their plans set for when they land. She seemingly has it made with the perfect man, wedding and life. But until Jack, no one ever asks her how she feels about the wedding or if she even loves her fiancé to begin with. She says “it feels like i’m standing in the middle of a crowded room, screaming to the top of my lungs and no one even looks up.” And that colors a lot of experiences with the 8th house, being on the receiving end of other people’s resources without being asked if you even want them or having any input in them at all.

And running the risk of being called ungrateful if you don’t want them.

Rose feels trapped. She describes the opulent heart of the ocean diamond necklace that many would have died for as a dog collar. But she still hesitates to leave. When Jack comes into the picture and her mother realizes she may be tempted to throw her plan out of wack, she accuses Rose of being selfish and threatens the idea of a poor, dishonorable, shameful existence with them losing everything they have and working as seamstresses. The 8th House is an extreme house, it doesn’t know nuance, it doesn’t know the middle ground.

The 8th House: you accept all the resources other’s have to give you or they threaten to rip the rug out from under you completely. 

In the 8th House, you run the risk of people gifting you things with the intention of controlling you. 

Dangling their resources in your face like a cat toy.

In the end however, it leads 8th Housers out of the dark into the 9th House, a house defined by independence, adventure and risk. A life very similar to Jack and the path he was able to give her a glimpse of.

The path that she ultimately took for herself.

In the most extreme examples, such as mine, it may even make one hyper-independent but for the better. At the conclusion, Rose was able to give it all up and go live the life she built for herself, based on choices she made for herself and define herself outside of the things given to her, but with things she gave and made for herself. 

As an 8th houser, like Rose, you realize people would gift you with things not for you, but for them. 

Also, eventually like Rose, you stopped being scared of refusing things people gave you if you didn’t really want it. You, cautiously, learn to trust others but most of all you learn to trust yourself and your own resources to get you ahead, your own resources physically and mentally. 

And they worked.

It worked for me

Give it a chance and it will for you too!

Signed, The Divine Erotic (8th House Sun, Mercury, Ketu (South Node), Uranus and Neptune)

[thedivineerotic]

Rose Dewitt Bukater  

(Penmanship #2)

What’s a princess if she can’t even pick the crown on her head?

What’s a wife with a ring from someone she don’t want to wed?

What’s a lover if they can’t choose who sleeps in their bed?

Just a slave in diamond chains being dragged on ahead

All the things in the world and yet no power to choose

Not the way I want my hair, my outfit or my shoes

But I smile and try to speak without coming off rude

For if I say what I feel then I'll be singing the blues

Force feed me all of your wants, dreams and desires

But when it comes to what I want, it’s always time to deny her

“Depressed over presents? How could she be so ungrateful?”

Independence you were given but something I gotta wait for

“You don’t like it? Well we’ll take all this shit back and go”

Sometimes I pray, so I can find my way out alone

Maybe I might choose right, maybe I might choose wrong

But the decision is mine and one that only I own

[thedivineerotic]

Prayer (Penmanship #1)

I pray with the lights out

And my eyes wide open

For only in the darkness 

Can God have all my focus

Down on my knees 

With my guard still up

Holding out for a blessing

In case I run out of luck

The things closest to my heart

I tell you in my head

Mind is the messenger

Hoping to reach you from bed

They say, when you speak the words

They won’t come true

So to be safe, I keep silent

The love language between me and you

[thedivineerotic]

❄️The Ice Breaker❄️

Greetings and salutations, nice to see you stumbled upon my blog. Welcome to my vain attempt to evict myself from my own head and out into the world. The primary audience for this blog is myself but if anything I post interests you, touches you or even simply makes you think twice you are welcome to share my world, just be sure to grab a life-raft because it gets deep. Here are a few basic facts so you can get a feel for the water before you jump in 

Age: 24

Pronouns: She/Her

Sexuality: Don’t know, not dying to figure it out yet

DNI: If you be on bullshit

Cancer Rising, Aquarius Sun, Libra Moon (Tropical)

Gemini Rising, Capricorn Sun, Virgo Moon (Sidereal)

INFJ

4w5 (459 tritype)

Occasionally NSFW

Steal any of my intellectual property (poetry, short stories, writing samples, original characters etc.) and i’m on that ass like huggies

Primary Interests and Post Content: 

Writing (Realistic Fiction, Erotica, Short Stories, Poetry)

Journaling

Book Reviews

Retro Dance Music 

Obscure funk and R&B

Vaporwave

Cozycore

Citypop

Astrology (mostly sidereal inc. Vedic)

Personality Assessment (MBTI and Enneagram)

Psychology/ Sociology/ Philosophy/ Anthropology

20th Century Black History

Mississippi Delta Culture

Ancestry

Ways to describe me:

The Intensely Mellow Enigma

The Old Soul That’s a Child at Heart

The Black Ice Queen

The Divine Erotic

That's all I got for the surface, see you guys down below!

[thedivineerotic]

Emilia Nurmivaara - Warmth, 2023

[thedivineerotic]

Emilia Nurmivaara - Dreamer’s Corner, 2022

[thedivineerotic]

Lamp design by Carlo Nason (1969)

[thedivineerotic]

Wizardry in a Candle’s Flame

[thedivineerotic]

dhanistha | capricorn

[thedivineerotic]

shravana + lost in translation (2003)

spoiler warning!

nakshatras as movies i love

As "The Hearing Star", Shravanas tend to be active and engaging listeners, able to make anyone comfortable. You often find the Capricorn placements in the balcony of a house party, offering a sympathetic ear or a shoulder to cry on.

I find in my chart readings this trait is often because they weren't offered the same courtesy as children. They might have felt like outsiders in their friend groups or families, left out of inside jokes and hang outs, always the weakest link.

These feelings of isolation and alienation often follow them into adulthood like an itch in the back of their minds. Do these people I want to care about even know me?...if they really saw me as I am, would they stay?

With a Chara (moveable, changeable) nature, Shravana transits are a benefic time to travel, put down new roots, and try new things. Owing to this, the natives often prefer flight over fight when in conflict. Almost paradoxically, however, they hate feeling like an outsider.

The Capricorn placements are often extremely social, with a wide (yet shallow) friend group. However, Sravanas need to find others like them, other "outsiders" that they can relate to and form lasting connections. It's also crucial that Shravanas open up about their fears and allow themselves to be vulnerable; listening is a virtue, but talking is just as virtuous.

Although they present themselves as all-knowing and amicable, Shravans often feel like they're aliens wearing masks. These amazing placements must stop relying on their personas if they want to meet someone they can truly bond with.

[thedivineerotic]

Moon in Chitra