Dark oracle

DARK MIRROR ORACH
WHAT IS A DARK MIRROR?
Potentially it is the murky surface of our wounded, scarred spiritual lakes. As we live out each day in our modern society, our spiritual self is under constant pressure, often a neglected and abused child in the cold mansion of our humanity. We do our best to nurture and protect it, but we often fail, distracted by duty, reason, greed and... unsurprisingly... the pull of the material world. Or, it could be the screen of a mobile phone, a laptop or pad, or even a larger silent TV screen. Isn’t it ironic that we give to these black devices the power to be the windows to our world?
Still, even with all the faults of being human, it’s a little cliche to see darkness as our only way to be real and true to ourselves. It’s | not that.
Darkness - as light, as hope, as energy - is an ingredient to life, a 1 part of the spiritual as much as it is a part of the emotional and of the physical. “Darkness” is also a metaphor for many psychological processes we go through everyday. It’s not an unknown world, neither is an unexplored and dangerous land. It’s just a part of us.
Oracles are a simple tool to ask a question and receive an answer. They allow us to delve deep into the darkness of who we are and why. What changes, among them, is what kind of questions and what kind of answers.
FIVE CONCEPTS
Each card within the Dark Mirror Oracle has an aspect relating to one of the following five concepts. As you read over each card, use these ideas to understand what is going on in your own spiritual soul.
The Moon. The Moon is about the cycle of nature. It waxes and wanes. It gives us a rhythm to our life in the darkness. Not all darkness is without light, even if it’s with the light of the Moon.
Grief Processing. Pain, mourning, grief...they happen. They corr|e. They stay. And they can break us apart. Our mind cannot fight grief directly, instead it slowly processes through the emotions with time, walking through five different stages:
1 — Denial. In this stage, we try to numb our emotions to the pain. We're refusing to accept the event which brought on the feelings. We try to delude ourself that “it didn’t happen", or that what happened can be turned around.
2 - Anger. Once we cannot numb our emotions and act like they aren’t there anymore, we give space to anger. We redirect those, still too painful to bear, emotions outside. We blame, we fight, we scream. We take it out.
3 - Bargain. Once anger subsides and we have exhausted our strength, we try to cope with the grief by postponing it, making it less severe or less urgent. We try to talk our way out of the consequences, accepting what we want to hear, and rejecting what we don’t.
4 - Depression. As bargaining is doomed to fail, we take all of our emotions inside, bringing them in the darkest cave of our heart. We let them fester, and we hide them from the outside, letting them gnaw at our inside, as we bring out a mask of indifference.
5 - Acceptance. Ultimately, even our self-destructive effort will fail. Rather then destroy ourselves, we somehow digest these emotions and make them part of our being. We allow sadness in. And by being sad, we express our grief, and move forward.
Visual Seed. A description of the card as it looks like. It could offer a meditation seed. So look at the card and let it speak to you.
Sentence. Reflection upon the card meaning through a single sentence to think or meditate on.
Going Dark. We fear the dark. Yet sometimes we need to embrace our fear and walk through it. It is not an easy task, because - even if we are strong - the darkness can also be strong. It is a part of us, and strikes where we are weak. It is a necessary process, sometimes. Stare into the darkness, walk into the darkness, and let the darkness in. Look into a dark mirror.
A SIMPLE WAY TO READ
When you feel sad, and dark. When things looks uphill, and you are flooded by negative emotions and feelings (or lingering memories for those)... use the Dark Mirror Oracle.
Just draw a card.
Take the time to look at it.
Let the card accompany you to the dark side. Look into the card for the reflection of your shadow. Your shadow is all about those negative feelings. Follow them.
Then look away from the dark mirror and come back to the light.
Take a big breath Do not think about it too much, too soon. But

A MORE ADVANCED WAY TO READ
Returning to the very first topic of this booklet, what kind of questions would you ask a dark mirror?
- Questions you don’t like the answer
- Questions which force you to change
- Questions which make you deal with pain and pressure

QUESTIONS YOU DON’T LIKE THE ANSWER
Life is filled with two-ways choices. When you are undecided between two options, the more you think about them, sometimes the harder it is to make the choice. Smiling to yourself, flip a coin. Heads become choice A, while tails is B. Flip.
Just a second before you look at the coin, stop and look within yourself. What are you hoping it will be? What result are you cheering for? That's will be your choice.
As you can see from the above trick, even something as random as flipping a coin can bring clarity to a situation. “Random” is not the answer, rather it is the catalyst to unlock our own decision making process. In many occasions, our unconscious mind is much faster than our conscious one. Sometimes we don’t ask questions because we fear the answer. Or we ask the question, but we do not really focus on it, rather chasing detail after detail, staying clear of the core subject.
Please understand there is no way to force yourself, unless you are not ready. When you are ready to face the question, have confidence, and know the road that begins from the answer may take you to wondrous places.
Try the cards. If you are ready, you will find an answer. The cards become the catalyst, to help you thread where you are scared, or uncomfortable, or when you are constantly procrastinating, excuse after excuse.
QUESTIONS WHICH FORCE YOU TO CHANGE
Change is a natural part of our life. It’s another word for growth, adaptation, learning, evolution.
As the world morphs and moves around us, change is our way to be real. Unfortunately, we like to think that the world does not truly transform, that it’s actually stable and static. Stable and static are comfortable: we abhor change.
The cards can be used to be a catalyst of the process. Not a process of change, yet, but a process for understanding how we won’t lose ourself changing, and that we need to actually really change.
It is truly difficult to change while still being true to yourself. That’s the point of what change offers us as a process. It’s necessary. Changing in a way that is not an harmonious growth is just violence. Sometimes self-inflicted violence. Sometimes it’s not much different from domestic abuse.
But the opposite is as unhealthy. In front to the need to change and to evolve (a need that can come from within ourself, or from the outside... like our partner, our child or our workplace) we just go blank. We change something to be able to say (to ourselves mostly): “I tried”, “look I changed”, but we do not change what we really need to.
Imagine a husband who has trouble with her wife. When she has challenges, he offers solutions and advice. She gets angry, or she is grateful, but every time it happens, she simply feels more lonely. As he is a loving husband, and he can feel her pain, he knows he needs to change (yes, she also needs to change, but love is first about what we can do, not what others can do). He needs to learn the art of listening. It’s change. But before the end result can come to fruition, his journey takes a long time and effort. It won’t be just a difference in behaviour, it will be a difference in him as a human being.

QUESTIONS WHICH MAKE YOU DEAL
WITH PAIN AND PRESSURE
Pain and pressure are often two faces of the same coin. Pain rarely hurts much if it’s a new thing. As time goes on, the distress hurts more and more. We refer to this as trauma, or "wounds". Pressure is our reaction to what life throws to us. We fight back, and we gather more responsibilities upon us. They burden us and slowly choke out our freedom space. The options we have to go through . our day dims, day after day until only pressure is left. Dull and heavy. And we feel that the only way out is to surrender rather than fight.
Unfortunately, pain and pressure are part of life. An ugly part, and they come far too often to be comfortable. They needs to be faced. Sometimes they need to be processed. Broken through and endured, transformed into something that gives us more space to exist as ourselves.
Using the cards can help alleviate the pain and pressure form various traumas we face in life.



I. TRIUMPH 01 LIES
Moon Phase
Waxing Gibbous
If something hurts me, I change myself so it can stop.
VISUAL SEED
Headless mannequins crowd against each other under a cold neon light. They are dressed in luxury clothes and pricey accessories. Among them, one has a crowned skull floating where her face was supposed to be.
SENTENCE
Not all that glitters is gold. Emptiness is felt when there is nothing under the dress.
GOING DARK
The Triumph of Lies is about appearance. And appearance is always so important in the world. Day by day it seems more important. Can that be a lie too?
We seek to be what the world outside desires - and not necessarily society at large. Our family or partners or friends place judgements on what we should be. In the dress we choose, we carve a mask of expectations, behaviours and values, to live by It offers stability to ourself and to our relations, as being honest and true to ourselves can be too tiring, too easy to make us hurt. Unfortunately, the relationship with our mask is not as straightforward as it feels. Inside the mask, envy grows, vanity takes root, lack of self-confidence becomes an habit. It gnaws at us, and hurt us from the inside.
It feels like it is ourselves. But it’s not really authentic. It is just a lie we have made habit to believe in. When our lies became a gilded cage, and our dress became a burden... we should remember that we were born naked.

2. THE TEMPLE OF MY BODY
Moon Phase	A	Stage
First Quarter	)	Depression
I feel I am not worth enough.
VISUAL SEED
A succubus-like creature with claws resembling nails holds a very thin silver chain. And the pendant on it, appears like a crimson tear of blood.
SENTENCE
My body is the temple of my soul. It has no secrets to me.
GOING DARK
This card is about the darkness in the body Culture can make us take distance from what is our corporality. So many religions and customs, for instance, demonise sex in many different ways, lacing it with guilt, as an assassin could lace food with poison. On the other side, we are collaborators in cheapening our body, hiding it, being shamed by it, selling it, giving it away for nothing. It happens when we accept an abusive relationship, when we refuse to respect the body of another... or more simply when we do things like being too lazy to eat healthily.
Our body is a temple. It cannot be defiled. We can take a shower, raise our chin, feel proud. It is our body Ours!
OBSESSION
Moon Phase f X Stage
Waxing Crescent	J Denial
There is nothing else that can replace my focus.
VISUAL SEED
An elven face, the hair entwined with bark and thorns, stares at a blank, clear, empty round mirror.
SENTENCE
All things led to one. And then they disappear into one. Until only that one remains.
GOING DARK
We chase comets, and mirrors, and shadows. Sometimes, we actually chase cars. Or myths. Obsession is a trick of our perception. Many became one. And that one bloats as to take everything else. It feels like it - whatever it is... an idea, a person, an objective... - flavours our life and gives meaning to it. As all the light through a lens, it converges on a single point, and that point goes ablaze, under the greatest fire. But in truth, more than enacting our life, it numbs our attention to the rest. It makes us feel more awake, by hiding the rest of the world under a cloud of slumber. Obsession is a drug. In small doses it whips. In big doses, it kills.
If we drown inside an obsession, we should close our eyes. We don’t die in the darkness. We just fall asleep, and then we can wake up more naturally.

4. IS THIS ME?

I cannot recognize myself. But I’m still me.
VISUAL SEED
A dark fantasy female warrior, with pale skin, is enshrouded by a scanty spiked bikini armor. She holds a fanged bat hiked sword against a back-ground of fire and ruin.
SENTENCE
I cannot recognize myself. As I can’t remember the road that led me here, how can 1 see the road ahead?
GOING DARK
This card is not about an affirmation, but rather a question. Is this me? Can I recognize myself? Maybe yes, maybe no. But for sure, I lost the road I had once, the last time 1 stopped to really think about it. In my heart, 1 feel maybe like the high school girl that went to the prom. But truly I am now 45 and I weight thrice. I feel my true self as the kid that wanted to play soccer with the Real Madrid. All this while punching numbers on an Excel file, out in an insurance office. It is not necessarily something negative as a dream lost or corrupted. I could see myself as “love is the most important thing in my life”, but actually I have a very well paid job that makes me travel, and I sleep alone in hotel rooms. When did we last look at ourself in a mirror? Do we like what we are? Make no excuses, because the choices which made what we are, are our responsibility. If an old dream is dead, it’s time to dream anew. If the old dream is alive, it’s time to go back to it.
5. GILDED REGRET

I feel like living in the past.
Please, give me five more minutes to linger.
VISUAL SEED
An elven queen with heavy eyes, her dress as blue as the clearest water, her crown of thorns and golden clawed flowers holds a blue orb in her hand.
SENTENCE
Memories are like floating underwater, safe, warm and murky. Yet they held the scent of death.
GOING DARK
The cage of our memories is the most gilded. Lingering to the past, savouring crumbs and flashes, hints and ifs... “But” is our sword. “However” is our shield. We follow the river against the currents to a sea of maybes. We cannot say “life is here, now”. We just say, “life was here”. So that even when the future builds, day by day, we still look ' backward to memories and possibilities. Options we missed, things we lost, changes we fled. It is like staying in the twilight of conscience, in the blessed state of those “five minutes” between the time the alarm rings and when you actually have to wake up. Like little kids, between the time mum calls and the time we need to wake up. And run. But those 5 minutes are taking up too much time. They are the drain of . our energies, or our opportunities, of our future. The ifs are now gone.
Whatever has been has been already, isn’t it?
6. ALONE IN THE WORLD
Moon Phase	(	Stage
Third Quarter	k	Acceptance
In solitude I stand; in solitude I may shine.
VISUAL SEED
Under the morning light, in a closed and silent court, paved with stones, laced by trees, a beautiful woman sits naked on a precious bench. Many blankets or drapes are around her... in color red and white, like discarded wings.
SENTENCE
I made my home a cloister, my heart a chalice for the faintest breeze, and yet I stand alone.
GOING DARK
Waiting for something to come back. When we parted ways, we promised to each other “I will wait for you”, and “I will come back”. We may have used different words like “it’s just for a few months” or a sharper pen, like “I don’t need you”. Still we are waiting. Mind has lost hope. Body has lost memory, but our heart is still incomplete.
It is shrined into a blessed feeling of longing and desire, innocence and hope. But it is also entombed into a well of solitude and distance. It built walls to stall the passage of time, and the walls kept out everything. Will the prince come, or has the world gone silent while we waited?
Waiting is a transition. It has a beginning and it has an end. Waiting is the night. Morning brings the sun of a new day.
7. SACRIFICE
Moon Phase	(Stage
Waning Gibbous	Anger
Even if I have to break apart, as long as it serves a purpose.
VISUAL SEED
A beautiful female knight wears heavy armor. She holds a blade in front of her, and a blade of light slices across her face, showing the deadly seriousness of her stare, the mirror of her resolve.
SENTENCE
I have accepted my duty, and in my release I found freedom.
GOING DARK
There is a strong power in sacrifice. Our fears, our hopes, they are all chains to a small world. Our sense of self is a small petty creature, of uncertain resolve and shaky horizons. With sacrifice, we renounce our sense of self. We accept to be lost. We accept to be shaken, and cut, and bruised, and hurt, and burdened, and locked, and stricken, and despised, and gossiped, and betrayed, and be misunderstood, and be left alone. To rot. To die. With just words of thanks, while the world goes on over our broken dreams. But when we drown our sense of self to sacrifice, we are also a greater person. We are screaming “I exist! I make the difference”. We accepted a price to pay, and we used our blood and tears as currency. That give us the right to stand tall.
8. THE CHILD I WAS MEANT TO BE
Moon Phase	Stage
Full	Acceptance
An instant of clarity is the light I needed.
VISUAL SEED
Tones of lemon yellow and plum magenta, with castings of sky blue and bright morning white. The serene face of a woman with gentle gesture, holds a small growing plant, made of dreams and new leaves.
SENTENCE
To go forward is to go backward, as hope heals the wounds of the past.
GOING DARK
There is little darkness in this card. It is a card of connection with our-selves. So many times it feels like dream. It’s fleeting, uncertain and yet clear. The moment you close your hand to grasp it, it turns into fairy light and disappears. But it remains as a lingering smell, and ephemeral feeling of light, and peaches and blossoms. It is faith. It is hope. It is a warm smile at the other side of the forest of smoke and mirrors. We can be whole again. We can be pure again. We can be happy again. No matter what we did... we can. Just know this as a gift of light, among the cruel darkness. It brings no road. Sometimes no solace. But it can become a seed of hope. A wind of change. A place fo safety in the storm. Even if it’s gone... it was definitely here.
9. ENVIOUS GLUTTONY
Moon Phase	Stage
Waxing Gibbous	Denial
Going to the edge of the ravine,
savouring the idea of letting go all restraint.
VISUAL SEED
A man has rotting sickly skin and yellow eyes. He dresses in tatters, and sticky blood runs down his chin. He has clawed feet, and a crown of a skeleton alligator jaw. The upper part on his head, the lower part on his chest, like a gaping mouth.
SENTENCE
There is hunger sleeping just under the surface, like an animal lurking.
GOING DARK
This card is not just dark. It is unpleasant. Sickly disgusting. The difference in the how we feel in front of a vampire as opposed in front of writhing bugs. It’s not an existential darkness, that we can paint of romance, drama and subtle anguish. It is raw, primal, reeking of rotting stench. It feels like there is darkness, and in that black landscape there is an hole, leading to an even greater darkness. And that is calling. The urge is pressed down every time, played with, toyed with, treated like something that doesn’t belong here. It’s like rolling in the mud, bringing out the twisted refreshing feeling of demeaning oneself.
The key is that we don't want to recognize the depth of the envy and the anger. We casted it out of ourselves, and now it’s truly a parasitic monster, impossible to accept as something that came out of ourselves. What if we bring light to the pitch dark well? What if the scary monster is just a scrawny, starved feeling. What if it’s just a little thing... dark as tar, indeed, but to be sorry of, not to be feared?
10. COLORLESS ANGEL
Moon Phase		Stage
First Quarter	)	Denial
It is better not to feel, rather than feeling pain.
VISUAL SEED
A dark horse prances proudly in the background, unnoticed by a man kneeling upon a pond. He wears a crown of myrth, his face expression-less. Behind him wings of smoke and bones grow, or disappear.
SENTENCE
Apathy is the crowned king of nothingness, and the shining queen of whatever.
GOING DARK
We can be Siegfrid, the dragonlslaying hero. But not when he slays the dragon, nor when he is betrayed and dies, but when he is simply doing nothing. We can be Michael the Archangel, while he waits bored and motionless, and Saint George, surprised in a moment of stillness and nothingness. All the strong rivers can become a swamp when they reach the plains. And the most yummy food, can become gummy after a couple of hours unattended on a table. There is a lot of darkness when we make the habit of going grey. We numb our senses with a fog of delays, and then we just get indifferent to the fog herself. “I’m here,” we whisper. And if - by a very tiny chance - someone notices and replies and asks “who’s there?’’, we become shy and we stay silent a little more. You cannot be saved unless you face the dragon. And the dragon hurts. Of course it does.


11. ADDICTED

It’s not about choosing the chains.
It’s about choosing them again and again.
VISUAL SEED
White sparkly hair over a scarred, melted downcast face. Is the hand melting or already long gone? A chain chokes his neck, and many spikes pierce the back.
SENTENCE
Freedom was the worse of lies. I could have been a slaver or a slave, but I choose the latter.
GOING DARK
Addiction to something. To drugs? To love? To company? To evil? To pain? To safety? To making simple everything that can be deep? Oh... they have in common the feeling of being lost if we ever are without it. Freedom is not a friend, as it promises responsibility, failure, challenges. Freedom can be taken. Can be broken. Can be stripped naked and whipped and abused. Slavery is a much cleaner choice. If you give it all away at the beginning, how can they take it from you?
So... how can it be that is so easy to believe that freedom is an illusion, and it’s so hard to feel that slavery is an illusion as well? That the sky has a limit, but the chains have one as well? The irony of it all, when we lose the desire - much before losing the will - to fight... is that actually is possible to reach for the sky even when bound by chains.

12. ARTIFICAL HEART
If I don’t feel the warmth of the sun, will I blame the sun or myself?
VISUAL SEED
A female figure.,. an android or a robot, with cyber lines traveling over the skin like gentle spiders. A black choker of feminine servitude, and jade eyes of futuristic indifference.
SENTENCE
Building oneself to specifications. Steeling oneself to adversity. Dreaming of electric sheep.
GOING DARK
Once upon a time - it was a time of flying monkeys - someone journeyed to a place that wasn’t Kansas in order to gain a heart. Oh... such a charming old-fashioned fairytale. A new heart can be bought on the internet now, and be delivered in a couple of days with a brand new shiny instruction manual. It works, too.
It gets the job done. It’s not a job of feelings. It’s scripted. Like a job of numbers. Actually it feels like a trade off. We find refuge in the rational mind, which in tum gives us back the illusion of control. But we still feel. We still long to live through our emotions fully. We are truly like an artificial knight that wants to become a real person. Happiness is not in numbers, but it’s not because numbers are bad. It is because there is nothing that - alone - can grant happiness, and guarantee it. We trade in the natural world for artificiality and then we blame this choice as the reason why our sky has no color. What if it’s not actually connected? What if it’s just an excuse? What if even an artificial heart could beat and fall in love and drown in sorrow?

13. BLIND TO THE PAIN

I can shoulder it, and it’s not a big deal, isn’t it?
VISUAL SEED
Flies, pinned. Not pinned, but ordered as bees, feeding of the neatly arranged blood. A woman’s chest, carved by a blade in a diamond pattern. Full lips - the color of blood. A blindfold on whom the last fly lingers.
SENTENCE
Carving oneself for every stroke of whip, and feeling so broken that it makes no difference to be whole.
GOING DARK
T.S. Eliot said, “... a fly that lives a single day has lived as long as we.” Yet we accept the passage of time like it didn’t matter. Like we don’t matter. Every day a single line is added to the pattern. A single fly is added to the wall. We take one more responsibility. We take a little more abuse. We shoulder a little more pain. We smile in front of a little more insolence. We close our eyes to our wounds. We think we can endure it. “It doesn’t hurt,” “it doesn’t hurt,” we say to ourselves. Like men because its manly to endure and be strong. Like women because it’s feminine to endure and be strong. Like humans because the care and gentleness we feel is precious to others, and we don’t dare to actually claim for ourselves. After all... we can do it. But it actually hurts. It’s painful. Tears are better than feeding flies with our own blood. We can scream. And say no. Or endure, nevertheless. But remembering that we are just humans. Neither heroes, nor saints.
14. HIDING YOUR TRUE SELF
Moon Phase	f	Stage
Third Quarter	k	Acceptance
Hiding is keeping things inside. Luck of trust becomes lack of hope.
So there must be a limit.
VISUAL SEED
In the dazzling light, there is an hint of a door, like the door to a Ham-man. Outside, draped in scarlet tunics stand two women, one under the sign of the sun and the other beneath the sign of the moon.
SENTENCE
You could be in front of the mirror, or you could hide behind the mirror, yet you chose to be the mirror.
GOING DARK
Hiding is a survival instinct. Do you want to be honest and truly be yourself? Very few people will accept you then. You are too complicated to be comfortable. Too contradictory to be easy. Too exceptional to be believed. Too plain to be considered. You can be the sun, you can be the moon, you can be the door, you can be the road, you can be the butterfly and the brick. Maybe the question is not "if", but "when". Sometimes real solitude is when there is not a right moment to be yourself. And not the right person. And neither the right way. Being yourself is like a moment at the spa. It is a massage for the soul. A purification process that brings in oxygen and turns away age and wear. It is bliss and pleasure.
15. MASQUERADE
Moon Phase (Stage
Waning Gibbous	Bargain
What I can’t have forever, I will have for a minute.
What I can’t have for a minute, I will hold to me for one second.
VISUAL SEED
A men’s face, young in the flesh and in posture, with a wide open shirt. Over him appears the most complicated and baroque hat, straight from a Venetian carnival.
SENTENCE
Under the guise of Cupid, I will come to you. Under the guise of a thief I will fly away.
GOING DARK
There is often guilt in taking the mask of Don Juan. Or Dona Juana. The seducer is not a master of love, neither of manipulation. He is the master of the ephemeral. Of what is fleeting and brief and transient to the extreme. He is the master of the moment, and as such he forgot all other kind of eternity. There is guilt if you care, because you are not building. There is guilt out of loss, because you are not treasuring. There is guilt out of indifference, because when you don’t care, you cheat yourself of meaning and value. Sometimes there is guilt in the selflessness, in the desire itself, in everything leading to pleasure. As if the only pleasure that can be sacred are only those labeled as such. The masquerade is a dance. It is a road that goes in circles and ebbs and flows... and always ends with the first light. Before the time comes hold it tightly. When the time comes, let it go.
16. BLACK FLOWER FRAGRANCE
Moon Phase	Stage
Full	Anger
The world is unfair. Fuck off dear world. Fuck you.
VISUAL SEED
A beautiful woman, her face with a hint of resolve, holds a strange black rose on her chest. It seems to explode like a crystal. Each petal an obsidian shard.
SENTENCE
If we want to go dark, go black. Don’t stop to the evening, but embrace the night!
GOING DARK
Love is not a white dove, nor it turns people into angels. Love can be ugly. Love can be cheap. Love can be rotten. But, even ugly love has a right to exist. Even cheap love can raise to the sky. Even rotten love has the dignity of eternity. Even a black rose by any other name should still smell as sweet. Even if you are wrong, you still have the right to be angry. Even if your not perfect, you have the right to be respected. Even if you are stupid, you have the right to be listened to. Even if you are lucky, you have the right to complain. Even if you are rich, you have the right to be sad. If you cannot shine because you are beautiful, then shine even if you are ugly. Shine because you are ugly. Gorgeously black. Ugly as love, worn out as an angel, cheap as a crown! Unconquered as a fragrance in the night.
17. FORGETTING ONESELF
Moon Phase	Stage
Waxing Gibbous	Denial
Time as an eternal present, not fleeting but locked.
No progress is no regress either.
VISUAL SEED
A naked young man, whose curly brown hair are intertwined by a golden laurel crown. Half of a golden mask protects his eyes, while the sky around him breaks, ripped to take the shape of a mistletoe branch.
SENTENCE
 Eating the lotus flower, numbing our identity to go by the sound of a  music that was never ours.
GOING DARK
A modern Adonis, an ancient Hermes, a grown up Cupid shrined by laurel, myrth, and lotus. He is the welcoming allure of the present moment. The warm embrace which numbs everything else, like Bacchus’s wet kiss. If you let go of the pressure and of the pain, if you let go I enough of your identity and of the context you live in, then you will just feel better. It is what happens when you fall asleep, when you take refuge in the arms of a loved one, or when you watch a movie slumped ungraciously on a comfy couch. Sometimes, however, it asks for more. It takes more out of you. More of yourself to be forgotten, to feel just a little better. And maybe the twisted idea that if you forget everything, then you will actually really feel better. Forgetting everything. Letting everything go. Not just as a moment of rest, but as a jump in the dark. It is like vertigo. You stand on the edge of the precipice, and a little part of you wants to jump. But it is just a moment of rest. A moment of pause. A moment of uncreative selfishness. So what... let it be, and sleep soundly
18. NAKED BEFORE HE STARS
Moon Phase
First Quarter
Accepting our own beauty, in size, color, age, and fat.
VISUAL SEED
A beautiful, curvy, woman wears lacy lingerie. One is a black corset, and she kneels in her full sensuality, under the lights of a million artificial stars.
SENTENCE
There is no perfection that is worth enough. There is imperfection, as proud as the heavens!
GOING DARK
What do we see when we look in a minor? Do we see something we like, or something we dislike? Something we care? Or something we are slave of? What do we compare ourselves to? To the stars of a media firmament leaking into our real life? To the social models? To the beauty queens and kings of the eternal pageant? To our inner self? To the idea we had when we were younger? To the eyes of the people loving us? I wonder what feelings the words curvy, cute, chubby, fatty, rounded... arouse within us? If a smile, or distaste or recognition? The quest for beauty is not an empty quest. Even if beauty is not as deep as the ocean, still when we shine, our world becomes brighter. But we will always feel naked in front of the stars. We should just learn not to blush, and stand proudly.


19. PARASITE
When the only answer to lack of self-efficiency is to ding to another one.
VISUAL SEED
A long haired man with a pale faced heavy eyelids. A dull golden chain drapes over his forehead. Around his body and through his body, a poisonous ivy grows and clings subtly to him.
SENTENCE
What can’t survive alone will seek company. But instead of growing together, they will wither together.
GOING DARK
Relationships are not a zero sum game. Of course, “using” each other is part of the game. But it’s quite different when use take the shape of sup-porting, rather than manipulating or exploiting. In the long run, a good relationship is a win-win, where the more I give, the more I get, and the other way around. Still, it’s not always like this, isn’t it? Not just in bad relationship. In the short run, bad is bound to happen even in the house of true love. We cling. We bite. We hunger for safety, and freedom, and support... and on the other side, we get mangled, bitten, demanded on. Well, it happens. It happened, and it will happen again. It is part of the game. But if it happens too often, it creates a toxic environment. It doesn’t matter if we are the victim or the perpetrator, as poison is shared equally. One gets the pain, another one gets the advantage, but the toxic part... they both get. Fully. A parasite... a leech... kills itself as much as it kills the host. It sacrifices the journey to the destination, and then the destination to its own failures. The problem is not living as sheep, but the true problem is living as a sheep for one hundred years.
20. DOWNCAST PRIDE
Moon Phase	Z	X Stage
New	k	J	Depression
Bending to adapt becomes an excuse for the habit of bending.
VISUAL SEED
The eyes, dark with dried blood tears, look downwards. The face of a dark skinned beautiful elf, with gold laurels among her hair, is stern and motionless. Roots plunge into her body from a golden collar. The sky behind her is as grey as concrete.
SENTENCE
The root of sadness and grief is deeper than the skin. The only delusion is the grey sky.
GOING DARK
Survival is a direct consequence of adaptation. What we call adaptation is not the result of a subtle but constantly constructive change of ourselves, but rather a mockery of it, as we strip day by day of our dignity in order to avoid conflict with a world that would spread us apart. How can we endure this? Maybe through the power of responsibility? Or through an hidden core of identity? Sometimes we don’t use the best part of us, but rather we draw from the ugliest. We survive and bend our knees because we draw out from our laziness, fear and disgust. We let our deepest roots go dry, replaced by what can only be called “a surge of lack of self-esteem”. We are deluded, when we think that we are only sacrificing our pride. We cling to vanity, but we can’t afford dignity. Isn’t it sad? Honestly, the true delusion is our faith in Fall and Winter, while we discard Spring and Summer as fairytales. The sky can change color, too... as long as we sometimes look up, we can notice.
21. BRIDE IN A CAGE
Moon Phase
Waning Crescent
Tomorrow will he the right moment.
Tomorrow will be better, even if today is hell.
VISUAL SEED
A gorgeous, white wedding dress shines through the neon grey artificial light of the evening. It is worn by a mannequin with a dissociated skeleton head. It seems like a happy place, if not for the light. The mannequin stares at the outside, while a purple laser grid cage holds it in.
SENTENCE
Did we die waiting for the perfect day? Or were we never alive?
GOING DARK
When we put the good of our life just in our expectations, we can dismiss the present, waiting for the dawn we know will arrive. The future be-comes a shopping cart. It needs a bit of this, a bit of that, a few kilograms of that and also a couple of boxes of another this. When we look at it, it shines like a brand new day in a commercial. And as it happens with commercials, when the future comes it’s not exactly perfect. The smile is forced, the day is too hot or too cold, the kiss is dry, the lion limps softly and doesn’t roar. As long as something is not here, but is pushed further along the timeline, we have the luxury to take it off of reality and treat it as a fantasy. We push forward and we push forward, until we actually catch up with our dream and then we crush. The future should not feel like a cage. Not even a gilded, wonderful, handmade designer cage. The future is a tree. Gnarled, rough to the touch, full of flowers only in spring... dense and damp through the rain. Absolutely imperfect!

22. I WON'T CRY FOR YOU
Moon Phase	f	Stage
Third Quarter	k	Acceptance
Sometimes when it’s over, closure must be created, not just found.
VISUAL SEED
With her back to the light of the moon, a beautiful woman with deep blue eyes sheds dry tears of blood. She holds in her hand a drop shaped vial, full of blood as well, and she gestures forward as if offering it.
SENTENCE
I gave you my last gift. I shed my last tear for you. It’s a time not to let you free, but to let myself free.
GOING DARK
Breaking up can only be done by two persons. One will do it earlier, maybe. But sooner or later the other will follow. One can afford to do it with words and actions. The other probably will only be able to do inside her own heart. It’s painful. It’s definite. It’s hard. It’s sometimes... necessary. Breaking up is not just letting go of a person. You are letting go of a part of yourself, of hopes and dreams, and trusts... you let go of feelings and memories. You let go of the emptiness you felt and the connection you relied onto. Anger will help at the beginning, but the last part of the road can’t be done by just anger. Closure comes when you dry up your tears. It is a gorgeous moment when you allow yourself to, frankly, don’t give a damn about it. All that was past is not a credit or a debt... it is just suddenly no more then a gift. You can raise your chin. After all, tomorrow is another day.
23. REVENGE
Moon Phase	Stage
Waning Gibbous	Anger
It is time to take arms against a sea of troubles,
and by opposing end them.
VISUAL SEED
A complex magic glyph illuminates the ground, as a pale woman, dressed in black seems to surge from it. She has blood crimson eyes, a white flower garland, and two plain swords. Her wings are made of withered branches.
SENTENCE
There is no white knight, but there can be a black storm woven by fallen angels.
GOING DARK
What if there was a place where there is no more time for words? No more sense to bargain or negotiate? No more survival instinct to accept fear or ponder consequences? It’s a place we can reach, at the limit of our abuse, with the last spark of our dignity surging up as a powerful black flame. We cry, we hurt... and we strike. To destroy.
We destroy not for ourselves, because we are gone. We destroy for the fairness of the world. We destroy because if there is no sweet justice, there can at least be cruel revenge. We destroy for those who came earlier. For those who would have come later. We destroy and as we destroy we forsake ourselves.
There is no going back. Because coming back from that requires much more than force.
24. QUEEN OF MY OWN WORLD
Moon Phase	Stage
Full	Bargain
I sei limits to my world. Inside I am queen and outside is lost.
VISUAL SEED
Onto a snowy background, white columns rise through the forest. A pale women dressed in scarlet bright red with a crown of thorns and a white luminous lance strides forward, her posture confident and her feet bare.
SENTENCE
I am my world, and my world is me. I am royalty!
GOING DARK
There is a space out and a space in. There is my realm and what is mine, and there are other places. I will not care if my world is made of thorn and ice, and if it’s carved by my blood. My world is my world. I rule. I decide his borders and I am law, I am princess, I am the blood in the veins of its heart, 1 am the warrior and the bride. I am alone and 1 am the first among many Be fearful of my world, because it’s paved of my hopes and dreams, and you have no power there. I am greater than the stars and more beautiful than the moon.
25. FATED TO SUFFER
Moon Phase
Waxing Gibbous
Feeling confined into a script, forced by other, and never really
fought. Heading toward a destination of pain.
VISUAL SEED
In the confines of a foggy forest a misshaped woman hands a green and red apple to a younger woman with red lips, dressed as a servant.
SENTENCE
If you know the future, you forsake your choices. Only with no fate, life i is free to unfold into unknown shores.
GOING DARK
Once upon a time, we believed in fairytales. They were the voice of common sense. The educational tool which prepared us to duty, danger and morals. Some things we would never accept if they were told by a single voice. So the world arranges us to hear them with a thousand voices. A million voices. It’s about what you can do, and what you can’t do. What are you worth, what can you aspire to. It’s about what you like, what you want, what you hold dear. It creates a script which be- । comes as strong as all the voices that believe that script combined. So much that you cannot see another path.
Are you truly seeing Snow White in the card? Is this story truly the only one that this image can tell? What if the apple is not poisoned? What if the witch is not evil? Is that the same at what you look in your life? Is it truly what you think it is? Are there not any other options? Is the opinion of others honestly better than ours, even if they are many and we are only one? Are you fated to suffer? It is not that there is no suffering in the world. The point is that there is no fate.

26. PEACEFUL AMONG THORNS

The spiritual can’t solve the material. But it can transcend it.
VISUAL SEED
A futuristic monk, his skin crossed by small circuitry, meditates in the lotus position. A eight pointed star, inscribed within a circle is at his back, like thorns piercing the air. A golden lotus aura envelopes his body
SENTENCE
Coexistence of the material and the spiritual is the human way to enlightenment.
GOING DARK
We talk too much about spiritual stuff. Spiritual that, spiritual this. Not that the spiritual side isn’t important, especially in an age when every-thing seems reduced to a materialistic drive... but aren’t we going too much to the other side? 1 have a money problem. Go spiritual. I have an health problem. Go spiritual. 1 have a love problem. Think of true love and go spiritual. I want to have sex. Go spiritual. If we were truly able to solve problems like this, what is spiritual would have been sold in grocery stores. Sometimes to solve money problems you need money. j And to solve love problems you need to fuck. Strange... but true. Getting spiritual is not what solves our problems. It is what give depth to our solutions. It makes them meaningful. It takes us from the small to the wide, from the river to the ocean. But sometimes we are not ready to make it our center, and therefore it’s perfectly fine if we do not.
27. FRAGMENTATION

When rage is projected inward,
destruction joins confusion and we break.
VISUAL SEED
What seems to be a cold iron coat rack is topped by a broken stone statue of a fairy, visible only from the chest up. Stone roses are at her breasts, a crack cuts her face and her body, a jewel is on her forehead, and silvery insect wings stand at her back. A crescent golden slice of 1 the moon is like an halo behind her head. It is possible to glimpse, suspended in the void, also the hands of the stone fairy
SENTENCE
Losing a sense of self is a crescendo of noise, a decrescendo of pain and a prelude to nothingness.
GOING DARK
If I were to cut off my legs, would I still be me? If I were to carve out my heart, would I still be me? If my flesh would turn to stone? If my lungs were emptied of air? If my dream to fly were to be forced in chains, and hanged out like an expired balloon? Would I still be me? I fought and lost. Broken. Beyond recognition. Not by the shallow sight of bystanders who can pity but who can’t understand. I cannot even recognize myself. Through the sobs, through the tears, and when silence finally comes, trough the empty motions and the conventional smiles. Who did this to me? I did, maybe. Maybe not. What is broken can be mend- I ed... not so that it returns whole, but at least until it tells his name anew. My name. And who will do that to me? I will.
28. PERCHANCE TO DREAM

If I sleep long enough, when 1 wake up the pain will have been gone.
VISUAL SEED
A crowned naked man is reclining, his eyes closed and his body dis-solving in the wind. Another man holds him gently. Behind them a circle of brass, risen by thin silvery threads.
SENTENCE
To die. To sleep. Perchance to dream. Or...
GOING DARK
It’s the time to surrender. To drown. To dive in, headfirst, in the cozy all-enveloping darkness of the blanket. It is a moment of weakness... a desire to close your eyes and surrender, just for one moment... one second... one minute. Not like an hero, fighting the world, but like a kid... just welcoming the darkness outside, within. Fully.
How long will that moment last? A minute? We can say... just a minute, but it’s not true. Disappearing is but an instant, just the time to take a breath twice... and yet, it can take ages. Ages we will regret. Ages that we will have lost, like stolen by our own surrendering. And yet we close our eyes. We let one sense after the other slow down to nothing. Sight first... then hearing... and smell... last will be the touch. The comforting hand we all deserve. To hold us up when we have done enough and we just cannot but let it go.

29. ANGER AND CHAINS

Force channeled outside. Unreasonable, undirected, but powerful.
VISUAL SEED
Lions, and sparks, and chains, and signs, and lines all mettle together. Geometry and colors, like an explosion.
SENTENCE
I’ve got to break free, I want to be free.
GOING DARK
Anger is not the road to clarity. It’s not a controlled effort or a cold dish. It is raw. Primal. Explosive. It is the loss of reason, the loss of restraint. A bomb burning bright in black color. A wax seal carefully crafted to be immediately broken. But anger is also freedom. How can you break a single thread woven with a million others? How can you unfetter your-self from a bad situation letting all the rest unchanged? It doesn’t work like that. When you need to break free, you need to shake and shout... and more things will be broken then just what you want to hurt. They are like a bundle. You can target, but you cannot choose. Break many to break one. Save one to save many.
30. CALLING OF THE STORM
Moon Phase
Third Quarter
Power comes not from the inside, but from connection
and integration to a greater whole.
VISUAL SEED
A shaman woman wears an antler hat, dresses in crimson and brown, and holds her crow-headed staff to the storm. Autumn leaves spiral out of control around her, as the whirlwind shakes the world.
SENTENCE
Pull and release, push to the limit. The eye is the only peaceful place that can be.	j
GOING DARK
There is time to find and release our power. Like a spring that had been compressed to the point it has lost the memory of motion and movement. Yet... there is power inside it. Finding it, is called “empowerment". It starts from the belief in our power. In our ability to cope, to fight, to endure, to overcome a challenge. However, too often we are encouraged to see empowerment as something that happens only within, in our psychological space. We are not necessarily islands. We can borrow the power of the world around, the context, the environment, the expectations. We do not control the storm, we just call it. To call the storm, we need not to fear it... and this is what will make us strong. After the storm there is always sun. So... if the sky has been grey for too long time, it’s time not to fear the storm, but to embrace it. It will grow up and devour our chains and our jailers. And it will hurt us as well. But it will be healthier than just stare at the chilly rain. We can restart, only after we let ourself end.

31. ATONEMENT
Moon Phase f	Stage
Waning Gibbous	Depression
Accepting the full burden of responsibility.
The fair, as well the unfair, with no discount.
VISUAL SEED
A woman with long wet hair, stares at the haze of a rising sun. Her top is naked, but we can see only her back. Many swords pierce her body, but no blood is shed. She opens her arms and droplet of water fall from her hands.
SENTENCE
Accepting pain is a way to survive the pain. Not all things bum, but some should.
GOING DARK
Atonement is about paying the bills. Unadulterated. Unfiltered. Not negotiated. It is about full and open acceptance of consequences. And a little more. It is also about paying for the price of others. Letting go of all “its” and “buts”, and taking it all in. Whether it’s ours to take or another’s to shoulder. If you have a piece of what puts you at fault, normally, you would try to separate it, and weight it evenly with what makes the other at fault, and with what you made it right. A little for a little. But it rarely does it move anything forward. Sometimes... we need a clean slate. And it’s done by going though it all. Paying more than is due. To create closure. For yourself. For others. You take the dark in, so that others can stay in the light. Even if they don’t deserve it. Even if you don’t deserve it.
32. TODAY FOR TOMORROW
Moon Phase	Stage
Full	Acceptance
Hope is in the present. It’s the brick we use to build the future on.
VISUAL SEED
Mother and daughter, or maybe twins. Or the same person in different times? Red hair, a black dress, standing at the top of some stairs, under the moon, in the wind.
SENTENCE
I want it some, I want it later. Gently.
GOING DARK
It may seem like a tradeoff. To sacrifice the present in order to secure a better future. That’s what ants do. Or to sacrifice the future to enjoy a better present. Cicadas do this. Either choice holds a bitter taste. It’s like watching a child play. Shouldn’t she study? And if she were studying, wouldn’t she regret not playing more? You meet a person you are attracted to. Do you go past and let it stay in the fantasy, or you make a move and follow it through to the ephemeral ending? The endless choice between regret and remorse. What if... for once we turn our back to the dark? We do the unexpected and we shred it like an used dress. We can walk by the sea, as no one is around and we skinny dip out of our worries. The present and the future are one single integrated connection. There is no choice because the road is only one. What we are today and what we are tomorrow, may be different, but it is the same person.