“The Muse doesn’t care if you’re ready.”
It’s Friday—aka Venus Day. You’ve been walking through a goddess’s domain all day without realizing it. She’s the one whispering, “buy the fancy candle” or “start that weird little project.” Honestly, you should probably just listen.
Welcome to the first 5 for the Muse—a weekly ritual of attention and offering. Four sparks from me, one flame from you. It’s not advice: It’s a whisper, a charm, a thing to carry into your weekend.
A Venus-day ritual altar to creativity
1. ✨ The Sortes
My pull:
The “Flight of the Wild Geese” had begun.
— Blood on the Harp: Irish Rebel History in Ballad (The Heritage), Turlough Faolain, Pg. 188
And from the poetic translation of a contemporary Gaelic Jacobite ballad by Mangan:
How many a noble soldier, how many a cavalier,
Careered along this road seven fleeting weeks ago,
With silver-hilted sword, with matchlock and with spear,
Who now, mavrone, lieth low.
2. 🧿 The Eye of the Muse
Something mundane but radiant I saw this week:
Life returns: Vibrant green emerging buds of Hosta leaves, wound tightly for strength. The first beautiful thing to punch through the sand in the city.
3. 📜 The Scrap
Something I wrote this week that has no use:
We live exist in the slum backwater internet, not the pleasure palace internet.
4. 💎 The Gem
This week’s gem: They won’t always be so long, but the timing worked (email came through as I was sitting down to write this morning).
Sometimes Venus doesn’t send flowers.
Sometimes she sends the Tower card.
So here’s a signal boost wrapped in a blessing:
Sequoyah Kennedy, the former host of The Nonsense Bazaar (which some of you know I adored), is building something extraordinary—because he has to.
After losing his job, he’s gone all-in on a project that blurs the lines between AI, ecology, spirituality, and community systems. He’s trying to build a literal place—a lab, a sanctuary, a media hub—where natural intelligence, machine intelligence, and human insight actually work together. Not as some techno-utopia, but as an honest-to-god survival tactic in the face of collapse.
He's re-launched his Patreon to get stabilized and start sharing the work—and let me be clear: This is someone I believe in (as much as one can believe in a random internet stranger, which you all know I frequently do, your strange selves included).
I think this might matter.
Because this could be the actual balance so many of us who work in tech have been searching for: Using emerging tools ethically, imaginatively, and in service of a world that doesn’t forget the human, the living, the creative.
Because this could be the actual balance so many of us who work in tech have been searching for: Using emerging tools ethically, imaginatively, and in service of a world that doesn’t forget the human, the living, the creative.
If you’re someone who’s been craving a better integration—art and infrastructure, magic and systems, myth and material—you might want to keep an eye on what he’s doing.
Signal boost it. Support it if you can. And maybe let this be a little reminder, too, that Venus rules value, and sometimes value looks like putting resources toward the future you want to live in.
5. 🔥 The Flame (your turn)
The final part of this ritual is to leave something of your own in the comments. It can be whatever strikes you.
Leave something for someone else. A word, a thought, a color, a question. Fuel for the next fire. A shared flame does not diminish the light of the first.
Go well, create wildly, and offer something back to the Muse. She’s always listening.
Until next time,
Nico
📸 Find me in the labyrinth: TikTok | Instagram | Threads | Zines | Letterboxd
🔗 I only recommend creators who light up my brain. Check them out here.
#5ForTheMuse #MicroPodcast #Alchemy #CreativeRituals #SubstackWriters
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