July 23rd is the Festival of Heart!
If you follow as a practitioner of Pop Culture Paganism, a user of Homestuck inspired Chaos Magic, or just want to use your favorite series to inspire you throughout the year, Skaia Temple is your resource center!
Whether you want to just celebrate it on the day, use it as a date for empowered energy, integrate it into your more mundane celebrations, or just appreciate your favorite characters and concepts this month, we have suggestions for whatever path you want to take with us!
Read below the cut for a condensed idea & resource list for this month of Heart!
Aspect Centered
Celebrate the Aspect in all its glory if you’re all about on celebrating the Festivals for exactly what they represent: The Aspect and all the traits associated with it.
“Forging an identity is extremely important to the Heart-bound, and every decision and action goes toward building a coherent narrative of their own story.”
Heart is about the Self, the Soul. If Life is about self care, Heart is about caring for the self. It’s often discouraged to be selfish about our own needs, but sometimes its just what we might need or deserve. If Blood is about community, Heart is about finding out who you are in it.
Sometimes the strongest weapon we can have is being ourselves completely unabashedly. Whether this means holding your own in conflict, or keeping yourself steady when nothing else is so. We need to be able to have a grasp on ourselves to truly understand how and why we need to grow.
Maybe there’s some facets of your personality you suppress for some reason that you need to learn to let loose, maybe you can find a new or more genuine way to express yourself, or maybe all you need to do is let those around you know that its you who knows yourself best.
This month is for being yourself.
Magical Inspiration
If you want to use Homestuck concepts more abstractly and need some ideas for what brands of magic would work best for the season, if you have an Aspect or character-themed spell, feel free to send it in so it can be added to this section!
Shadow work during Doom was more about making peace with yourself, but doing it during Heart season would be more about wielding it like a sword. Or shitty katana- Another side of it could be glamour magic, both for confidence or just when you need someone to see a specific facet of yourself for any reason. The main idea for now is to make sure your inside feelings match your outside actions.
Love and Romance also arent out of place for something about self-nourishment. Here is a Nepeta themed Romantic Luck spell for the occasion as well!
Integration Route
For people in the broom closet who are too timid or anxious to celebrate the Festivals openly- you can always integrate the Aspects traits to fit in with the more common trends and holidays of the month. Not even Hussie is is Homestuck God, no one will mind!
Appropriately, there are no major traditional holidays in this season, at least not in America. Maybe you could look up some minor holidays and find some that resonate with you and set forth celebrating them unabashedly and with full force- or maybe you could just make it a month where you celebrate You. Make the whole Heart season your Unbirthday Month. (In the event that your birthday is within this season, Happy Birthday! And I hope you have a even happier Unbirthday pt2)
The start of August marks Lammas, celebrating summer harvests, specifically grains- doesn't baking heartshaped bread sound pawsitively adorapurr?
Fandom Driven
For if you’re not all about spirituality or routine and just want to enjoy going all-out with a beloved story & characters, you can honor the ones of this month by driving full-throttle on the fandom bandwagon.
Heart is the Aspect for the Leijons. Some very underappreciated girls who never seem to catch a break. They’re strong beautiful ladies whose voices often go unheard through fear, manipulation, or ill timing to be able to speak out in all of their unique, creative, colorful glory. They show all the best parts of the Heart Aspect, pure timid selves who need only the chance and support to be able to shine brightly light everyone deserves to get to. Look at them and keep in mind that you deserve to express yourself in every way you want to.
It’s also the Aspect for the infamous Dirk Strider, and however you feel about whatever iteration of this walking identity crisis, he too embodies his Aspect strongly. He’s on a constant search to find his self and purpose, and so shows us the darker side of when we might try to change everyone else around us to better fit the picture we’ve painstakingly made to justify who we’re trying to be. Be it admiration, pity, or mouth frothing rage, look at Dirk and remember that whatever path we walk, we should be able to find one that allows us to walk in pace with everyone else that we so care about, and that has to be done with empathy, not anxiety and micromanaging. Stan Dirk.
Draw art, write fic, post analysis’ and/or callout posts for these big bright (inwardly and/or outwardly) characters this season!
We hope you got some ideas for activities you can do with your friends or otherwise use to inspire and better yourself this month. Everyone plays the game of life differently, and everyones beliefs are their own. Celebrate yourself as you see fit, and Thanks for Playing with Us.
~Mod Bee
