The Laurel of Asheville‘s Community Events Calendar
If you would like to submit an event to appear in our online Community Events Calendar, please visit our submission page.
The Laurel of Asheville is a lifestyle magazine focused on the arts, culture, and communities of Western North Carolina, and submitted events should fall within this context. If your event occurs over several days, please submit multiple events. Events extending beyond a month will not be accepted. All submissions are subject to editorial approval and edits for clarity and style before being published online. If you are going to include a photograph, please be certain that you have the rights to utilize that image. If there is a question about image rights, we may remove the image. Also, images should be no larger than 2000 pixels wide. Large images will prevent the event from being submitted. Please allow up to 5 days for your even to be posted. If you encounter difficulties submitting an event, please email [email protected].
- This event has passed.
Courting the Morning Star: Falling Angels, The Desire Body & the Aesthetics of the Heart Chakra
April 12, 2025 @ 7:00 pm - 9:00 pm
$12 – $36
Stories from Stardust is a one of a kind story-telling, stargazing deep-dive that braids together myth, cosmology & poetics with intellectual history, cultural remembering, practical astronomy & heart-centered teachings. These events are a form of ritual attunement that weave together imagination, landscape, cross-cultural star-lore, wonder, ancient perceptions & an alchemical courting of the night sky. I tell stories the way our ancestors did: under the night sky, around a fire, along shorelines, communing with the treasure trove of constellational images and folklore that is our starry heavens. Doing it this way is an inheritance that reaches deep into an embodied culture of belonging and plucks the long-forgotten heartstrings of the human psyche.
***
What do you know about love, desire, and the realm of Venus?
“The heart breaks and breaks and lives by breaking. It is necessary to go through the dark and deeper dark and not to turn.” -Kunitz, The Testing Tree
James Baldwin once wrote, “You have to remember that the role of the artist is the same as the role of the lover. If I love you, I have to make you conscious of the things you don’t see. Love does not begin and end the way we seem to think it does. Love is a battle, love is a war; love is a growing up.” This discourse of love & art & war takes place mostly on Venusian soil. As our Morning Star, she is known as Venus-Phosphorus—“the light bringer,” also known as Lucifer, the one who announces the return of the Sun. And as Morning Star, Venus was reputed to be the Goddess of War. The Mayans used Venus cycles to predict warfare, and in India Venus is Asuracharya—the teacher of the Asuras, the demonic demigods. Goddess of Love, she also rules the heart chakra and governs our worldly desires.
Like human desire, Venus is complicated & sophisticated business.
De sidere (Latin), desire: “await what the stars will bring”
It’s no secret that the desires of the body & longings of the heart are braided together with the light of Venus. On April 12th, with a full moon in Libra, Venus will station direct in her exaltation of Pisces. In honor of our brightest neighbor we’ll gather for a night of veneration & aphroditic stories. We’ll adorn our imaginations with some of the old images and mythic rememberings to feed the heart chakra, and gain a deeper understanding of how Venus shows up in the esoteric & alchemical astrology traditions. Love is a battle, a battle towards the expansive aesthetics of the devotional heart. This one’s for the hummingbirds, the jeweled messengers of the Morning Star.
***
Date: Saturday, April 12th
Time: 7pm
Where: 65 Sanford Way, Barnardsville – The Sundial at The High Meadow
~or~ the Pavilion at Wild Abundance (if rainy)
*important parking info below, carpooling encouraged*
(will also be livestreamed on Zoom – info below)
Suggested donation: $12-36, no one turned away for lack of funds
You can Venmo @MedicineOfTheStarryHeavens, book a ticket on Eventbrite, or bring cash the night of the event.
Bring warm clothes, cushions, blankets, chairs, whatever you need to be comfy and open to the medicine of the starry heavens…
Zoom link: https://us06web.zoom.us/j/85985421599
Meeting ID: 859 8542 1599
Leave a Comment