The Monstrous Feminine Zine: an Astrological
Guide of Dark Femininity, for the Misfits, Harlots, Bad Girls, Succubus and Other Witches

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116 p.
Digital PDF

Septmber 2024

This zine is a love letter to the complex, expansive, powerful, dark femininity we all hold inside of us.
This zine honors the unruly, m

onstrous side of what has been confined and vilifed.
This zine is for everyone looking to expand their understanding of gender and femininity through the dazzling language of astrology.

In collaboration with  Heloïse, we have created a collection of essays that explore the monstrous feminine archetype in its many incarnations. This collection of writing looks to return the witches, sirens, wild women and marvelous beasts to the astrological pantheon to help everyone access all aspects of their femininity. Through exploring the monstrous side of Saturn, Venus, the Moon and fixed stars Algol and Alphard, we contend with how patriarchy punishes power in women and how to access this wealth of cosmic energy with its dark, ancient roots.

I have long been drawn to feminine archetypes roiling with power, controversy, iconoclasm: Poets like Anne Sexton and musicians like Courtney Love and Fiona Apple or mythical figures like Medusa and Hecate. I have long felt my relationship to my femininity— my receptivity, my depth of feeling, my primordial creativity— to be potent and vital. But growing up in this world, I was told again and again that I was too sensitive, too intense, too much. My voice was either ignored or vilified. It confused me because the porosity, the emotional ferocity, I possessed seemed deeply linked with my power.

But there’s an inherent danger to the status quo of a woman or femme or gender-nonconforming individual who knows themselves and speaks their mind. In her essay on Ancient Greek Gender Relations, “The Gender of Sound,” Anne Carson proposes a theory why sovereign women post a threat: “Woman is that creature who puts the inside on the outside. By projections and leakages of all kinds— somatic, vocal, emotional sexual— females expose or expend what should be kept in”. We do not keep ourselves contained but speak truths in a manner that disrupts the flow of power or creates newer, deeper, streams.

Instead of try to understand the unique Other, our interiors have been obscured, our lives outside of men erased. “Men say that there are two unrepresentable things: death and the feminine sex,” feminist theorist Helene Cixious tells us. “That's because they need femininity to be associated with death”. There is some truth to this connection, but the transformative power of the feminine means, like how dead plant material becomes soil for new beings to flower within, death just yields more life. A different life, perhaps, than one presented by the patriarchy.

One way the feminine is obscured is by reducing the two primary feminine planets— The Moon and Venus— to the mother and the maiden, anodyne stereotypes when not in conversation with archetypes beyond obedience and procreation. Though many are drawn to celestial bodies like the Black Moon Lilith to locate the chaotic feminine, I believe it our duty to open up the range of our classic planetary pantheon. Venus is as much the siren seeking justice as she is the attractive ingenue. The Moon is a fierce huntress, acting for the people, as much as she is a vessel for life. We also include Saturn because there is a distinctly feminine bent to the planet that is worth exploring in depth. Finally, we include two snake stars— Algol, the head of Medusa, and Alphard, the heart of the Hydra— that are loud in powerful feminine nativities.

To help people connect with the archetypes in this zine, we have created a Monstrous Feminine Quiz to help you meet your inner monster <3

For each of the four archetypes, this volume contains:
- an essay exploring its facets and manifestations
- real life examples of famous maligned and misunderstood women
- features and qualities of each archetype to help you identify which one you most embody 
- rituals and practices to connect with each monstrous feminine manifestation. 

**Now through 9/28 take 20% off the zine when you purchase** 

May this zine guide you through your own inner richness and beyond. 

Purchase at Heloïse’s website.

︎Want to learn what Monstrous Feminine Archetype you align with? Take our quiz here ︎