Alphabet Of Desire is a collaboration between Chris Reppucci and Namu Future
The origin of the symbol we use for a heart, commonly referring in contemporary times to care, nurturing and romantic love, seems in earlier periods, as early as the 5th century B.C., to refer more to sexual love and sensuality in general. This is due to its more botanical origins as both the fig leaf or the fruiting seedpod of the siliphium plant, much used and valued in the Mediterranean world and written about in classical accounts. What plant siliphium referred to is now speculative and may have been a kind of now extinct fennel, although it was under the auspices of Apollo, was a known aphrodisiac, used as a contraceptive as well as a cure for love-madness, lust or romantic obsession. As an object of trade it had its own symbol and appeared widely on coins pottery and other iconography. We think of it largely as one of the four playing card suits, synonymous with the Cups of tarot, watery yet warm with blood. Interesting, already in this hagiography of the Heart there is romance, antique mystery, blood and chalices present. The possible botanical origins of this playing card suit jives with the origins of playing cards in general which arrive in the Tang Dynasty in the 9th century with accounts of playing the “leaf” game, in which players held and traded wood block printed paper. Worth noting that this might have been both paper money and the cards of the game simultaneously, in which these botanical artworks root ideas of value and exchange back to both the Venusian and mercurial currents respectively. Leaves here might refer to the sheets of paper more than the iconography printed on them, but that is up for speculation. Regardless, there is a botanical origin either way, as it required vegetation of some sort to produce paper.
The hearts here are rendered in Green, to reflect these botanical origins, but stressed are the Venusian geomantic figures of Puella, the girl, and Amissio, Loss, in the sense of how one “loses one’s heart” when they fall in love. If you love a thing you open your purse and spend money on it, and if you love a person you spend time with them. There is a kind of willingness to release and output something of the self in such matters of attraction and desire.
The Jupitarian figures of Laetitia, Joy, and Aquisito, Gain, also appear. Gain is the inversion of Loss, in this case the purse is upright like an open sack ready to receive. Laetitia was seen as the wedding arches, a symbol of a joyous occasion. We find all the figures of the two benefics as they were copresent in Pisces, their exaltation and rulership respectively, as this project was conceptualized.
A prepared geomantic house chart composed of these figures is presented with the Part Of Fortune falling into the 8th house, of collaborations and sharing, where it may carry into the 9th, that of the long term, the long distance, the philosophic, the spiritual. There is then the mystery of divination, in retrieving that which is lost to the past, that which has crossed over the western horizon, then there is the quest of searching the world over for the object of desire, the Heart-Chalice as the Holy Grail, in the romantic spirit of Pisces, empathic nostalgia and the oceanic swelling of emotional fantasy, overflowing fountains of remembrance. Loves that flowed to and through and away and now infuse the world at large with their impressions. A way to gain via release, a way to have and not to hold, an aqueduct of botanical origins, a holistically potent aphrodisiac that effects all.
This is not a talisman exactly, though the moods and themes which express from the celestial archetypes were harvested at appropriate elections and called upon to conduct the work. This is more a mood and a mode of participation in romantic emotion present in the greening force of nature and reverberating through our bodies and undulating our memories as they flow across the experience of existing in a wave of co creation.
An interesting note on process. The recipe for the chart was attained through mediumship, gleaning advice as to chart elements suggested during spirit conversation. I then had to play around with the particular parameters given to generate the chart components the spirit described with the seed factors in play. This became a kind of puzzle which took me many, many hours to solve, and then acquire the stamp of approval by said spirit, during which I pondered the more historically recent convention of cryptocurrency, a coin being established as a cryptographic puzzle is broken creating the unit of value. This reminded me of playing card's origins as paper slips which were both the pieces of the game and the tokens of value won in playing, similar in a sense to non fungible tokens or NFTs. I found this all appropriate to the 8th house investments and 9th house / long term threading which sympathizes conceptually with grail quests through the chalice/heart symbol, which are eternal, and considered further the idea of the kykeon, the drink, or entheogenic agent present in what was imbibed during the Eleusinian Mysteries, a botanical key which unlocks within the being pathways to subtle integration further into the world.
Present are Letters from a particular Alphabet Of Desire, coincidentally in the loose tradition of Austin Osman Spear. These figures sew the garments into the Other realms, the pre-lingual and logic-less transference of essences across beacons of meaning and becoming, from whence story unfolds, and within the pages of which the wearer finds themself in novel experience.
Find Alphabet Of Desire HERE