I was instantly in awe of her being so worldly and so well read—and not just in astrology but all things mystical! Shelley had traveled the world and experienced the magic of the Universe firsthand, and my heart thrilled at her vision. It was as if her stories were the missing link, as if she’d opened the door to a whole new world, which, conversely, I realized I’d been seeking all along—a Narnia she described as “the numinous.”
“It means ‘that which is unknown or unknowable,’” she explained … and I felt my soul swoon. Not even the hypnotic allure of a new pair of Miu Miu shoes could have inspired such tingles in me as the web of intrigue the word numinous wove in my mind. Having been raised atheist (I once had to walk out of a midnight mass in case I started yelling “cult!” at the top of my voice), it was kind of like getting the whole concept of, um, God, for the first time. (In fact, sometimes when people ask me what the word means, I have been known to reply: “basically ‘awesome’—but in a biblical sense.”)
Was this the moment I “woke up,” as people in Now Age circles often refer to the day they finally decide to walk out on their corporate career and go train to be a yoga instructor in Bali? Well, in a similar vein, I basically decided there and then that beyond the study of astrology, my new side project was going to be investigating all things numinous for myself. And while we were at it … wasn’t that a great name for a magazine?
Beyond the personal sense of “awakening” I was experiencing, this whole conversation was tugging hard on what had become my finely tuned journalistic sensibilities. I knew (also because the Voice told me) that in the face of such rapid/rabid technological evolution, I couldn’t be the only one experiencing this deep sense of existential unease. From my fashion industry perspective, the whole esoteric shebang could use a bit of an image upgrade (all that patchouli and crushed purple velvet had been hanging around since the 1970s, after all)—but maybe I could have a go at that? The message that the “something more” we were all searching for was actually just sitting there, waiting to be dusted off and given a polish, was something I felt compelled to share. Before I knew it, I was envisioning a beautiful publication that would make it as cool to get to know your spirit animal as it was, say, to shop at Chanel. And lo, The Numinous was born!
Or conceived at least. There was no way in hell I was going to actually jack in my job on Style and start my own magazine instead (or more likely, due to my lack of funds or contacts with connection to funds, lowly blog). I was waaay too attached to the kudos and the baubles, despite the fact I was by now well aware that all the designer trinkets in the world were not going to make me happy. It’s one thing to want to surround yourself with beautiful things (actually a very spiritual thing, since I’ve come to believe that “beauty” is simply the physical manifestation of “love”—a.k.a. pure spirit consciousness)—and quite another to, like, literally worship at the church of Chanel (as many a colleague had declared over the years).
It’s actually been little surprise to me that a lot of the women in my Now Age coven describe themselves as “recovering fashion industry victims.” Because isn’t it also the definition of an addiction? When you keep reaching for the same magic potion (in my case yet more pairs of $350 shoes) expecting a different outcome—and ending up back at rock bottom?
I’ve also learned that as soon as you begin to pay actual attention to the Voice, however, and take even the most tentative steps in the direction it’s urging you to go, the Universe will step in and take matters into its own hands. It’s Law of Attraction 101. As above so below … thoughts becoming things. And it was only a few months later that my husband, from here on referred to as the Pisces, landed a job in New York—starting January 2012. Whether I’d go with him was a no-brainer, which meant it was time to leave the shiny baubles behind, woman-up, and step boldly into the Numiverse.
And here’s the real kicker. Turns out when the Voice was whispering It’s not enough … , it wasn’t trying to tell me that I didn’t have enough—enough stuff, enough success, even enough love. I clearly had buckets of all that; in fact, way more, on a global scale, than my fair share. The message the Voice was trying to hit me over the head with was that I wasn’t living in alignment with my truth. Meaning I wasn’t doing enough to work out all the crap—the karmic lessons, the conditioning, and the limiting beliefs—that was standing in the way of me experiencing a relationship with my most authentic Self. And, as such, a relationship with the Universal Source energy commonly referred to as “God.”
I think I might have mentioned I was raised atheist, correct? And, well, as a result, the G word doesn’t sit that comfortably with me (as you may have guessed). But if not having any religious beliefs drummed into me as a kid had never registered as a lack in my life, I have since come to see how the fathomless sense of emptiness I now found myself struggling with was essentially a lack of faith in the idea that all life on Earth is sustained and united by our connection to the Divine.
In the meantime, I’d been willfully plastering Band Aids over the other “wounds” I’d sustained over the course of my life. The superficial flesh wounds of being the weird kid in school and of my parents’ divorce. And then the deeper lesions inflicted on my soul by my eating disorder, my relationship with the Capricorn, and my investing pretty much all my spiritual development and sense of self in glad rags and handbags.
But as I began to investigate all things numinous, it was as if every gong bath, every meditation, and every intuitive tarot session was clearing a path back to Source (my higher Self, the Universal oneness … okay, God), and soon all the skeletons came screeching out of the closet, begging (in a kind of zombie apocalypse way at times) to be healed. Slaying them (or, rather, putting them to rest, RIP) has not always been pretty, but it has been consistently empowering, endlessly awe-inspiring, and often waaaay more fun than another Friday night drinking my cares away (because why would I want to wash away the things I care about?)—as we’ll discover in the chapter on how, for me, healing is the new nightlife.
Another word on the concepts of “healing” and “wounds” here, too, since these are words you’ll find me using a lot. Rather than be repelled by the idea that this suggests there’s something “wrong” with you—how about leaning in to the concept that there’s actually something very, VERY right with you, that needs “healing,” meaning bringing into wholeness in order for you to be fully empowered.
As for the people you may encounter who prefer to dismiss all things numinous as “woo-woo” bullshit or a bunch of silly girls getting squeamish over their Ouija boards? (a), screw the patriarchal system that decided anything to do with divination and intuition has little bearing in the “real world.” And (b), when not so long ago I was interviewed for British Vogue about the subject of astrology entering the mainstream, my response to a variation on the above objections went something along the lines of: “The world is divided into scientists and mystics—those who mainly ask ‘how’ and those who mainly ask ‘why.’ Left- and right-brain thinkers. I stand firmly in the latter camp (thanks in part to my Cancer Moon—lol), because, for me, without this kind of existential self-inquiry, life is meaningless.”
Not that we don’t need our fully-functioning right-brain faculties to navigate the daily task of being human, of course. But with no other word for “God” in my five-year-old lexicon, I can also see now that even as a child astrology spoke to a deeply human need in me—a need to know my place in the cosmos, in order to feel connected to my highest Self, to my fellow beings, and to the planet we happen to call “home.”
Because you know, one of the best things about deciding to simply embrace the numinous, to marvel at the magic of the Universe, and then do the internal work it tends to ask of you, is that you get to align yourself with the beating pulse of our Mother Earth. And if there’s anything we all know it’s that we need to do everything in our power right NOW to foster a more harmonious coexistence with the natural world.
It also seems to me