Mission & Story
The Fire At Night workshop is the first offering of a larger community project–NOUS–focusing on public education, community building, and literary publication for astrologers. As NOUS, our mission is to help those working in astrology, magic, spirituality, and divinatory-adjacent spaces enhance their writing, editing, and communication skills with the aim of publication and audience growth.
NOUS highlights spiritual collaboration, community, artistic expression, and thinking that fosters a radical communal vision for how to live, imagine, and create together amidst the backdrop of a world-in-crisis. NOUS holds so much promise because it insists on taking seriously an ethics of sharing, creating space, and learning together. It sees divination as an art form in its own right, and believes in the importance of supporting each other in our pursuit of written and artistic excellence as we share the knowledge, wisdom, and ways of being that have been tended to by astrologers, magicians, and occultists for nearly as long as humans have been alive.
NOUS' first online workshop, The Fire At Night: Writing For Astrologers, helps participants to build excellent writing skills under the instruction of a university-trained English and Creative Writing professor and guest lectures from some of the leading astrologers of our moment.
NOUS' monthly book club offers a chance for members to come together to discuss the literary, creative, and divinatory merits of excellent past and contemporary works of fiction, nonfiction, and poetry, with an eye toward building community and gleaning linguistic, metaphorical, and storytelling insights for the written portions of our own divinatory practices.
NOUS' quarterly magazine will publish the best writing and art from the most thrilling voices in astrology, magic, and the occult today in a carefully curated and multivalent publication that features unparalleled original work at the intersection of astrology and culture, academia and the occult, spirituality and social justice.
Founding Members
Cameron Steele, PhD
Founding Member, Lead Instructor
Cameron Steele, PhD, is a writer, teacher, and tarot reader based in the Blue Ridge mountains, where she counsels clients drawing on her doctorate and divinatory training. Recent essays have been published in Gulf Coast, Barrelhouse, Brevity, and Split Lip Magazine, and her dissertation won runner-up for the Iron Horse Review/Texas Tech University Press first book prize in 2021. She also writes the popular weekly newsletter, “interruptions,” at the intersection of literature, illness, and the occult.
Vivi Henriette
Founding Member, Lead Instructor
Vivi Henriette is an LA-based astrologer and tarot reader whose collaborative approach to divination weaves in storytelling and mythology to create a container for her clients to explore their personal narrative. Host of the TalkTalkTalk and AskMeAstros shows, Vivi brings conversations with artists, astrologers, and occult practitioners to their audience and online community.
Jove Spucchi
Founding Member, Lead Instructor
Jove Spucchi is a witch, astrologer, artist, and folk-psychopomp exploring relationship with spirit through butoh, underground dance music, tech, psychedelics, performance, and queerness. In their client work, they give counsel on self-actualization and spiritual development through the co-creation of magical, mindful, and devotional practices. Jove centers the belief that it is through these practices that one develops genuine connections with spirits, their archetypes, faces, and mythic narratives-- relationships that bestow wisdom, creativity, and an expanded and potentiated agency.
Book Club
Our monthly book club, hosted through The Fire At Night newsletter, offers a chance for members to come together to discuss the literary, creative, and divinatory merits of excellent past and contemporary works of fiction, nonfiction, and poetry, with an eye toward building community and gleaning linguistic, metaphorical, and storytelling insights for the written portions of our own divinatory practices.
Sign up for our newsletter to get on the list to receive news about the first book we’re reading, Maggie Thrash’s Rainbow Black, and for information about meeting dates and more!
Future Plans
Future offerings include virtual live events, workshops, and classes by astrologers, academics, and artists with a focus on building clarity, creativity, and confidence in writing across the wide range of genres that today’s astrologers are required to prove competency within today. NOUS borrows its name from Marsilio Ficino’s hermetic definition of the Egyptian-Greek “nous,” a word that denotes an expansive mind, on the one hand, and, on the other, calls forth mercurial prowess for the participation in and collaboration with radical humanity. NOUS is at once cosmic consciousness and the collaborative human project to render it into clear, artful language.
Get Involved
We're actively seeking to grow our community, and if you'd like to participate, start by taking a look at our online offerings:
- Substack Newsletter: Subscribe
- Instagram: @TheFireAtNight
- Discord Community: Join The Fire At Night Discord Community
- Donate: Help Us to Grow our Community!