The moon, ever shifting through phases of silvery light, holds unique, potent energies that can guide and support us through the sacred rhythms of life. Living in sync with the moon is especially helpful when it comes to pursuing our passion projects, as the progression of moon phases naturally supports creation, growth, culmination, and release. Each phase of the moon holds its own magic, which we can draw upon to assist us in these endeavors as well as to celebrate our achievements along the way. I’ve crafted a full moon herbal bath salt to help you do just that.

UNIQUE ENERGIES OF THE EIGHT PHASES OF THE MOON

Dark/New Moon
This lunar phase’s energy invites us to a place of darkness and stillness, a watery womb of rebirth where we can begin again if we choose. It’s an ideal phase for inner reflection and sowing seeds of intention for long-term growth.

Waxing Crescent
The sliver of light of the waxing crescent stirs new energy that can help us set our intentions in motion through goal setting and action. Nurture the seeds you planted by taking practical steps toward your desires.

First Quarter
The moon is half light and half dark during this phase, with energy expanding outward. Continue with actions toward your goals, making decisions and dealing with any obstacles along the way. Refine and reshape your plan as needed and continue moving forward with perseverance and steadfastness.

Waxing Gibbous
Energy is rapidly building. This is a good time to evaluate your progress, continue to refine your intentions, and prepare for culmination.

Full Moon
This is the culminating phase of full illumination and lunar power at its peak. It’s a time to celebrate your achievements while also taking some time for self-care, for cleansing and recharging in this phase’s abundant energy.

Waning Gibbous
After the peak, the process of release begins. It’s a time to feel grateful for your growth and all that you’ve learned, while at the same time letting go of any excess that doesn’t serve your desires.

Last Quarter
As the moon is once again half lit, the energy of the last quarter turns inward. Resolve any unfinished business, tie up loose ends, and continue to clear what no longer serves your goals.

Waning Crescent
Also known as the Crone’s Moon, this final sliver of light before the darkness invites us to enter into rest and let go so we can begin anew, whether that be with a new passion project or a new phase of an existing project.

Full Moon Celebration Bath Salt

It’s important to pause and celebrate our achievements in life—both the small steps along the way as well as larger, culminating events. The peak phase of the moon is an ideal time for celebrating these milestones.

I’ve created a full moon herbal bath salt to help you celebrate and honor yourself and your work in the form of self-care and self-reverence. Bathe in the full luminosity of this moon phase and fully indulge in the experience of this luxurious botanical preparation, which will relax and uplift you, cleanse your aura, recharge your spirit, and ready you to fully soak up the potent lunar energy of the full moon.

Ingredients:

• 1 cup Epsom salts

• ½ cup Himalayan pink salt

• 1 tablespoon each of dried rose petals or buds (unsprayed), lavender buds, and chamomile blossoms

• 10 to 20 drops total of essential oil (I like to add 8 drops each of frankincense and copaiba essential oils)

How-to:

Blend the salts together in a glass bowl.

Add the dried herbs and gently stir them into the mixture. Add the essential oils drop by drop, continuing to stir as you do, incorporating the oil evenly into the mixture. If you’d like, put your bath salts on a windowsill beneath the light of the full moon, to be charged by its potent energy.

Add ½ to 1 cup of the salts to your bathwater. Enjoy your full moon bath and celebrate you!

A thing of beauty is a joy forever, or so John Keats (1795–1821) stated in the opening stanza of his poem Endymion (1818). While the line is well-known, its”meaning in relation to the story of the shepherd Endymion and his complicated love life is rather more obscure. In fact, when you consider exactly what is meant by that opening line, you must wonder if anything should be a joy forever.

Before I get to Keats, I should mention that during the 19th century, the name Endymion was famous because of the book of the same name by Benjamin Disraeli, Earl of Beaconsfield, a former prime minister and best-selling novelist, beloved by the public for his romanticism, which often came with a political edge. When he published his final novel Endymion in 1880, the newspapers wrote that “first class passengers, especially ladies, carry it with them as they would a favorite pug or a flask of fluid refreshment.” In Disraeli’s novel, Endymion is the son of a disgraced politician, determined to redeem the family name by becoming a politician for the other side. Disraeli’s hero is good, virtuous, and ultimately successful, with the book ending on his assent to prime minister. The connection to the poem is purely superficial, but the name is used to denote goodness and love together with a sense of renewal and revitalization. You could also guess that for the young women clasping the book as they traveled, it was a joy until the last page, if not forever.

The wellspring of the name, well known to Disraeli, was obviously the poem. Keats based his work on the Greek myth of the beautiful shepherd on the slopes of Mount Latmus, named Endymion. From the various retellings, the shepherd was possibly also a prince and an astronomer, but what we can agree on is that he was so handsome that celestial beings placed him into an eternal sleep so they could worship him forever. Licymnius of Chios, an ancient Greek poet, told the story that Hypnos, the god of sleep, loved the shepherd so much that he cast his spell over him with the caveat that Endymion’s eyes remained open so Hypnos could gaze into them eternally. Mercifully, Keats told the marginally less creepy version of the myth, in which the slumbering beauty is visited by the goddess of the moon, Selena (or Cynthia as she is known in this poem). To the relief of all viewers of the art created from said myth, Endymion’s eyes remain closed.

In the traditional myth, Selena, the Titan goddess of the moon, fell deeply in love with the beautiful shepherd and begged Zeus, another of her lovers, to grant Endymion eternal youth so that the shepherd would always be with her. The goddess should have known never to trust Zeus, a tricksy devil at the best of times and one with a grudge in the case of our pretty shepherd. Turns out Endymion had also been the object of desire for Hera, Zeus’s wife/sister, and so Zeus chose to interpret the plea from Selena in a malicious manner. Instead of making Endymion immortal, he put the shepherd into an eternal sleep, preserving his beauty in a permanently unconscious manner.

Not that I’m one to speak in defense of Zeus, but he is not the only one to be petty in this myth. A lesser-known story connected to Endymion is that a girl called Muia found the sleeping shepherd and took a shine to him. He was a great listener, so she would sit and talk to him every night and her endless chatter disturbed his celestial sleep, which is quite a talent. This infuriated Selena so much that she turned the girl into a fly, doomed to annoy sleepers forever with her irritating buzzing. There are no romantic art depictions of this particular myth, unfortunately, so Selena’s shady past can be overlooked on this occasion.

When artists portrayed this poetic love story, the emphasis was always on the gorgeous supine shepherd, his beauty shimmering in the moonlight. Above him, sighing and longing, leans Selena, gazing upon the man she loves who will never gaze back. Anne-Louis Girodet’s 1791 painting The Sleep of Endymion shows a remarkably naked shepherd in all his glory, snoozing under a bush while a chubby child, presumably Eros, parts the branches so the silvery fingertips of moonlight can caress his splendid form. By the time of Jerome-Martin Langlois’s 1822 interpretation, Selena had taken an equally naked shape and is seen floating down on the beams of moonlight to get a closer look at the sleeping beauty with Eros helpfully lifting his blanket. Mercifully, Eros is missing from later paintings as his presence feels both a little unnecessary and rather weird. I’m sure the goddess can sneak a peek under the blanket on her own. By Victor Pollet’s work of 1854, Selena gazes upon the object of her desire alone, her body as pale as the crescent moon that cradles her. Endymion, covered by the smallest piece of animal fur, his shepherd’s crook clutched in his hand, remains an object of glory, the personification of perfection.

Another reason for the departure of Eros from the scene might be an extension of the myth where the moon goddess not only gazed upon her slumbering love but physically visited him every night, giving birth to fifty children by him, which is a little excessive. A magical interpretation appeared in John Atkinson Grimshaw’s 1879 Endymion on Mount Latmus, where Selena, fluttering like a fairy, glows above the object of her desire. It could be that the goddess is departing her love in the glow of the rising sun, curving her body to get a last look at his face, clutching her heart as she is banished by the day.

This rather lustier attraction becomes apparent in later depictions, such as Edward Poynter’s 1902 painting showing Selena skipping down from the sky to find her lover sleeping among the poppies, which denote his endless slumber. A year later, George Frederick Watts painted Selena as a swirling cloud engulfing her lover, creating a circle along with his golden sleeping form. The spirit of the goddess seems to enter the slumbering shepherd, who echoes her body above him, and they appear to form two halves of a whole. They become the phases of the moon together, symbolic of the time passing and the goddess’s love renewing eternally.

The tale of Endymion, the sleeping shepherd, adored in his unconsciousness, is remarkable for the passivity of the male protagonist. Our hero is eternally snoozing because a goddess wanted to possess him. His best qualities are being submissive, silent, and decorative—talents usually required of heroines and yet this feminization of a hero is accepted as a triumph and the pinnacle of romance. There is also a reflection of nature and its joyful cycles. You can interpret Selena’s swooping down to Endymion every night as the lowering of the moon so that the sun can rise, as his name may be derived from the Greek word for “to dive into.” Thus Endymion’s power is to tempt the moon down every night so that the sun can rise and day can come again. In that way, his beauty is his power, keeping the world turning even from his endless sleep. Likewise, Selena’s love is not destructive like that of some of her fellow immortals, but revives each night, new and passionate, to last forever.

“Moonlight drowns out all but the brightest stars.” —J.R.R. Tolkien

Opalescent moonstone resembles a tiny planet or a luminous mini-moon. Moonlight and moonglow wrap the world in radiant light that glows like a pearl.

All things related to the moon have long been among my favorites, which is not surprising, I suppose, since the first thing I notice about my surroundings is the light. But here’s a surprising truth about the moon: Unlike the sun or stars, it does not radiate its own light. Rather, it reflects the sunlight that hits its surface, just like when light strikes a mirror.

In fact, although the moon magically looks pearly white to us, it is actually quite dull, with a massive gray surface similar to that of a dusty rock. Still, the light of the moon appears preternaturally beautiful. It seems to wrap itself around us in a warm, radiant glow that creates luminescence in anything it touches, especially the skin. In mythology and folklore, the moon is imbued with magical powers. But in truth, it’s a fraud.

No matter what it looks like or how you explain it, moonlight is an illusion, which in some ways serves to make it even more compelling, mysterious, and alluring. We strive to appear bathed in a moonlit glow—radiant, luminous, and lit from within. Here are a few secret ways to evoke the light of the moon on your face and body, with the help of makeup and skin care.

MS Beauty EyeLights

Cream Eyeshadow No one knows how to get a glow going like clean beauty guru Rose-Marie Swift, founder of RMS Beauty. Swift has worked with Sports Illustrated cover models and top celebrities, and RMS Beauty EyeLights Cream Eyeshadow has a slavishly devoted following—for good reason. A little dab on the lids lights up the entire face and creates a subtle look when you’ve got somewhere really special to go. It’s creamy but it stays put, and it includes organic green tea extract and ethically sourced mica. EyeLights won’t crease or smudge, and it reflects light so beautifully that your eyes radiate moonbeams! rmsbeauty.com

Soft Services Buffing Bar Miniature Collection

Any bookworm will be drawn to this collection of four mini buffing body bars, microcrystal exfoliants shaped like Lilliputian bars of soap. The bars are packaged in what looks like a book, and they’re perfect as a gift, great for travel, or as a special treat for yourself. With mineral-derived microcrystals tucked into bars that feature a moisturizing base, the collection features four flavors—Original (fragrance-free), Green Banana, Debaser (by D.S. & Durga), and Affocato L’Orange (espresso, vanilla, and coconut cream). Designed to smooth and buff rough spots and leave the skin looking luminous. softservices.com

California Naturals Glow Oil Body Wash

Owen Wilson is an investor in California Naturals, and also an adviser: His official title is “chief shampoo officer.” The Glow Oil Body Wash is a light gel that softly foams in the shower, leaving a fine mist of moisture lingering on the skin to keep it glowing. Loaded with lubricious botanical oils, including evening primrose, guava seed, sunflower seed, and aloe, it’s designed to soften and feed the skin. thecalifornianaturals.com

Live Tinted Born to Shine

A makeup and skin-care hybrid, Born to Shine is a skin hydrator, with hyaluronic acid, squalane, and sunflower seed oil that all nourish and hydrate, with an added bonus: a dollop of micro-shimmers that create a halo of light that looks like a lit-from-within glow. It’s perfect on its own, or blended into moisturizer or foundation, in three shades that radiate warmth for all skin tones. livetinted.com

PHOTOGRAPHY BY LILLIAN LIU
Model: @prisciliavanb
Designs: Syban Velardi-laufer @sybansyban
Makeup: Maya Lewis Makeup @mayalewismakeup
Lighting: Lumecube @lumecube

Model: Karie Holst @karieleighholst
Environment Artist: CSaros @eyeofsaros Dress: Firefly Path @fireflypath
Headdress: DreamscometrueUA @dreams_cometrueua
Necklace: Regal Rose @regalrose Nails: Lory Sun Artistry @lorysunartistry Lighting: Elinchrom @elinchrom_ltd, Nanlite @nanliteusa

On a long winter’s night, at an hour through which most mortals slumber like cozy hedgehogs, your mind roams the heavens. You soar past the rooftops and treetops and into the clouds; you drift among stars and planets, gazing tenderly down at the quiet world.

You are drawn, naturally, to the moon. She is your sister; her light is your light too.

So it’s natural that when you open your eyes in the darkness, she follows you to earth. In her shimmering gown and glowing moonstones, she finds you in the slumbering woods—among the remnants of a Gothic palace, let’s say—and dips her feet into the stream of time. Thus she connects herself to the tides, the stars, the planet, and the universe. We believe there’s no kinder protector possible.

“Assemble, ye huntresses and warriors,” she calls. “Gather to us, our sister spirits of the heavens’ untapped powers!”

You watch, rapt, as a pantheon of celestial figures manifest in different phases and moods. They’re luminous, regal, curious, playful, commanding, serene … Clad in gold dust and silver armor, bright silks in shades that drape like curtains made of twilight, and bold tiaras with dangerous tips, your divine companions marry strength to beauty and hold spirit above all. They don’t need to bow to the queen goddess, because the moon doesn’t require obeisance in order to shine; her power is her power is her power, and there’s no one who will deny it. Each one of you will have a turn to illuminate the land, the sea, the sky.

Yes, you are also an aspect of the moon. This is also your night to shine.

Photographer Lillian Liu, the brilliance behind our celestial photo feature, calls the silvery über-goddess on our cover “the soft whisper of night, the comforting glow that keeps the creeping darkness at bay.” As embodied by model Karie Holst, she’s also a creation of inspiration and innovation, just as you’d expect from an artist whose own fantasies always fuel her art.

The goddesses have bestowed multiple talents on Lillian. She’s not only a prolific photographer but also a model and a concert pianist who has performed everywhere from Vancouver (her current city) to Paris. She holds multiple degrees in music, including one in classical piano performance earned at London’s Royal College of Music, and is on the faculty of several

esteemed schools and conservatories. As a lover of antiquarian books, vintage art, animals, and (of course) fantastic costumes, she’s a creative contributor and member of the Paris-based humanitarian and environmentalist collective Free Spirit, which blends art and music with philanthropy.

With such a diverse background, where did she draw inspiration for these pictures?

“My moon goddess here isn’t derived from one culture specifically,” Lillian says, while noting that the water sign of Cancer, which is ruled by the moon, did inspire the stream in which she’s stepping and the jugs on the ground around her.

Lillian created the moon goddess character with Karie in mind. Karie is a “chameleon” who Lillian says beams yin energy—the quiet, feminine, dark type of power that finds its mate in the more aggressively garish yang.

The exquisite costume helped guide the shoot. “I build ideas from the costume up,” Lillian says. One of her first steps was to “source the dress that would convey the theme best.” She found it in the design studio of JoEllen Elam Conway, otherwise known as Firefly Path. “The gown was a perfect piece,” she says, “because of its simplicity and that fabric, which offers sleek shine with its liquid texture and an ethereal design, reminiscent of glowing moonlight radiating off the water. The floating pieces of the gown on her skin look like embedded sigils.”

She decided that Karie’s makeup would be “cool-toned and dewy as well to match the luminescent glow of the dress. And of course, we can’t forget the white wig!” Lillian and Karie did the makeup and styling themselves.

When I asked how Lillian found the perfect location for the cover shoot, she told me she created it—in her apartment.

That was where she took the photos. Once they were done, she started sketching an ideal environment for the character they’d just created. The Gothic arches made the perfect frame for Karie’s sinuous pose, and we think they’re all the palace a moon goddess will ever need—because of course she should have plants and flowing water and open sky wherever she goes.

Finally, Lillian says, “I approached my artist friend CSaros, and he brought this beautiful and mystical world to life” as a 3D rendering. “I then embedded the photograph of the model, painting in light and shadow, and began toning the whole piece,” shading the colors seamlessly.

So the Gothic arches, the stream, the silver-blue rays reaching through twisty tree branches like the timeless enchanted forest of our wishes—all of that was created from scratch and imagination, as if the goddess summoned it into being herself ?

Well, naturally. That’s what goddesses do: They create.

And, of course, they conjure. We imagine the goddesses of these inside pages represent the moon in all her attributes and phases. They were, Lillian says, “inspired by different stories and elements” and include “warriors that channel their power from the night” and the personifications of light and radiance itself, all tricked out in gold and silver … as well as a few figures of, say, speckled moonbeams on a staircase, and a sleeper who might be the dark moon at rest between waning and waxing.

You’ll recognize our perennial favorite Yinsey Wang, who embodies a mere sliver of luminous moon in glimmering blue sky, touching down at a stream in the Azores. Other phases evolve in new locations. Lillian pauses at the Château du Vivier in Fontenay-Trésigny, France, where Janis from Mars brings the blue-silver crescent of an armored new moon. Outside a church in Paris, Theresa Fractale reflects the golden glister of a bright harvest phase crowned with stars, hovering just above Earth in late summer and early fall.

In time, even the brightest heavenly body feels the need for rest. The moon goddess understands, and she promises to bestow upon you the gift of deep, peaceful repose. She guides you toward that oneiric realm in which all your dreams will be good ones.

“You’ll wake refreshed and serene,” she promises.

So go ahead—lie down below the windows of that Gothic palace grown up. Drape yourself over the stones like a knight in a Pre-Raphaelite painting. Sleep as long as you can—even after the sun rises and beams yang energy toward Earth. We know the moon is always with us.

I’m going to make a prophecy. All through the coming year, I predict, you will dream of the moon. You’ll embrace her spirit and take her luster for your own. While you sleep, let the shadows guard your secrets; this gathering of celestial beings will inspire you to create more. If cold, bitter sorrow strikes, you’ll continue to shine. You have the moon’s harmonious balance for inspiration.

That’s because the truth, my luminous sisters, is that we’re all goddesses of the moon. We have our phases and dreams, our powers and light. And this season, we shine together.

Sometime this month, I’ll be sitting on the couch, or making supper, or writing, and I’ll be called to come outside; to come quickly. The moon is out, one of my daughters will tell me. The full moon is shining over our Massachusetts home.

Sometime over the next year, we’ll hear about a special appearance of the moon, a must-see event, according to the person on Channel 5, or an internet post, or The Old Farmer’s Almanac. It will have a poetic name, Strawberry Moon, Harvest Moon, Supermoon, Wolf Moon. Or perhaps, the full moon will be the closest to Earth it has been in fifty years or the closest it will be again for another sixty. Or maybe there will be a lunar eclipse, where the moon will appear as a red ball, a Blood Moon with depth and shadow that make it appear close enough to hold.

We’ll wait for the moment the newsperson or the internet or the almanac has promised is best to view the moon in some spectacular disguise. We’ll leave the house in slippers, trying first the backyard, then standing in the middle of the street, then wandering toward the railroad bridge, until the moon becomes visible over the peaked roof of the corner store or the train tracks heading to Concord, or emerges through a hole in the clouds, appearing first as a hopeful yellow-white glow before showing us its gentle face.

Or we might be driving home at night and see the full moon rising over the Mystic River, huge and low, and know that by the time we get home it will have returned to its normal size. We must look now, we know. Look, look at the full moon. How had we forgotten that this was the night?

Or maybe it’s daytime, and we’ll see it iridescent against the bright blue sky. The moon is always there, always visible, even in the day, or so we are told. Still, each time seems like a new discovery, one that must be shared.

When my youngest daughter was little, she loved the moon so much that I made her a toy one, an embroidered pillow with a softly smiling face, because it’s the face she likes best—the face made of craters, that children around the world see as a rabbit, a toad, a holy name.

When I was very little, I was told, and believed, that the moon was made of cheese. I wonder what those other children believe. I wonder how many of those children, sometime this month, will rush outside—calling to their mothers—to seek the full moon as an old friend.

As long as my daughters are with me, we will rush out to see the full moon and feel cheated if we miss it. We’ll wake up at night to look for it, bright and round in the sky. We’ll watch and exclaim and take pictures that never come out the way they should, not as big, not as clear, not as radiant against the blackness of the night sky. But we’ll try anyway, because we want to remember, to mark this small moment of connection to each other, to the people everywhere, who—as our mothers often tell us—are looking up at the same sky.

When we come back inside, my own mother will be waiting on the phone. “Did you see that moon?” she’ll ask us. “How did it look from your house?”

Bring the Vibrant Energy of the Forest Into Your Home

Beneath a canopy of coniferous emerald and autumnal lden boughs, I wander with a woven basket swinging ntly at my side. I weave between the trunks of sentient trees, through fern and hollow; the moss soft beneath my feet is like a velvet path. I move as if I’ve always belonged to the woods, with a sense of peace and a sense of home. The trees whisper an ancient language I understand as I stoop to slowly and reverently gather bits of moss that smell of rain and inky-capped mushrooms blooming in a bed of clover.

Upon returning home, I lay out my forest treasures on the rustic farm table with care: birch twigs, tufts of soft moss, and acorns smooth and shining, still warm from the earth. With eager but patient hands, I begin to play with my treasures, carefully incorporating the pieces together, binding the sticks with twine, and shaping each natural ornament into diamond-like structures. I adorn them with foraged finds, creating pleasing patterns, adding pops of color, and combining textures to make ornamental charms that hold the energies of the forest.

Acorns for growth.
Birch twigs for healing.
Moss for resilience.

When the ornaments are finished, I return with them to the forest, hanging them on low branches, whispering thanks to the spirits of the land. With these natural gifts they gave to me, I make them offerings to show gratitude and to feel the oneness between us. I keep these ornaments hanging in the trees of the forest for a little while so the fae spirits can enjoy and absorb their energy, then I bring them back into my home to serve as decorative, sacred portals that keep me connected to the realm of the woodland.

Make your own

You’ll need:

• Small, fallen tree branches cut to lengths of 5 to 6 inches (there are plenty on the forest floor)
• Hot glue sticks and a glue gun
• A small length of twine
• Adornments from nature: moss, lichen, dried herbs, dried flowers (I like rosebuds and silvery mugwort, as they hold their color), pinecones, acorns, seeds, bones, shells
• Other baubles: crystals (tiny gems and small crystal towers), old keys, coins, ribbons, and other personal trinkets

Instructions:

• Form a diamond shape with four branches, overlapping them where they meet.
• Secure each overlapping corner with a dot of hot glue and some twine wound and knotted. Make a loop through the twine at the top of the ornament for hanging.

• Decorate your ornament by gluing your natural adornments to the sticks. Trim off the brown backing of the moss before adhering it.

Keep your moss looking fresh and green

• Keep your woodland decoration out of direct sunlight.
• Occasionally spritz the moss of your decoration with a fine mist of water.
• Once the color naturally fades, you can bring it back to life by painting the moss with a mixture of watercolor or acrylic craft paint mixed with glycerin and water. Choose a green paint that’s close to the color of your moss. You can mix it with other colors to achieve the best color match. In a separate container, mix one part glycerin with two parts warm water. Slowly add some of the water-glycerine mixture to the paint, stirring, achieving a consistency that is thin but not too runny. With a foam brush, dab the mixture onto the moss and allow it to dry.

Wherever we live—whether in a large, beautiful home, a small studio, a trailer, a rented room, or even just corner in someone else’s house—it’s important to make that space into a magical sanctuary. In a world of fast-paced social media, a peaceful space of one’s own is critical to mental health. Each one of us should have a personal sanctuary where we can unwind, connect with ourselves, and make our own magic.

For me, being creative requires a space where I can get away from the outside world, a place to meditate and allow my inner muse to express herself. I need to be able to putter around, play a bit, allow the magic to flow without restraint or critique. And while “magic” might mean different things to different people, I believe that at root it’s always about transformation—a shift from ordinary to sacred, mundane to meaningful. A curated space allows that transformation to happen.

Your own space doesn’t have to be elaborate. It can be anything you want: an entire studio to yourself or just a chair by a window, maybe a corner in the attic kitted out with cozy poufs and stacked books, or a favorite tree in a quiet park. It can even be so simple as an old suitcase holding beloved items—your journal, a few photos, a favorite candle. A simple box can store sacred writing tools and precious mementos to help you shift into magical mind space. What matters most is that this place feels like yours.

A special space of one’s own is not just about aesthetics (though for me, that’s a significant part of it). It’s also emotional. Just as the body needs rest, the spirit needs retreat; having a place to return to that can ground and soothe you is essential to well-being and creative flow. Here you breathe, think, feel, and create. The setting holds you and gives you permission to simply be.

Rituals also help transform an ordinary area into a sacred one. Lighting a candle, brewing tea, opening a journal—these small acts send a signal to the unconscious that you’re shifting into a different state of being. Rituals don’t need to be elaborate; their power lies in the intention behind them.

TIPS FOR CREATING A MAGICAL SPACE ON A BUDGET

It’s easy to design a dreamy sanctuary in a large home with no budget constraints. But how do you do it with limited funds or a landlord who doesn’t allow alterations?

• You don’t need a large budget or extravagant décor. The process begins with intention. Start by listing what’s important to you. Ask yourself, What sensations or objects make me feel grounded, happy, and inspired? Where do I feel most myself ? Meditate on those answers, then browse Pinterest or magazines for inspiration. Ask yourself, Am I drawn to cozy reading nooks? Old-fashioned desks? Cloudlike beds draped in linen?

• Once you know your vibe, map out your space and list priorities. Pay close attention to lighting, scent, and sound; these elements deeply affect your mood and focus. The sound of silence, the comforting scent of essential oils, or a soft reading light can turn any four walls into a haven.
• Wall color can dramatically change a room on a small budget. Start by buying sample sizes to test the hues. If painting isn’t allowed, try hanging fabric instead. You can drape fabric on curtain rods or staple it to thin wood slats and mount them at the top of the wall like a tapestry. Just be prepared to patch and paint over holes when you move out. The transformation is worth the effort.
• Facebook Marketplace, thrift stores, and swap meets are treasure troves for inexpensive furniture, lighting, and décor. If you’re an artist, lay down an old thrifted rug or use painted cardboard to catch your mess. Bibliophiles can create affordable, stylish bookshelves with boards and bricks or decorative cinder blocks. Stores like Home Depot will cut boards to your desired size.

• Old lace tablecloths—especially ones with damage—can be tea- or coffee-stained and repurposed as charming bed or couch covers. Layer them to hide holes, or let their imperfections show—they can add character and vintage charm.

• If you love herbs and flowers, hang bunches to dry from bamboo plant stakes. This adds a witchy, earthy vibe and naturally perfumes the space. Houseplants are another great way to bring vibrancy and life into a room. Consult a local nursery to find varieties that match your lighting conditions.
• Baskets are both beautiful and practical. You’ll find plenty in thrift stores—use them to organize clothes, desk supplies, or creative tools. You can even hang them from the ceiling to create an old-world feel.
• Even everyday items can be made beautiful when arranged with care. The key to a sacred magical space lies in intention and respect. Root in, slow down, and make each corner meaningful.

We all know the cottage. The one in the story, the one where the witch lives. It sits east of the sun and west of the moon, a stone’s throw away from a glass mountain and a quick trot from the hollow tree where three dogs howl. It’s a place of boundaries and limits and risk, the beginning and end of the story, time out of time. That cottage.

And the witch makes it … cozy? Petite, anyway. Maybe even miniature.

A dollhouse, with or without humanlike figures inside. It always looks as if she just stepped out for a second. She’ll be back before you know it, with some marvel hidden in her pocket.

We all know the witch too. She’s better than her reputation. She is a healer, most likely; a reader, certainly. Her shelves are as crowded with books as her rafters are thick with bunches of drying herbs. Or maybe (additionally?) she is a temptress and a goddess of wrath, the one who builds a home out of candy and cake and then calls us rude for tearing it to bits and stuffing our faces. Or she’s a doddering old grandma waiting innocently for her red-caped granddaughter to show up with some lunch.

Which witch is yours? Where does she live? Does she prefer to sleep in a cozy cupboard bed or a wrought-iron cot? What fills her cauldron, her nightstand, her étagère?

Yes, of course witches have étagères. They need the shelves for their supplies and the objets d’art et de vertu they bring back from their travels. One broomstick can carry a girl pretty far in a night—over the seas, maybe, or back in time about a hundred years or so.

My witch is a time traveler. She also adores tiny things. She’s a friend to the bats, and of course she loves cats (and occasional rhymes). She grows flowers for the bees and bakes cakes just because.

If I talk about her as I would a friend, it’s because to me she is Real.

Enchanted Reality

A miniaturist craves two reactions: Wow, how did you make that? And Wow, that looks Real!

When a mini lover tells you that something seems “real,” they’re talking about way more than verisimilitude. Let’s capitalize it: What’s Real is a feeling, a vibe, a je ne sais quoi that connects with the Beyond and the creator in all of us.

The Real is the otherworldly rush I get from gazing into a scene. I let my eyes go soft and a little blurry. I breathe deeply and remind myself to relax. And then I forget what size I am. I also forget the year, the date, and where I’m standing—I melt into the setting. I get to live in that suspended moment, get a taste of what it would be like to be Mary, Queen of Scots, in hiding (for example). Or the wisewoman who bandages the dragon queen’s wounds and helps her live to fight another day. Or the childless crone who watches from a window while a couple of waifs pick at the walls of her cottage and swallow gobbets of marzipan and chocolate from the place where she lives.

Just for a moment, let’s not call this Real thing a dollhouse. I prefer the term domestic sculpture. We’re talking about art on a finicky scale, a magic of transformation.

No surprise, miniaturists are wisewomen and witches themselves. We are crafty repurposers and makers of arcane little doodads that puzzle our partners and give our familiars something to bat around the floor. We are Borrowers, à la the mini people in the Mary Norton novels, taking things from the big world and making them Real. We fashion stonework out of egg cartons and thatched roofs out of faux fur; we cut up our clothes to stitch crazy quilts. And please don’t invite us to play chess. The temptation is too great—queens and knights make lovely statuary, and a pawn is a fabulous pedestal to prop up a polymer-clay sink. You would be wise to at least ask us to empty our pockets before we leave.

“I actually feel it when an item has a history—a soul, if you will,” says my friend Mark, who is building a vast Georgian mansion, one room at a time. Whether the sense of history comes from the age of the object itself (vintage is huge in the tiny world) or from the parts having done duty as something else, nostalgia helps to create a connection to a world he is both reproducing and correcting in perfect little scenes.

Mini Reality and the Fine Arts

Some of the world’s great museums display miniaturism as fine art. Denmark’s National Museum has collected over a hundred antique domestic sculptures,

and in Holland you’d probably have a hard time finding a museum that doesn’t feature a dollhouse. In the U.S., the mini capital is Chicago, where you’ll find both the Thorne miniature rooms and Colleen Moore’s fairy castle. Both deliver a Real rush, but they do it in different ways.

The Thorne rooms—a few more of which are displayed in Phoenix, a few in Knoxville, Tennessee—are the gold standard for letter-perfect reality. Narcissa Niblack Thorne was a collector and design historian whose husband was an heir to the Montgomery Ward estate.

With a bit of that five-and-dime fortune, she commissioned over one hundred of the world’s swankiest and most accurate representations of historical settings from the late 1200s to the 1940s, sixty-eight of which are now housed at the Art Institute of Chicago. Launching her project during the Depression of the 1930s, Thorne hired out-of-work artisans, designers, and fine artists to re-create great interiors from Europe, Asia, and North America: We curtsey in a gilded French salon from 1780, or we pull up a square chair in a New Mexican dining room from 1940, its white fireplace carefully shaded to show smoke damage. Admire the cubist paintings in a tiny California hallway.

You can’t help walking away from the Thorne rooms with some morsel of historical knowledge. So Thorne’s labor of love completes the mission of the Dutch baby houses of the 1500s and beyond.

Usually a tall cabinet with shelves divided into rooms, the baby house was a teaching tool: Little girls were meant to learn about housekeeping by caring for their mini rooms. (For a trip back in time to see such a house, read or watch The Miniaturist.) Almost all of the rooms are in 1:12 scale, which means that one inch of a miniature scene equals one foot of real life—the most common scale for mini creations. The same proportions suit the miniature hyperreal in Randy Hage’s faithfully gritty renderings of decaying storefronts in the New York City area—club CBGB, for example, and a favorite delicatessen, a mom-and-pop grocery. You’ll never see anything more realistically Real; you might even find that IRL seems dull and imprecise after you sink into the miniaturist trance.

As proof that a domestic sculpture doesn’t have to be realistic to feel Real, a few miles away from the Thorne rooms, you can visit a twelve-foot-high fairy castle. This is the brainchild of actress Colleen Moore, who took her dark-eyed gamine charm off to Hollywood in the 1920s to cavort across the silver screen as a flapper. The moment you see her creation, you simply fall in love; you become a different person, a more hopeful, heart-glad sort of fairy (or witch). It’s a glittering marvel that took seven years and $500,000 to make.

In contemporary currency, that’s a cost of more than $9 million—but the skills to make such a magnum opus don’t exist anymore, so, you know, priceless.

Moore was known to hand over her own personal jewels and ask that they be turned into the back of a mini chair, or maybe a diamond and emerald chandelier. Her undersea-themed library holds tiny books (usually a few lines of text spread over several pages) signed by the likes of F. Scott Fitzgerald (This Side of Paradise), Anita Loos (Gentlemen Prefer Blondes), Agatha Christie (At Bertram’s Hotel), and Daphne du Maurier (Rebecca). The astonishing confection is now on display in the Griffin Museum of Science and Industry.

The fact that these houses have a place in museums means they are continuing to educate. Through them we learn what a household is; we see how different countries and eras defined it. Architectural styles, members of the family, members of the staff, the marriage of beautiful things with practical ones. And the element of fantasy in creating a home.

My mini chum Vicky Brandt used to visit Moore’s fairy castle when she was in grade school. “I would just stand there on a stool and stare,” she says. Now she makes historical miniatures and doll clothes. “I am in control of the little world I create,” she says. “That is totally opposite to the reality we live in.”

Who needs full-size reality? I’ll take a fairy castle, a cubist painting, and one of Vicky’s frocks any day. And this song, “Garden Below, Garden Above,” written by Timothy Bailey of Timothy Bailey and the Humans during the Covid pandemic:
You held her and she spoke to you
She loves you in a miniature room, a miniature room
You live inside of the house she’s made
Outside, calamity, but inside it’s safe.

Into a Great Big Beyond

Each diminutive setting is a gesture toward something so big that it boggles the mind. Call it Art or Imagination, Beauty or the Eternal; by any name, it is a magic carpet ride into another mind, a time machine, a way of connecting to whatever in us is eternally human: our imagination.

Most of us can’t afford Thorne and Moore or Hage-level brands of transcendence, but we can and do keep pushing to think of ways to repurpose things that already exist in our lives.

So the stolen chess piece does become a garden statue, a bottle cap a mixing bowl, a dental floss dispenser the back of a sleek modern toilet.

We love kits. Especially those of us with no saw or knife skills: We’ll take the factory-milled walls and clever towers, yes, please! We might get out a Dremel and cut new holes for windows, maybe kit-bash a couple of things together and change a Victorian manor into a Castle Rackrent. To make the cottage pictured on the next page, I used a very basic kit that I bought years ago. I didn’t bash anything into it (such a term!), but I did change the precut holes to accommodate Gothic windows and a door, then filled in the extra space in the corners with balsa wood and spackle. (Remember how I said I don’t have good saw or knife skills? Not a lie.) I used joint compound to get a plaster effect on the interior walls. The wood floor started out as a $4 box of coffee stirrers that I stained four different colors, then glued down on a piece of cardboard patchworked together from old envelopes.

For every fancy, swanky, amazingly Real and incredibly expensive mini manor-castle-cottage out there, you can be sure there are dozens of makers who are doing something similar with unusual materials—meaning trash—and the castoffs of full-scale modern life. If you can’t afford the stone siding made by a high-end materials company, you can certainly afford to make your own using cardboard egg cartons, as I did here. (I think it looks more Real than what you can buy anyway, and it’s easy and fun.) You don’t even have to eat eggs; when I posted a wish for a few egg cartons, my neighbors started dropping them off by the dozen. If you are my neighbor, I’ll be happy to share, because miniaturism is also about community and joy.

The Scary Side of Tiny

But. Right. You say you happen to know somebody who loathes miniatures in all forms, who always refused to play with dollhouses and dolls themselves, even shudders at the tiny toothpaste tube that comes in a motel’s convenience pack. This person probably can’t put the feeling into words other than “creepy.” They find the Thorne rooms “creepy”! He says your sweet little cottage gives him the willies!

She refuses to let herself relax into the dreamy appreciation of things miniature!

That is, perhaps, the problem: the allure of small things, small worlds, that feel Real and yet aren’t quite real, not to our scale. They make us question ourselves and our selves and our place in the universe.

In his “Essay on the ‘Uncanny,’” Sigmund Freud described the unsettling effect of doppelgangers, simulacra, and reproductions quite simply: They make us unsure about what we call life. Amid so much that is Real but not alive, how do you know that you are alive? And that the doll who might inhabit your sculpture is not? Such questions can keep you up at night, I’ll admit.

So maybe it’s natural that there are so many miniaturists who celebrate Halloween all year long. They specialize in haunted houses and witches’ lairs. Is there anything more uncanny and disturbing than a ghost living in a dollhouse? Well, your leery friend could point out, every dollhouse is haunted—at very least by childhood ideas and games that linger long after the dollhouse stops being a plaything or an educational tool.

I imagine a tiny lady in a stiff gray frock, passing from floor to floor without a staircase, weeping for what she has lost … What has she lost? Does she need help? And what sorts of experiences has my time-traveling witch had that I’ll never share?

I give my witch all my best treasures and plans, souvenirs from the places I’ve been and even the places I want to go.

I give her some books I love and others I want to read. Her cottage is my diary and day planner.

What we see in a domestic sculpture might be Real and recognizable, but it isn’t entirely little-r real. No matter how meticulous the mini work is, we know there will be some little detail that jars you, something that seems wrong.

The thickness of the writing on a jar of eye of newt, for example: From the perspective of a 1:12 person, it looks like a spluttery attempt by a kindergartner.

Most commonly, we notice that our fabrics are all far too thick to move properly in curtains, carpets, bed hangings; even all the geniuses of the Thorne rooms can’t quite make the drapes look entirely real.

And that can be alarming. Maybe we were just about to surrender to the illusion and live imaginatively (as I truly believe I could) as a miniature person in a wistful Gothic cottage, but then we see that the small world is different. Ordinary reality whooshes in and plucks us back.

I, for one, would love to rid myself of that reality.

The miniature world beckons. How far in you let yourself enter is between you and your psyche.

“All the things real people couldn’t have”

As Colleen Moore said when she was planning her spectacular fairy castle in the midst of the Great Depression, “We’ll have to think of all the things real people couldn’t have.” That’s the purpose of miniaturism: making what’s impossible in the real world into a deeper Reality, using whatever comes to hand.

In the Thorne collection, each roombox hints at a vaster world. A door opens into another room, barely glimpsed, or a dramatically curved staircase; a window offers a hint of tantalizing view. You think, This could be my room, if only I could shrink down …

Which world is Real and which simply real?

Build the cottage.

Be the witch.

Photos by ALANA ADETOLA ARTS PHOTOGRAPHY

When the cool finally starts to creep in, I feel an anticipation like no other deep in my bones. Every year the wheel turns and spirals, the clockwork ticks over to September, and I grab my first-remembered tools of magic. A perfect pen, a new notebook (and just where did this giant stack of pretty, empty journals come from!), a delicious pile of stickers, carefully saved images, and dried plant-ephemera. If I want to get maximally nostalgic, I splurge on a new box of crayons just to huff the smell and spend a moment putting them into
perfect rainbow-order.

Inner-child me is delighted: Time for sweaters and scones and perfectly sharpened pencils. With everything laid out, I start to plot and plan and dream. Lists on lists on lists. (Autumn must-dos: Gotta pick apples. Gotta revisit my favorite dark-academia books. Gotta hide behind the blanket during that part of The X-Files rewatch.) Piles of vision-board materials from ripped-out magazine pages. At least half of these are spiced baked goods I must seek out and savor. Soothing music pulses in the background. This is a full-on montage. This ritual always features a cup of tea, steaming hot, because the oppressive heat of summer has blessedly given way to harvest time. This feels like the deepest magic to me every year: to be chill enough to want warming up again. This is the time to speak new worlds into being, to cozy up to a stack of books, to blend summer herbs that have been drying and are at last ready to steep. Something in me thrills to this preparation.

The harvest is here, and now we alchemize our labors into the tools that will carry us over the threshold from one year to the next. I’m packing my wagon on the Oregon Trail with just the right supplies to make the journey. I’m choosing the very best outfit for my first day of school. I’m setting aside lavender, rose hips, and sweet citrus for a long cold time ahead where soothing potions will make all the difference. At the tea shop, a wise owl watches over me while I blend. Under a starry blue ceiling, I painted her with a fierce expression to remind me to keep doing the work. She stares at me from the wall as if to say, “Don’t you already know what you really should be doing?” I feel like I can always use a reminder to return to the center—to question if my current work is truly mine, that which I love, work that calls to me with fascination and wonder. It’s so easy to get distracted, to trip into something “good enough” and forget what my real work is.

For me, the only way to discover this true work is to stop, slow down, and listen deeply. What has been catching my eye? What song lyrics snag in my brain? If my plans were canceled at the last minute tonight, what would I love to do with that surprise free time? If I could wipe the board of my life clean and start anew, what would be different?

These breadcrumbs lead me to what I need to know, and in the crisp air of autumn I seem to see them more clearly. Maybe this is from a lifetime of heading “back to school” as a student or a teacher, but I think there’s something essential about this rhythm deep in all of us: In autumn we instinctively slow down, turn inward, and dream differently. We sense that we can slow and deepen into more complexity. We can hold a paradox and examine it slowly, like a cup of tea warming in our hands. I prefer to dream in as cinematic a setting as possible. To romance the edges, to place myself in a story. My tea shop is filled with dried herbs, materia magica picked from my forest garden and ready to be turned into potions. These plants and their properties, their myths and tales, enthrall me and keep me mixing, sketching, experimenting, and sipping.

I adore how the sun once hit tiny seeds in my garden, and that energy blossoms into calendula blooms, spicy and rich in beneficial antioxidants, with an intensity so golden it feels like I’m saving the sunlight for later as I dry the petals for tea. When my body needs support, these plants will be there, carefully kept in autumn for a year of adventure. I saved the seeds last year, planted them in winter, and brought them around again in a spiral that goes on and on. They nurtured countless bees. They bloomed in the sun, in organic dirt I tended; they soaked in rain and sought the sky.

They persist—and it buoys my ability to persist to see it. I mail packets of tea all over the world, but I think the best magic comes when you make it yourself and share it with someone you love to have a cozy chat with: You welcome in a moment of rest and reverie. The botanicals bloom in the swirling water. Ideas unfold like music, layering over each other. The tea itself breathes steam into the air. Like any good potion, it transforms you in the moment, and it also holds the moment, present and precious. So here is a tea ritual for you to blend your own elixir, and then share it over a little talk with your best friend, your familiar, or with yourself in your favorite journal.

TEA TUTORIAL

“Golden hour” captures the fading light of a cozy autumn day, and this recipe makes a full pot of tea so you can share it with cottage guests. The fruits and botanicals blend to be a delicious and soothing support, full of anti-inflammatory ingredients (like calendula) and vitamin C to bolster your immunity and resilience.

Ingredients
5 apricots
1 tablespoon dried calendula petals
1 tablespoon chamomile blossoms
¼ teaspoon nutmeg (best grated fresh)
3-inch strip or 1 teaspoon grated orange peel
1 teaspoon rose hips

Pour 4 cups of boiling water over the blend above and steep five-plus minutes for a strong cuppa. Delightful with a touch of honey or maple syrup, and the extra stores well as iced tea for later. (This recipe is for dried ingredients, but you can always use fresh fruit, herbs, and flowers as well—just double the recipe so the flavor stays at full strength!)

TEA RITUAL

Now that you have your tea brewing, settle down with your journal or your friend, stir some sweetness into your cup, and ask: