“This morning I got up to begin this book I coughed. Something was coming out of my throat: it was strangling me. I broke the thread which held it and yanked it out. I went back to bed and said: I have just spat out my heart.”
Anaïs Nin, House of Incest (1936)
Oh, Anaïs Nin! Where to start? I’ve started with my favorite quote, from a writer as famous for her surrealist writing and her lifelong journal habit as she is for the complicated life she poured into those pages.
Shortly after Venus’s ingress into the troubled waters of Scorpio, I sat down in conversation with two scholars, Kim Krizan and Thea Wirsching, PhD, to help me make sense of Nin’s life and works, and, perhaps most importantly for this publication, to get a glimpse into the ways astrology shaped her world.
Kim’s love of Nin began with her master’s thesis and has led her to spend years with Nin’s archive at UCLA and in Nin’s Silver Lake home, giving her rare access to an author known both for her secrecy and for publicly sharing her private life. She co-wrote Before Sunrise and Before Sunset, earning an Academy Award nomination for Before Sunset, and is the author of Spy in the House of Anaïs Nin, a collection of essays examining Nin’s diaries and letters.
Thea’s a former academic and lifelong astrologer whose relationship to Nin goes back to when she was a teenager and her therapist accidentally turned her on to the diarist. Her adolescent love bloomed to maturity at UCLA, where she delivered her undergrad honors thesis on the occult life of Anaïs Nin, a topic she has lectured on in many iterations since.
Kim and Thea, longtime friends, have been discussing the astrology of Anaïs Nin for a while, and I’m still giddy from the excitement of joining these two in conversation.
In this TALKTALKTALK, we cover all the big Nin themes: the bicoastal life, bigamy, incest, the affairs, Henry Miller…
Which is to say, we deep dive into sensitive territory, and this talk isn’t for everyone.
For those ready to explore with us, we also visit the places between the headlines: the brilliance, the insecurities, the well-before-her-time tenacity of a woman who lived boldly, with disregard for social norms and taboos.
Far beyond being a muse, Nin financed and wrote the preface for Henry Miller’s Tropic of Cancer. When no one would publish her own work, she taught herself to set type, started her own press, Gemor Press, and printed her books there, including House of Incest. And she continued writing through periods of little fanfare.
We get into all of that & much, much more!
If you’re looking for a group of likeminded astro seekers, Club Astro is your place!
We meet weekly to explore the sky in real time and make sense of what is unfolding in our lives and in the collective. This is your chance to ask me questions about your chart, share stories, and connect with a cohort of fellow astrologers.
Club Astro members also get exclusive perks:
Discounted astrological readings & mentorship
Secret invites
Discounted tickets to the Los Angeles Astro Salon and the LA Astro Fest.
