KOSMESIS TALISMANIC LIPSTICK
“Saludo en ti las fuerzas de las estrellas, Saludo en ti las riquezas e lo profundo del mar.
En su música está la gracia de la danza de una luna llena“
-
“I salute in you the powers of the stars, I salute in you the riches of the depths of the sea.
In your music is the grace of a full moon's dance.”
Kosmesis: Secrets of Venusian Adornment
Beauty as Removal and Refinement
In the pursuits of beauty and harmony, both the human and the earth sacrifice time and patience to watch the seeds planted give fruit to the sweetest of apples, and also the best of shades to sit and ponder the sweet delight of the paradise we have cultivated.
The feeling of removing the pesky blemish, the unibrow, the hanging nail! The lash that will NOT stay glued! The feeling of being able to remove an issue that limits the appearance of being glamorous or in tune with the vision of the wearer is the magic that comes out of the operation and products in this collection.
Most, if not all, beauty recipes in the ancient world related to removing the parts of the human that were grotesque and unglamorous per the beauty standards of the geographical place and time.
Many of these texts also emphasised the danger of removing hair incorrectly.
“In one book from 1557, women were urged to only practise hair removal ‘when the moon is waning’ and to avoid tweezers, as they are too violent for the skin and will lead to enlarged pores.”
Renaissance Beauty and the Venustà
An excerpt from How to Be a Renaissance Woman reminds us of this same cosmetic desire:
“The second verse boasts about the secret recipes the book reveals – make-up to colour the skin white and scarlet, compositions of distilled waters to grow or remove body and facial hair, to eradicate spots, or to make the skin soft.”
From the beauty book The Venustà:
“You’ll hear, without trouble, this guide
You’ll not waste ingredients or time.
Like a beautiful nymph by your side,
Advising with each rhyme.
Enough now, I’ve spoken or spake,
From her, you will learn the true art.
Such great potions she knows how to make,
In return, he will give you his heart.”
The Venustà—by name and content—offers the secrets and arts of Venus as armor for women who, in their disenfranchised state, were measured by their femininity.
“Venustà, a word that can roughly be translated as ‘beauty’ or ‘comeliness’ but literally means Venus-like.”
.“There are several women discussed later in the book who made a living by selling cosmetics, love potions, and other magic spells, as well as renting out rooms to sex workers”
Instead of becoming the servant to our master like Medea, we adorn ourselves with the secrets and mysteries she provides to appear like their version of “Venus”.
Magic, Love, and Sincerity
Dr. Ali A. Olomi, in Love Magic: History and Practice, shares Persian and Islamicate recipes for compelling love through sacred names, numbers, and celestial powers:
“The heart of love magic is sincerity and sympathy.” – Ali A. Olomi
Clarity and sincerity matter more than domination. Without clear intent, Cupid’s arrow becomes reckless. Venusian operations rooted in obsession—breaking relationships out of spite, tying strangers, forcing love—are misuses of her glamour.
To remain in Venus’ sphere is to embody cleanliness, fragrance, and adornment. It is a practice of alignment, not control.
Kosmesis: Venusian Adornment
On the eve of June 21st, under the auspices of Venus at 3:59 AM in Kissimmee, Florida, enchanted pearls per the Islamicate tradition were made (recipe shared by Ali A. Olomi), and my own personal project of cosmetics manifested as Kosmesis—“adornment.”
From Aphrodite by Monica S. Cyrino:
“In the ancient Greek sources, the epiphany of the goddess is accompanied by intricate and detailed depictions of her golden jewelry, brilliant clothing, floral garlands, and the fragrance of perfume and incense. Such physical adornment enhances Aphrodite’s sway over the realms of erotic attraction and allure.”
Cosmetics, jewelry, and scents are the scattered virtues of Venus. When awakened through divine names and rituals, they embody Beauty, Enchantment, Allure, and Glamour.
“ It suggests that the long wait that beauty treatments necessitated also offered opportunities for chat, gossip, and laughter. It also, tantalisingly, shows how immigrant women – who lived worlds away from the elegant salons of Titian’s Venus – may have contributed to the wider culture of beauty in the Renaissance.”
The image of the foreigner arriving in a place like Italy in the Renaissance world, after facing exile, and bringing their talent for Kosmetikos and the art of adornment. The Jewish and Muslim influence brought into Europe from Spain in this time period gives way to not only the recipes to withstand the ravages of time but also the occult secrets and deployments of this *fetching* magic we shall see here.
Venetian Women at their Toilet - Paris Bordon
Beauty Industry and Mirage
Ali A. Olomi also reminds us of the modern corporate illusion of beauty: filters, procedures, and profit-driven exclusivity.
But true Venusian service is not to trends, but to vessel and self. Cosmetics as ritual adornment move beyond superficiality into devotion, glamouring yourself with colors and forms in service to Venus and the secrets, spirits, and ability to help wash away and bring forth better places to plant our relationships and artistic endeavors and fixed desires.
Moon, Timing, and Spellcraft
How do we arrive with the blessing of Venus and remove that which hinders the adorments and exaltations we seek?
First, an elected moment to find these virtues in our sky, where our wise friend Marsilio Ficino speaks about the connection between the graces and the beauties we harvest, we can draw down from the stars:
Chapter 7 - How our limbs are nourished through agreement with the signs
of the Moon and the fixed stars
“For the face of the Moon is always graciously bestowing things. Nevertheless, this is not easily done for any length of time or to the utmost unless, before looking at the Moon, the Graces themselves mutually look at each other, or are nearly about to look at each other or two of them anyway.”
Our moon is entering the rays of Venus and Jupiter after passing the closing sextile to the sun as it reaches the point in the solar path where bonds of relation and comfort are examined through seasonal rites.
Austin Coppock, in 36 Faces, speaks to us about Venus in this decan.
“Venus’ time in the second decan of Taurus offers an array of viable magical uses.
Wealth charms and romantic glamours are both particularly effective here, provided Venus is not impeded. Made properly, a talisman impressed with the power of Venus in this decan will draw both wealth and affection toward the bearer.
Yet the possessor must remember not to hoard love or valuables at others' expense. The one who receives has a responsibility that the giver does not.”
The prized jewel of this election and my attempts to capture the goddess with the graces attending her, exalting the gardens she plants seeds for the future.
Austin Coppock mentions the omission of the fertile and fecund images that rise with this part of the heavens, and with the creation of these pearls and products, we seek to once again visit the success in our endeavors, similarly pictured in the tarot card associated with this decan: 6 of Pentacles.
Here in this image, we see the scales of balance and the fortune one seeks to purify through the acts of giving freely and without expecting anything from those to whom you are giving.
Key difference between being “rich” and “wealthy”.
This image also reflects the lack of care and tending to the people and those who are a part of one’s kingdom and sphere (the buildings to the right speak to where this emissary came from), having the responsibility to expand their wealth to the people in their Lunar sphere.
“Pope Francis has made caring for inmates a priority of his papacy. He washed the feet of Muslim and women prisoners weeks after his election as pope, and is planning to wash inmates’ feet again this upcoming Holy Thursday.’ - Times”
Aiding the stranger has all shown up as images and experiences with exalting and giving away to the othered and those in need of a venusian blessing.
Inspired by a spell outlined in the hoodoo tradition for losing weight, an interesting claim on the nature of waxing and waning spells, and the familiar use of natural phenomanea in folk traditions to attain one’s desire by the movement of nature’s favorite time keeper: Luna
This operation of removing that which does not exalt, bring comfort, harmony, or joy to the fixed spheres of our lives and relationships was created using these references in mind, the cleansing of the fixed limitations of pleasures:
TWO WASTING MOON SPELLS FOR WEIGHT LOSS
In 1938, in New Orleans, Louisiana, Harry Hyatt met Informant #787, who said,
"When you want to do somebody something, just like, if you want to have me just dragging and wasting away; fat as I am, I could get small as I-don't-know-what.
They say you do it on the Waste of the Moon, and as the Moon wastes away, you wastes away until that's all of you."
I was taught a more beneficial weight loss spell: Collect as many smooth, white pebbles as the number of pounds you want to lose.
Show them to the Full Moon. On every day of the Waning Moon, throw one of the pebbles into running water. Do this spell only by the Waning Moon.
Both of these spells outline two things: Target magic and also using the moon’s waning light to remove, expel in some cases, humans, others target appearances, and aesthetic procedures parallel to the same worries the Renaissance mage would have addressed, and also the same electional protocols!
To remove is to hollow, like the cave—a spiritual center and womb of the Earth. Caves, sacred in myth, house spirits, treasures, and initiations.
Julia Tort from OCCLVTA reminds us:
“Entering the cave is considered re-entry into the womb of Mother Earth.”
In Puerto Rico, the passage of Venus in Cancer and the waning moon in Taurus, and the use of this lipstick, aligned with chthonic forces in El Yunque’s mountains and rivers.
These places, where nymphs carved grottoes, revealed Venusian acceptance of offerings.
Chthonic spirits—daimones, genies, the souls of the dead—mediate between mortal and divine. Invoking them through Kosmesis grounds glamour in the earth’s treasures: stones, metals, and oils
(all products of fixed earthly delights)
This lipstick was taken to the mountains of the great Taino rainforest of El Yunque and touches the same cloud of exaltation I have seen the results bring. How does a spell said with a specific lipstick made with the wax of the queen’s hive, under the auspices of removing that which limits glamour, open the thick pastures of the mountain to reveal the cave in which the copper queen resides?
Atabey and Guabancex
The secrets of the Daimones of the land, after working with incenses dedicated to land spirits, opened the secrets of my ancestors, both in my personal sphere and with Rauw Alejandro dropping an entire album referencing this pantheon after another working took place, and this talismanic lipstick used in Puerto Rico as beta testing took place.
The aspect of the Fertile face of this deity being brought offerings and praised for the waters they brought down to the Antilles, and the relationship with the same spirit whose fury would come down as Guabancex - el hurakan.
Showing up as soon as we arrived on the Island and being the main image for much of the lip gloss series and enchanted pearls of Atabey while Jove and Venus danced in Cancer, and the Moon visited Tauro once again. Full Debrief on Guabancex - Here
Reminiscent of the same pantheon of spirits that reside near the fixed star Caput Algol at 26 Taurus and the ways that the same waters that can provide nourishment can also ravage everything we own and know to be true with one swift wind, llega el temporal.
When these same winds visited our island, Kosmesis was applied like the same caciques who would adorn themselves and confront the spirits that demanded their presence be attended to. Removal of that which did not exalt showed up and demanded we give our offerings of sorrows, limitations in entering into deeper, more intimate connections that the time and astrology invited and poured into our lives.
Entering the Venusian sphere is creating roots that are fertile and sown with the correct items and nourishment for long-lasting harmony and compounding of said resources one patiently, like the honey from a beehive or its precious wax, formed from thousands of small actions to create the nectar and comb we stitch our desires and lusts with.
How does the offering of a petition whose sigil was drawn during the hour of the Goddess Venus to remove the hindrances to the relationship that is being created?
Moving away from socials and even the mercurial studying and taking this recipe to Puerto Rico both showed the secrets of nature that create the feeling of relaxation, and also the beginning actions in creating fixed relationships with and land spirits like the nymphs and fae.
Jokes about caves and spirits being in them, you being lost in them or visiting one to find something you lost have always been present, their deeper meaning was found during this trip.
“Cave stands for the spiritual Centre, the heart or the hearth (cf. the cave in Ithaca, or the Cave of the Nymphs in Porphyry).
puerto rico cave of the nymphs for kosmesis talismani lipstick
This symbolism implies a displacement of the symbolic centre, that is, the mountain peak of the world ‘outside’ is transferred to the ‘inside’ (of the mountain, and so of the world and of Man).
They can be secret passageways to an underworld, places in which to make contact with the powers and forces that will eventually make their way into the world of light. In popular legend, caves usually house gnomes, spirits, DRAGONS, and TREASURE; they are often the site for initiational ceremonies. - Julia Tort
These mountains and places where the nymphs carved their grottoes, and in the ocean and rivers, were explored and conjured through with the spirits of venusian nature, showing their presence and acceptance of offerings from the beaches to the highest mountain in El Yunque. In return, the glamour, acceptance, and elevation by the people of my island, Puerto Rico, to the entity that has become ClaimedParadise!
el yunque grotto - near ceiba tree
Puerto Rico’s dance showed the glamour and blessing of Kosmesis was bestowed upon my crown, like Oshun always promised.
The dances, exalted places to relax and have magical rites, and enjoy the bounty of friendship, while also weeding the garden and seeing very clearly the rotted parts of the tree of life we have created, and how consequential and rooted our emotions and bonds are to the people in our lunar spheres.
To remove something from your body, spirit or enviroment brings the hollowness which reminds me of the cave where the possability to birth something through the chthonic process and support through grief and trauma with friends and lunar fortune that grant the state for the human vessel to let go and allow the sweet waters to wash away the pains and bring forth a clean slate, a weeded garden, open soil and the removal of the fruits that no longer bear the amrita we desire to relish in. -
The feeling of a DEEP bath, POST spiritual prayer is the key to this creation and the way it allows for the fortune that follows to bring sweetness and grounding to that which we desire to bring forth into our spheres, from lovers to artistic endeavors and career-defining deals and gifts from relatives hitting the thousands!
Kosmesis and the secrets of being favored by the exalted nobles and Sweet ladies have been LOUD!
Maferefun Oshun, Osha y Luz y progreso a esa Gitana que jamás me abandonó, esta es para ti, bella.
De mi para ti.
