Welcome to the Somnia Collection:
Idola Stellarum’s 2024 Winter Solstice Collection
of Astromagical Talismanic Jewelry

Read more below, or jump to the talismans:

• The Immovable Throne – Saturn in Aquarius
• Restoration & Slumber – Cassiopeia Constellation
• Support, Empathy, & Affinity – Venus in Cancer (triplicity dignity)

The Somnia collection will open at the following times:

• For members of the Inner Sanctum: Saturday, December 21, 2024 at 11:51am EST.
• For general mailing list members: Sunday, December 22, 2024 at 11:47am EST.

A public release may follow if any talismans remain after these releases.

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“Now what I call a dream is that which comes from the spirit of fantasy and the intellect, united together either by the enlightenment of the acting intellect over our soul or by the bare revelation of some divine will with a purged and tranquil mind. Indeed, our soul receives true oracles from this and sufficiently gives oracles to us. In dreams, we seem to ask, learn, gather, and discover; likewise, many doubtful things, many deliberations, many unknown and unexpected things, nor ever attempted by our minds, are revealed in our dreams.”

—Heinrich Cornelius Agrippa, Three Books of Occult Philosophy, Book III, Chapter 51

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Somnia, or the Oneiroi

Somnia is the Roman/Latin name of the Oneiroi, the winged spirits of dreams who were known as the children of Night (Nyx) by Hesiod and the children of Sleep (Hypnos) by Ovid. Daemons of the dark, the Oneiroi or Somnia were sometimes feared or considered evil, but were also seen as messengers of the will of heaven, and the conveyers of omens that were otherwise occluded to the waking mind.

The Orphic Hymn to the Oneiroi captures well their positive qualities:

Thee I invoke, blessed power of dreams divine,

angel of future fates, swift wings are thine:
Great source of oracles to human kind,

when stealing soft, and whispering to the mind,
Through sleep’s sweet silence and the gloom of night,

thy power awakes the intellectual fight;
To silent souls the will of heaven relates,

and silently reveals their future fates.
For ever friendly to the upright mind

sacred and pure, to holy rites inclined;
For these with pleasing hope thy dreams inspire,

bliss to anticipate, which all desire.
Thy visions manifest of fate disclose,

what methods best may mitigate our woes;
Reveal what rites the Gods immortal please,

and what the means their anger to appease:
For ever tranquil is the good man’s end,

whose life, thy dreams admonish and defend.
But from the wicked turned averse to bless,

thy form unseen, the angel of distress;
No means to cheek approaching ill they find,

pensive with fears, and to the future blind.
Come, blessed power, the signatures reveal

which heaven’s decrees mysteriously conceal,
Signs only present to the worthy mind,

nor omens ill disclose of monstrous kind.

—The Orphic Hymn to the Oneiroi, tr. Thomas Taylor

The Somnia collection was named after the intermediary nature of the Oneiroi, who stood in as a medium between humans and celestial knowledge, reducing the gap between human beings and the divine:

“Since Zeus didn’t want Apollon to have so much power over people, he devised a true kind of Oneiros that would reveal to people in their sleep what was going to happen. When Apollon realized that no one would need him for his prophecies any more, he asked Zeus to be reconciled to him, imploring Zeus not to subvert his own prophetic power. Zeus forgave Apollon and proceeded to devise yet more Oneiroi for mankind, so that there were now false Oneiroi that came to them in their sleep, in addition to the true Oneiroi. Once the people realized that their dreams were unreliable, they had to turn once again to Apollon, the original source of prophetic divination.”

—Aesop, Fables 529, from Life of Aesop 33 (tr. Gibbs)

The closing petition in the Orphic Hymn to the Oneroi, as well as this passage in Aesop’s Fables, point to how dreams, while not completely reliable, may present more consistently or comprehensibly to those of “worthy mind.” To us, this suggests something about coming into a clearer understanding of our own nature, the nature of the heavens, and the nature of our relationship to the celestials. In right relationship, we can properly harmonize with dreams in a worthy way.

Dreaming the Earth’s Bones and Teeth

Ancient worldviews, particularly those influenced by Aristotelian philosophy, drew a sharp line between the heavens and earth. Soul, originating in the heavens, reached out like a light from a vast distance, illuminating the sublunary matter that was seen as passive, receptive, practically without qualities, waiting to be endowed with heavenly virtues. In more expansive, less divisive versions of this worldview, we have a somewhat more encompassing and uniting image of the World Soul, pervading, sheltering, mothering all of reality and breathing life into the sublunary:

“The life of the world, innate in everything, is clearly propagated into plants and trees, like the body-hair and tresses of its body. Moreover, the world is pregnant with stones and metals, like its bones and teeth. It sprouts also in shells which live clinging to the earth and to stones. For these things live not so much by their own life as by the common life of the universal whole itself.”

—Marsilio Ficino, Three Books on Life, Book III, Chapter XI (tr. Kaske & Clark)

Now, we are not particularly sympathetic to versions of this story that privilege and divinize form (Idea, celestial) while reviling and disparaging matter (body, terrestrial). Rather, we might poeticize it in the following way: matter is the dream of form, the wish through which form comes to fulfillment.

To imagine this sort of relationship between form and matter would turn on its head the Aristotelian idea that matter’s nature is “to desire and yearn for” form (Physics, Book I, Part 9, tr. R.P. Hardie & R.K. Gaye). Matter, in its mutual slumber with form, shifts and develops “in the womb of the earth” (Ficino, op. cit., Book III, Chapter XVI), being dreamed into fuller being and fruition by the celestial rays.

We dream the heavens and the heavens dream us into being.

Dreaming with Deep Time

The “as above, so below” cosmology of the Emerald Tablet among so many other world-visions almost always implies the human as a microcosmos, an image of the universe in miniature. We understand this not as a passive resemblance, as in a mirror image, but as pointing to a role of active mediation: part of the fullest expression of being human lies in the mediation between the terrestrial and celestial.

The gifts of the One, radiating through Intelligence and Soul on down to sublunary matter creates a chord of light: the sympathy between stones and stars which is the gods’ gift. To participate in astrological magic is to pluck this cosmic chord, allowing us to resonantly celebrate in the co-dreaming of form and matter, heaven and earth.

How vast, that dream. Ficino wrote of gemstones:

“[T]hings so beautiful cannot be fused under the earth without a consummate effort of the heavens, and that the power impressed in them once and for all from that effort remains. For the heavens have labored an immense length of time in concocting and assembling these things.”

—Marsilio Ficino, Three Books on Life, Book III, Chapter XIII (tr. Kaske & Clark)

Perhaps we, too, if our slumbers could last for long and silent aeons, would coax gems into beings like drops of dew forming from our coalescing dream images. But in lieu of that possibility, there are always astrological talismans, which we understand as particularly well-suited to titrating our systems to appreciating the extent of the otherness of stones and stars, and yet also their inherent community with us as part of the One.

Mediating the relationship between star and stone helps us meditate with the deep time of the earth, which provides some medicine for the panic we can feel around the immediate concerns of climate crisis, exploitation of finite resources, and all of the violence that goes into that. This is not to say we and our loved ones do not face very real dangers, because we do. Our ancestors did. Our descendants do. But thinking with the deep time of the cosmos that connects us as a species to our earthly home helps fortify us against the self-defeating hobgoblins of despair, hopelessness, and panic.

We need a good night’s sleep to remember our dreams. We need an untroubled mind to rest, We need to step into harmony with ourselves, our lives, our communities, and our cosmos to allow the trouble to wane. Idola Stellarum is the fruit of our efforts to share our love for the chords of stones and stars. May you find your own path to dream down toward similar ends.

The Somnia Collection

The Somnia Collection holds talismans from three elections from late 2022 through 2023.

• The Saturn in Aquarius Immovable Throne talisman
• The Cassiopeia Constellation Restoration & Slumber talisman
• The Venus in Cancer Support, Empathy, & Affinity talisman

The three talismans of the Somnia collection each provide their own window into the dream of celestial connection that Idola Stellarum works to kindle and foster.

The Saturn in Aquarius Immovable Throne talisman supports our efforts to root the realities of our lives in our most foundational dreams, our most integrated and grounded feelings, and our most authoritative and profound thinking.

The Cassiopeia constellation Restoration & Slumber talisman most directly helps our dreaming by ushering in rest, sleep, and healing so that we are refreshed and restored to face the troubles of waking life.

And the Venus in Cancer (triplicity dignity) Support, Empathy, & Affinity talisman helps us interweave our personal dream with the collective dreaming of our friends, communities, and families.

We hope that the talismans of the Somnia collection help foster your dreams of a more beautiful, magical, and healed world within an image of greater harmony between earth and sky.

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Please follow the links below to visit the individual talisman product pages, or scroll down to see brief previews of each of the talismans.

• The Immovable Throne – Saturn in Aquarius
• Restoration & Slumber – Cassiopeia Constellation
• Support, Empathy, & Affinity – Venus in Cancer (triplicity dignity)

Note that all astrological talismans by their time-sensitive nature are extremely limited edition. Only a relatively small number of each specific talisman we release will ever be available. Once they are gone, they are gone.

(Note also: weight and dimensions listed in product attributes are approximate weights for the entire shipped package, not for the talismans themselves individually. None of the decorative elements displayed in altar photos or product shots besides the chains and jewelry boxes are included with purchased talismans.)

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Saturn in Aquarius – The Immovable Throne

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Cassiopeia Constellation – Restoration & Slumber

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Venus in Cancer – Support, Empathy, & Affinity

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Idola Stellarum Puts the Stars in your Hands

By putting you in relationship with the powerful spirits who peer into the sublunary realm through these talismans, we hope you will be better equipped to face a strange, shifting, and at times terrifying world in which, too often, injustice reigns and corruption prevails. With institutions under siege (some rightfully so) and social contracts disintegrating at the expense of the most oppressed among us, we have to rely on each other. Thankfully, our interdependent networks of care can include celestial angels, too.

The spirits who guide Idola Stellarum know that if we can begin to equip each other with deep and consequential magic, we can begin to make the types of changes that many of us were told as children were possible, and reach toward the dreams which we knew could come true, but which remain withheld by those who hold structural and institutional power. To that end, we provide extensive information on our talismans, because we believe in making the tradition of astrological magic more accessible and allowing people to step into talismanic relationships equipped with the knowledge they need.

On each product page linked above, we offer photographs and a narrative description of the talisman series before showcasing the electional chart (with a precise time range specifying the beginning and end of the ritual window) and discussing the essential features of the election, further magical factors of the election, and reflections on weaknesses of the election. We include ceremonial details of petitions, altars, suffumigations, and, of course, the talismans themselves.  

Sanctifying Relationships

In building Idola Stellarum, and in thinking about the Somnia collection, we aimed to not only put people in relationship with talismanic spirits, but to offer an experience of coming into connection. We, as beings of the sublunary realm, rely on our visceral and tactile senses, and so Idola Stellarum set our intention to usher in an experience of quality that would appeal to the aesthetics of body and spirit alike.

To this end, each Idola Stellarum talisman will include: a foil-stamped black velvet jewelry box for safe keeping and display; a detailed writeup about the nature of the talisman, the circumstances and rituals of its creation, and guidance on how to introduce yourself to the talismanic spirit; and a certificate of authenticity signed by Rain & Pallas. All talismanic jewelry in the Sonia collection has been set in high quality metal settings. All pendant settings in the Somnia collection are sterling silver (some gold-plated), and each pendant talisman includes a matching sterling silver or gold plated sterling silver rope chain in your choice of length.

Additionally, many questions related to the talismans you may have are answered in our frequently asked questions. We take our role as mages and mediators of the celestial spirits very seriously, and we stand by our work and the relationships we build, tend, and foster. To this end, each Idola Stellarum talisman is backed by a number of guarantees, which we encourage you to look over, as well as transparency about what we are not able to guarantee.

Note that good relationships have boundaries, and you should know ours: due to the nature of astrological talismans, all sales are final, and no refunds or exchanges will be offered. Please read our returns & exchanges policy for more information.

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Whether or not you hope to meet one of our talismans from this collection, we warmly invite you to keep up to date on our mailing list for more opportunities to join Idola Stellarum for events, spaces, and conversations intended to deepen and improve our relationships, talismanic and otherwise.

Membership in the Inner Sanctum is currently the only way to gain premiere early access to (as well as a member discount on) Idola Stellarum talisman collections. After Inner Sanctum early access, collections go out to our mailing list. Only after this are our collections open to the public, and then only if any talismans remain. The Inner Sanctum is currently closed, but opens quarterly.

Thank you for joining us at Idola Stellarum.

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