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An offering of sacred smut & somatic myths Created by Ro Rose | @queerlyfluid
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Back Seam Ecdysis | The Scroll That Split Me Open
Back Seam Ecdysis | Voice Memos
Back Seam Ecdysis | Field Guide
Back Seam Ecdysis | Creative Documentation
June 23, 2025
I’ve been noodling on this upcoming New Moon in Cancer. Both my closest sibling and my husband are a Sun/Ascendant Cancer. It’s threaded through oh so many of my dear ones. Cancerian nature is familiar to me: I appreciate how easy they are to read — a mirror of emotional responses reflected as possibilities. My Cancer placement is smack on the Midheaven (who would be surprised) and though no major planets, both Juno (conjunct MC) and Vesta (in Cancer) are present. It’s a hoot and a hollar, let me tell you. Anyhow…back to our discussion about my mothering of the world through gentle decay…
This past week I’ve been having some deep lineage threads tugging at my attention. Two dreams, one about each mother. Also my maternal grandmother standing at my shoulder. Each showing me ways they were inaccessible to me because of the harms they were holding. These images, their smells and mannerisms are tides within me these past few days..
In addition, I reached out to my dad to schedule a call during this new moon. I have been waiting for a hell yes to arise in my stomach before reaching for him, and I finally felt it come through a few days ago. I won’t open that wing of the house to you in this moment, but just to say: that’s no small feat given our historical rupture. But something tugged, and I enjoy the rides I get to go on when I follow those tugging threads! By the time you listen/read this, that call will have happened and no doubt informed this piece. But to start, it’s merely peeking on the horizon. I’ve begun another creative writing class and recently came once again across the genre of hermit crab essays. Every time I meet them, I’m delighted and this time I squeed, since I sent ya’ll the recipe card last week. I love when I notice a thread in the world that sparks my attention and then get to laugh because at some point in the past I had already begun weaving with it and in fact we’re just reflecting off each other!
So with all of this swirling, I began some explorations with Chatty, without yet offering her any of the details I just gave you.
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Penny for your thoughts: New Moon in Cancer! Time to begin working on a new sacred smut & somatic myth scroll my dear Chatty. Tell me all about this new moon: what is she up to? what is going on with human design at this same moment? how do they overlap? what transits are affecting me per my natal chart in these moments of cancer new moon?
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With Jupiter in Cancer and this New Moon anchoring your ancestral belly, consider opening with an invocation into your lineage—calling in womb-keepers, ancestresses, or past erotic matriarchs. Offer somatic gestures that honor what they carried in their own bodies.
Next I turned to my favorite idea generator: image hopping. I like to scour the internet for images that sing to my heart, crafting together a feast for my eyes which inevitably gets me busting with more questions. Like, how do crabs grow? There are so many different types of crabs! I spent time cruising the web reading about their lives, their various environments and whatnot. I love these rabbit hole dives. Trading shells, like in the case of hermit crabs, is quite a fascinating thing. But the molting process is what really captured my attention. I wondered about the time between the molting off of their exoskeleton, and the time it takes for the soft underlayer to then harder - what a vulnerable moment!
“Ecdysis, is the process where crustaceans shed their hard outer shell (exoskeleton) to grow. It's an essential part of their life cycle, allowing them to increase in size and regenerate damaged body parts.” - NOAA Fisheries
“Crabs can get stuck in their old shells, tear off limbs, or injure themselves” - The Crab Street Journal
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=md7Sbf72wrE
I ended up listening to this album for much of my excavation time!
“ecdysis represents a shift in Barrio Lindo’s sound, and a return to being inspired by the dancefloor. The release, while predominantly electronic, combines organic and psychedelic elements, reflecting a fascination for science and the mysteries of nature.”
https://barriolindo.bandcamp.com/album/ecdysis-vol-i
“Molting is a very stressful process, and many crabs do not survive the experience. It can take several hours, and the crab needs to expend a lot of energy to shed its shell and absorb water to expand its new one.” - Cambridge Univ. Press
I enjoyed digging into the work of Sougwen Chung who did a 2013 audio-visual installation called Ecdysis “in which the biological process of ecdysis is interpreted as a 20 minute light spectacle synchronized with a live violin performance”.
Science Direct offered details about the ecdysis of insects and most especially interesting to me was the ecdysteroid-regulated gene expression! Apparently it concentrates on gene expression that signals the execution of the ecdysis sequence. Fascinating! The whole sequence is apparently hormone driven, which got my brain chattering.
I was deeply moved and fascinated with the photography and artist commentary of [Spic in Ecdysis | A series by Xandra Ibarra](https://www.womenandperformance.org/ampersand/ampersand-articles/spic-in-ecdysis-a-series-by-xandra-ibarra.html#:~:text=Spic in Ecdysis | A series by,along with its state of presumed metamorphosis.). I was immediately captured by her use of Nietzsche’s, "..being is an empty fiction.” This is significant for me because of the non-duality work I’ve been sinking more deeply into over the past years.