They lined up when it was popular.
A solstice ritual, a hex for corporate cowardice, and something new arriving Sunday.
This weekend is a threshold.
Sunday brings both the Summer Solstice and the First Quarter Moon. It’s the moment in the lunar cycle where intention meets momentum, right as the sun crosses into Cancer and the year tips over its midpoint.
But today, on the Friday before all of that, we're in the last full day of Gemini season. Still in the mind. Still processing. Still sorting through what we've gathered.
This is the pause before the doorway.
Cancer doesn't rush. It prepares. It nests. It tends the inner world so the outer one has somewhere sturdy to land.
Today's ritual isn't for launching into the new season. It's for getting ready to receive it.
✨ SPELL
Even when the moon isn’t new or full, we don’t have to wait for a “special” sky to practice reclaiming ourselves.
Ritual isn’t about the calendar—it’s about interrupting the grind, reorienting to what matters, and reminding yourself you’re not just here to produce.
Here’s a ritual for this week, aligned with the current zodiacal season. Minimal supplies. Maximum reclamation.
The Threshold Preparation
A ritual for the day before Cancer season arrives.
Supplies:
A small object that feels like home to you. A stone, a piece of jewelry, a key, anything that carries a sense of safety
Steps:
Hold the object in your non-dominant hand.
Place your other hand over it.
Say: "What I hold, I honor. What I honor, I protect."
Take three slow breaths.
Keep the object in your pocket or close to your body through the weekend.
This marks the transition before the transition, letting your body know that something is shifting and you're ready.
✊ HEX
You don’t need a rundown of the headlines. You’re living them. Whether you’re in the U.S. or just suffering under its ripple effects, the harm is real—and relentless.
This isn’t catharsis. It’s counter-spell.
Each HEX is a ritual of refusal—a channel for holy rage, spiritual disruption, and deliberate, directed dissent.
Here’s who we’re targeting. And what to do about it.
They Lined Up When It Was Popular
This is Pride Month. Let's talk about who showed up and who didn't.
Several of the nation's largest Pride celebrations are down hundreds of thousands of dollars in corporate sponsorships this year. Pride St. Louis lost its Anheuser-Busch partnership entirely and came up more than $150,000 short of last year's budget. New York and San Francisco are each missing $200,000 to $350,000 in corporate funding. Houston lost more than $180,000 in sponsorships, with organizers citing direct concerns about DEI.
Pride organizers say some companies fear being targeted by the current administration over diversity and inclusion initiatives. Others are simply preserving cash and decided queer people were the expendable line item.
Target, which was once a visible Pride sponsor, now offers a Pride collection that shoppers must scroll to the bottom of the homepage to find, with most items unavailable in stores. (Of course, we’re still boycotting Target for the way they treated Black makers, so we expected this nonsense. It’s just a bit of a nail in the coffin.) In New York, several major sponsors are quietly supporting Pride through channels that don't include public branding, like providing water at events instead of sponsoring a float. The message is clear: we'll help, as long as no one can see us helping.
Suzanne Ford, executive director of San Francisco Pride, said it best: "We will remember who stood by us and who didn't. When it was politically popular, they were lined up."
These companies didn't discover new values. They didn't have a moral awakening that led them away from Pride. They calculated risk, and queer people came out on the wrong side of the math.
This is the same pattern we hexed with Patagonia. The same cowardice dressed in a different outfit. Allyship that evaporates the moment it requires actual courage was never allyship. It was a marketing line item, and the budget got cut.
So today we hex the companies who lined up for the photo opportunity and disappeared the moment it cost them something.
We hex the calculation that treats queer visibility as a risk to be managed rather than a community to be honored.
We hex the quiet pullback dressed up as fiscal responsibility.
We hex every brand that built years of goodwill on rainbow logos and abandoned it the moment the political wind shifted.
And we bless what doesn't disappear:
The Pride organizers who are filling six-figure gaps through individual donations because their communities refuse to let the celebration die.
The people showing up anyway, with smaller budgets and bigger hearts.
The truth that community… real community, the kind that doesn't need a corporate sponsor to exist, was always the actual point.
We will remember who stood by us.
And we will remember who didn't.
🔥 On Memory
Loyalty that only shows up when it's profitable isn't loyalty.
Name the difference.
Remember it.
📞 Action
If a Pride celebration near you lost corporate funding, consider an individual donation. These organizations are filling gaps with community support right now, and every contribution matters.
And if a brand you've supported quietly pulled back from Pride this year, tell them you noticed. Companies respond to consumer pressure more than they respond to conscience.
Something new is also arriving this weekend.
I built something I couldn't find anywhere else, and on Sunday (the solstice), I'm releasing the first episode of a podcast called Encomium: A Tribute to You.
This is for the people who have done the internal work: the therapy, the books, the breathwork, the journaling… and still feel like something is missing. Who know, somewhere in their bones, that the world can be different. Who want to build that difference, but have always been told it's a solo project. Who are craving real community (not an audience, not a guru at the center, but people doing this work together) and haven't found a space yet that actually feels like that.
If that's you, this was built for you.
Twice a month, we'll gather to do body-based, politically honest, spiritually grounded work. And we’ll do it together, instead of alone.
Episode one is out on Sunday. You can find it wherever you listen to podcasts.
With clarity, courage, and something new on the horizon,
Keli Lyn Jewel
PS: If you're standing at a threshold and you want someone in your corner for what's on the other side, The Deep End offers 1:1 support for exactly those moments.
And if what you're craving is the kind of collective support I just described, keep an eye out. The Spiral Path opens July 26.
