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Meet the Maker

Julie Wilder is the woman behind the design.
Leo Sun, Scorpio Moon, Sagittarius Rising

The astrology calendar line was inspired by lessons to teach her toddler about the cyclical nature of time way back in 2012.

She is a self-taught graphic designer, serial entrepreneur & student of astrology. A visual learner, Julie makes astrology accessible to folks like her!

Julie has worn many hats: organic restauranteur, localist advocate and community radio host (to name a few). Currently she oversees the Yestermorrow Adventures community of businesses from one of it's anchor indie enterprises, Spiral Circle, an independent bookstore in the heart of Orlando.

This Spiral Spectrum collection infuses the ethics of Earth Care, People Care and Fair Share into our business model.

Artist Statement

Hello friend, my name is Julie Wilder and this is my beautiful daughter, Max. She is the inspiration for this line of calendars.  When she was three years old, she started to learn about the days of the week at Montessori school and something inside me just went - UG. I wanted her to stay in no-time, where one day bled into the next and the passage of moments was marked by meals and goodnight snugglesholiday traditions and planting seeds in the garden. 

My wild & free self-longed for this, while my pragmatic self-understood this was, obviously, impossible - short of moving outside of civilization itself. So I settled for making a wheel of the week, color coded like the rainbow to show my mini-me, that time does not come in a line, as our calendar would suggest, but is a wheel that moves in cycles, repeating over and over again.

We did not write the alphabetical symbols on the calendar, we just referenced Monday was red day, Tuesday was orange day and on and on. She accepted this explanation so simply, and I began to reflect about the myths I had discovered about time and the ancient methods I've come to study since. When I discovered the way the Gregorian calendar came to be, I had an incredibly profound awakening. If something as fundamental as time itself was being misconstrued, what other information so impactful to EVERYTHING was also not quite right? As I researched, I understand that this calendar, adopted by so many cultures,  shifts people away from nature's rhythms, creating chaos. Our strange discomfort that something is off hardly ever gets identified because hardly anyone questions a universally recognized system.

The Julian calendar (on which the Gregorian calendar is based), was imposed by Roman Emperors (and later Catholic Popes) and literally & intentionally, moved entire cultures out of synchronization with nature while turning time into a one-dimensional line instead of the multi-dimensional experience of being unified harmonically with All That Is. The modern-day calendar, profoundly and fundamentally, keeps us disconnected from nature herself.  The advent of digital devices is further serving to erase the round clock, with its elegant gliding hands, to numbers on a screen. Many cultures still use a lunar or lunisolar calendar, however, the Gregorian has become the international standard for civil purposes.As I gazed at the little rainbow wheel Maya and I had crafted to represent the week, I realized time, well, it was on my mind. We had just entered the much-hyped year of 2012, renewing my fascination with the advanced Mayan method of observing the cycles of time. I began to wonder how to teach Maya about time while integrating my understanding of moon cycles & solar seasons, as well as the other planets. Our little rainbow wheel was still beckoning me, and I was seized with an intuition that chakra energy must also correlate somehow to time. In fact, I discovered (with a quick google search) there is an entire ancient body of knowledge dedicated to chakras & time called Kalachakra.

And so, I went to sleep that night, pregnant with ideas, knowing I had to create a calendar that would be an open invitation, the first step from Gregorian, or Father Time, to understanding cyclical time filled with energetic influences. We needed a bridge toward a new relationship and experience where Father Time could walk with Mother Time for a while. I awoke on the Spring Equinox of 2012 with images flashing through my mind. A rough draft wireframe was channeled through into Adobe Illustrator in late night binge sessions. I laid the design away until just before the much prophesied Winter Solstice was practically upon us. In another three-day session, I again felt called to birth this calendar into being.She was printed for the very first time on the morning of the Winter Solstice, December 21st, 2012 and blessed in a ceremony that evening.I'm excited to begin sharing through this website more information on the cycles of time and my personal experience shifting back into sync with nature, as much as possible in a culture so oriented toward the Gregorian. Learn more about the civil calendar and natural cycles through Spiral Spectrum's Synchronic System. 

Earth Care • People Care • Fair Share

Committed to an EcoSocial Ethic

EcoSocial Design is an emerging field that seeks to actively reorganize human activity on the planet so that the twin goals of ecological regeneration and social justice continue to emerge with ever greater vigor and speed. We align with and consider our work revealing natural time as integral to the emerging EcoSocial shift back to our inner authority & agency aligned with Mother Nature.

Love Our Planet

We cherish the Earth and all her beings. For our dated products, we use print on demand with global production partners to reduce waste and shorten miles traveled & prefer digitally delivered astrology reports over printed ones.

Love is Love

Open for Service is a wonderful registry service that allows any business to commit to it's values publicly as allies of people who identify on the LGBTQ spectrum.

Partnership is the Path

Committed to dismantling domination and reclaiming partnership as the path forward. We handle our relations with kindness, compassion and fairness. We conduct our business through an intersectional lens.

Love Our Planet

We cherish the Earth and all her beings. For our dated products, we use print on demand with global production partners to reduce waste and shorten miles traveled & prefer digitally delivered astrology reports over printed ones.

Love is Love

Open for Service is a wonderful registry service that allows any business to commit to it's values publicly as allies of people who identify on the LGBTQ spectrum.

Partnership is the Path

Committed to dismantling domination and reclaiming partnership as the path forward. We handle our relations with kindness, compassion and fairness. We conduct our business through an intersectional lens.

Designer Julie Wilder Interview on Night Sky Tourist Podcast - Spiral Spectrum
January 28, 2021
Designer Julie Wilder Interview on Night Sky Tourist Podcast

Grateful to have been invited to discuss the Night Sky with an astronomy enthusiast. This was a super fun interview...

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Video vignette by the Orlando Sentinel - Spiral Spectrum
December 19, 2017
Video vignette by the Orlando Sentinel

Some super sweet coverage of me packing up holiday orders by my hometown newspaper, The Orlando Sentinel. Good things happen in...

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"Side Hustle School" features Spiral Spectrum - Spiral Spectrum
January 17, 2017
"Side Hustle School" features Spiral Spectrum

Chris Guillebeau is one of the few people I actually follow in the business world. I admire his authentic style,...

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