This newsletter is part of a series on the magical-creative properties of the planets, as well as how to begin embodying them yourself.
So much of astrological study nowadays is confined to book learning but my understanding of the planets improved dramatically when I began engaging them directly. By doing this, I could conjure feelings, deeply-impressed images and great meaning behind the words I used.
This newsletter offers you a portal to have your own connection to the Sun. It’s one thing to say the Sun is about identity or sovereignty but it’s another to be in the midst of a karaoke session or throwing a party for your friends and realize “the Sun would like this too”.
If you want help connecting to your unique sun, and the rest of yourself through the stars, my books are currently open! My readings are meant to lift you up, to secure you against difficulty and remind you that there is always space, creativity, play. Book now to remember your place in the cosmos
This writing is intentionally not technical and meant to be understood even by those who have not studied astrology but want to connect more deeply to their world and themselves. Remember: these planets all describe fundamental parts of us. Whether you try to or not, you embody the Sun everyday. By learning what functions and activities with which the Sun corresponds, you learn more about yourself and your life, with nothing added but attention.
By reaching this felt understanding of the Sun (and the other planets), I believe we are also able to be better magicians and artists— two categories whose differences are slowly shrinking in my eyes. Do we not need the same centeredness and momentum to create a piece of art as we do to create a spell or scry into the future? Aren’t we vessels for something beyond our small self in both? This essay also delves into where in your creative-spiritual practice a dose of the Moon could serve you well.
To read Part I, on the Sun, click here
The Light of the Intellect
“Peel off the napkin
O my enemy.
Do I terrify?——”
Sylvia Plath
I’ve written extensively about the Sun’s association with the intellect, in part because this facet of the luminary has been forgotten over time. But since antiquity the Sun has ruled, as Valens puts it, '“intellectual light, the organ of mental perception…intellect, intelligence” as well as “high priesthoods”.1
In Babylon, where astrology originated, the Sun was linked to Shamash, the god of justice, protection, order and divination. According to Ali Olomi’s podcast on the Sun, Shamash “was believed to see everything that happened in the world every day,” tracing back to the Sun’s totalizing light illuminating all.2 Think of the experience of turning the light on in a dark room; you don’t need to ponder what’s in front of you— it appears to you all at once.
This action is similar to the wisom of the Sun— instantaneous, giving the full picture, and providing a truth without explanation. Just as the Sun is related to our individual genius, it provides us with knowledge that we may not be able to explain but that we know with all of our hearts to be true. Because the Sun sees all, he is also able to make judgements, both in a judicial sense and in the sense of divination. Shamash was specifically tied to the practice of extispicy, or the reading of entrails as divination and his relationship to truth meant he was able to make the fair and correct assessment.3
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