Hello lovely humans,
Happy summer! The longest day has arrived and we are basking in the heat and the sunshine, while probably also holding the heaviness of news in our hands.
I had planned to spend the summer reflecting on the Sun, which at first did not feel appropriate because right now anything I write that doesn’t pertain to the state of things feels like I am avoiding something immense and heavy that requires all of my attention.
But then, I started to reflect on the Sun and the idea that he is perpetually shining and the gift of such light, especially when facing the dark. I think the Sun is often misunderstood, as an archetype, or depending on how you believe, as an entity, that requires a blindness to the state of things in the name of love, of light. But, the Sun is not blind. The Sun sees all.
There are a lot of different themes I want to explore in relation to The Sun, but the first is that the sun can never be just one thing. A sun’s light is both a particle and a wave depending on how you are looking, which means The Sun is a dichotomy beholden to the perspective and those who wield the flame: life and death, food and famine, justice and smite, Joy and rage. We do not have to pick just one. We must not pick just one.
For example, I was at a party on Solstice Day and we got to talking about the No Kings protests and then about politics while sitting out on the lake where the conversation turned heavy and The Grief the kind Chloe Hope calls “a vast collective ocean made of all the sorrow ever felt, by all beings, human and non” swelled up from underneath us and threatened to swallow us whole.
And in that moment, we did not need the sun to pull us into collective action, we needed the Sun to remind us that He is a lifeline–that joy exists here–otherwise what are we fighting for?
It is so easy to become one thing because we are afraid or angry. Because we don’t know what to do with The Grief, perhaps having never experienced it before, but the Sun reminds us we are never just one thing–that this joy here does not negate the state of things, nor the pain of grief, nor the promise of action.
The sun simply reminds us that this joy here also gets to exist as a particle and a wave–
As a call to arms
As a battle cry
As a lifeline–Grief’s other name
As Love.
Journal Prompts:
Where might love be a lifeline to joy?
Do you have a connection to the archetype (or the entity) The Sun? If so, how does it manifest in your life? –Also I’d love to know in the comments. I personally struggle with The Sun’s more aggressive and extroverted energies. (Although I’m a mercury in Leo so I’m interested to see where this exploration goes!)
How are you doing with the both/and the dichotomy of existing in the joy that is here while also acknowledging the state of things? To that, I ask, have you cried today?
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