Dealing with the Sun has always been ambivalent for me. Since my childhood, I’ve been a creature of darkness. Given the choice, I stay up till nearly dawn and sleep well into the daytime; this distressed my partners for many years. When we moved from the city to a little homestead-farm in the country, I started getting up earlier in order to do farm work. While I wasn’t exactly greeting the dawn, I was seeing the morning on a daily basis for the first time in many years, and I got to watch the Sun’s slow progress across my garden as I worked. It was during those first years that I became aware of the Sun as something more than just a light in the sky that went on and off at semi-regular times.

I also became aware of the Sun’s difference during the various times of the year. I was aware that the Neo-Pagan church that I belonged to celebrated eight holidays that comprised a solar year, of course. How could I not know that? It was baby stuff. As we continued to farm, however, I grew deeply into that solar year. It taught me how the Sun isn’t just something to tan our hides at the beach. It is closely bound up with our food supply.

I learned, for example, that the reason that eggs are the symbol of Ostara, the spring equinox, wasn’t just theoretical. Chickens who aren’t kept under artificial lighting but are allowed to lay as they will automatically follow a solar cycle. Their egg laying slows as the light fades and the days shorten, until around Yule eggs are rare commodities—unfortunate for all the Yule baking I expected to do! As the Sun turns and the days lengthen, the egg-laying increases until it peaks during the period from Ostara to Beltane. Eggs, which some ancients referred to as suns-in-a-shell, are produced on a solar cycle, and are the true harbinger of spring.

I watched as the Sun stroked the leaves open, and learned why Beltane is the Green Man’s holiday. I watched as fruit ripened, and learned why the red stain of the berry is the blood of the slain Sun King who dies at the Solstice in Mediterranean countries. I watched the grain ripen, and realized why the golden god of more northerly countries is slain at Lammas, when the weather is more truly the Sun’s time in our cold north, and the grain reflects its gold. I watched the harvest come, and saw what happened when the balance of sun and rain wasn’t right. I saw the Sun fade to a mere few hours during the cold dark time of Yule, and understood why we desperately light bonfires at that time, and gather closely around them. I watched the midwinter festival of Oimelc, where the light is bright on the snow, a bright white cold that we don’t associate with the Sun but which is still part of her cycle.

I watched my seedlings grow upward, and realized deeply the relationship that all plants, all the Greenwights, have with Sunna. Greenwights have only three Gods: the Earth, the Rain, and the Sun, however humans may name them. Of the three of them, the Sun fills them with the greatest joy, even the shade-loving plants. They uncurl from the earth and reach for her blessings.  She gives them half their nourishment; they understand what it is to feed on the sun’s rays, and to hibernate or die entirely when her presence leaves them and the white cold ensues. I planted Sun gardens—small plots with yellow and orange annual flowers that would live for only one of her seasons—sunflowers, calendula, cosmos, German chamomile, dahlias, and heliotrope as blue-violet as the sky when she begins to drop below the horizon.

I also watched my friends with Seasonal Affective Disorder, a problem that has never affected my vampire self. I watched them wilt as the days grew shorter, and expand again in the light of the Sun. I suggested that they might go out and lay in the early morning rays, but I was told that the Sun was now dangerous. We’ve stripped part of the atmosphere off the earth, I’m told. In parts of Australia there’s hardly any protection from the deadly UV rays, and skin cancer is growing rampantly as a disease. We’ve made sun-worshiping a deadly activity. Sun-worshiping, that’s what they call it on the news when they refer to people laying out on the beach, and they only speak of it now in terms of smug warnings.

Flames leaped orange and burners glowed red,

The Sun beat down golden on our youthful heads,

The burns on our fingers were testament to

Our not giving Fire

The respect it was due…

 

And now we are stripping the shield off the Earth,

Exposed to the Fire that once gave us birth.

Do we really think our dear Sun won’t be cruel?

But Fire has no mercy

And She’ll kill us for fools.

                                -Corbie Petulengro, All That Burns

It’s something to think about. We’ve done such damage to our atmosphere, the blanket that lies between us and the terrifying side of the Sun, that it’s certain we can expect a change in attitude toward the Sun’s blessing. I’m already seeing it. People speak of sunlight in terms of fear and damage and protection, not warmth and joy. Parents no longer say, “Go outside—you need to get some sunshine!” They say, “Wear a hat and make sure that you wear extra-strength sunscreen, and don’t get burned.” Tans are acquired in studios, and my friends with SAD huddle up in front of little lamps rather than going out into the light that they need.

A friend of mine who is a sacred whore, working for the Love Goddesses, once wrote passionately about how fatal sexually transmitted diseases and the consequent need for safe sex have drastically changed attitudes toward sex and especially bodily fluids in this day and age. In ancient times, bodily fluids were considered sacred and to exchange them was a blessing. Today, when people think about that, they immediately think of Death. In the book Pagan Polyamory, my friend wrote about the issue:

I’m in a strict fluid bond with my primary partner, which means that no body fluids can get exchanged when I do my temple work. It is so incredibly difficult for me to have sacred sex while maintaining a safe separation between me and the other person’s bodily fluids! But I have no choice. I did safer sex education for a while, and in the training they give you answers to the common objections people have to using barriers, but nothing can address this: you must keep in mind at all times the association of their bodily fluids with death and disease. I can't do that. Their bodily fluids are sacred, and to take them into my body is to show ultimate acceptance of them and the physical product of their sexual arousal. To see this exchange not as a messy unpleasantry but as something desirable and beautiful is an affirmation of the sacredness of the body and of the physical realities of sex ... The way I’ve ritually dealt with it is this: When doing sacred sex, I have sometimes taken a small pot of honey and fed my client a dab off my finger, and had them do the same for me. I explain to them that it is reckless and disrespectful to our bodies to play without barriers in these times, but this sharing of honey is a symbol of the sacred exchange of fluids natural to sex. To share sexual fluids creates a link between you, just as a blood bond does. It is important to me to emphasize that although this exchange has been made symbolic, it is not because the sexual fluids are inherently dirty or disgusting, and I do what I can do downplay that connection to death. But I am of the age where from the time I was sexual, sex could kill. If I broke that fluid bond, every unsafe sex act would feel like Russian Roulette. I’d be constantly thinking: Will this one kill me? Am I still safe? Maybe it is already killing me, and I don’t even know it. How can we be sexual and not be aware that we walk this line?

What AIDS has done for sex, ozone pollution has done for sunlight. (While it may be a coincidence, I am struck by the reference to honey in the preceding quote—golden and sweet; honey has long been a sun-substance as well as a love-substance.) Those of us who want to have a relationship with the Sun need not to be in denial about this issue. If we don’t acknowledge what we’ve done, and what its consequences are (if only to ourselves), we are being hypocrites every time we raise our voices in praise of the Sun’s passing. How do we reconcile the danger, the dark side of all that light?

For me, I start with the fact that Sunna is a fire-giant. Most reconstructionists in the Northern Tradition are fairly wary of the giant-Gods in general, but they always seem to make allowances for Mani and Sunna and their harbingers Daeg and Nott … perhaps because the markers of their presence are right there overhead all the time anyway, so it really takes a stretch to demonize them. I’m not saying that they should be demonized, because I believe that it is inappropriate to demonize any of the Gods that I honor; our worldview doesn’t contain two divided sides of angels and demons, good and evil. Every creature, divine or otherwise, has their dark side. For the “brighter” deities, we usually only see that side when we’ve screwed up.

What we’ve done to the Earth’s atmosphere is an insult to Sunna, and to all solar deities. Since the Giant-Gods are the protectors of Nature—just as the Aesir and Vanir are the protectors of Civilization in two rather different forms—it makes sense that Sunna would show her wrath in this way. She’s a powerful force, and for us to want to stare her in the face without that veil between us is a wrong that she will swiftly punish. There are some forces that Man is better off keeping some kind of a distance from, and the Sun’s direct rays are one of them. As the Fire-Giant responsible for protecting sunlight, and protecting the Earth from sunlight, what we’ve done is near to unforgivable.

But not entirely. You want to propitiate Sunna? Give aid to an organization that is trying to replenish the ozone layer, whether from increasing sea plants to decreasing emissions. Buy a car that is emissions-free—or, better yet, buy one for someone who will never have the money to purchase such a thing. Run things on solar power whenever possible. (There, see, the cleanest form of alternative energy we have is solar power! Let’s declare Sunna the patron of that industry.)

Sunna has a typical Fire-Giant personality—impulsive, rambunctious, easily moved to laughter and suddenly inspired to scorching wrath … and, inevitably, easily moved again to more laughter when someone tries to please her. On top of that, all Sun deities are rather vain. It’s just part of the job. She enjoys being hailed, and having things done in her honor. Why else would she put on such a show? At this time in our history, we need to propitiate her more than ever … and replace the veil we are ripping off of her, before she smites the lot of us.

My story of learning about Sunna has not ended with undiluted happiness. I have lupus, a serious autoimmune disease that is worsened by sunlight. No one knows why sunlight makes the symptoms worse, but the fact remains that it does so. When we moved to the farm, I had just begun a new medication that put the illness into remission for several years, and I was able to enjoy Sunna’s rays regularly. Unfortunately, the disease caught up to the medication and progressed past it, and sunlight began to make me ill, more so than it had ever done before. I retreated again to the night, to shade, to large hats and umbrellas. This is probably the way that it will be for the rest of my life.  I am doomed to be a creature of darkness, a vampire in the shadow.

It would be easy for me, with my affliction, to come to hate the Sun. I can tolerate about a half hour of sunlight, perhaps an hour if I’m feeling especially well and nothing else is acting up. One minute too long, and I’m down in bed for the next few hours. It would be easy to come to hate this beauty which I was allowed to experience for such a short time, only to have it taken from me. It wouldn’t be hard at all, and yet I will not succumb to that anger and sorrow.

I believe that we can make change in the world magically, one small thing at a time, by living mindfully and dedicating our mindfulness to that change—as above, so below. Macrocosm, microcosm. As I pull this weed, I pull another small bit of fear and hatred from my soul. As I pull this weed, I pull another small bit of fear and hatred from the great mass of humanity. The one is just as achievable as the other … and holding onto a love for the Sun, even if I must observe her light from underneath the brim of my wide Chinese coolie hat, is a way to hold that faith for everyone else as well.

This land is my native earth, even if my ancestors did not live here, and I sleep on it every night. It is under my feet wherever I go, and it is the Sun that makes it green instead of barren. Like the greenwights told me: In the end it comes down to earth, rain, and sun. I will love the Sun even as I am driven from her by my own safety, through no fault of hers or mine … and if I can do that, so can all the rest of you. It’s easier than you think. Just look out your window … and do what needs to be done.