THE SUN

THE SUN Part 1 (Chaos Shamanism series continued)

I'm going to launch into the Wheel proper, so to speak. In other words, the four directions around it. We've been looking at the centre of the Wheel, its chaotic heart. Chaos in the sense of that mystery out of which our experience is always unfolding: our thoughts, our feelings, where do they come from? We don't know. Why are we here, what's the universe about, how did it begin, how will it end, where did life come from? All these are unknowable and unanswerable. We live from that mystery, and the purpose of the Wheel is to keep bringing us back to that, because that's when we're in the centre: when we know who we are, when we know we know nothing, and that we can know nothing. We have something, but it can't be put into words. It's like we know that we're part of this whole shebang, this whole universe and we kind of know we're connected to it all, we feel it. I reckon that's what happens after we die: we get connected to all of that, and we remember oh yes of course, why did I think I was separate?

 

We will now unfold the Wheel into its four aspects of Fire, Water, Earth and Air. East, South, West and North, in that order. Google Medicine Wheel stones and you’ll get the idea of what it looks like. I suggest you have a Wheel while you are reading this, it will make it more experiential. You just need four stones, one in each direction, use your local church to work out which way is East.

 

You can paint them if you want – yellow, red, black and white, in that order. It is what I have done, but you don’t need to, in fact I think you gain something in having raw stone, so to speak. It can be anywhere, maybe in your garden or maybe on your table, maybe you take it down sometimes. But it's good to have it as a sort of reference point. More than that, it becomes a symbol, it gets in you, it even carries your dream. I had that when I was in a caravan for a while, between lives, so to speak. I had a Medicine Wheel outside, on the grass, the sheep would tread on the stones and chip the paint! And the Wheel was just like carrying my life forward, I didn't quite know how it was going to go, but I could feel it was carrying the dream of my life. So the Medicine Wheel can do that. It can be your whole life.

 

But without further ado, let's go on to specifics. Because what I want to talk about is each direction, or rather each element, in turn and what they’re about and how to bring them into balance, beginning with the East, beginning with the Sun, with Fire, because that's where things begin.

 

As I say, I want this to be experiential. So have your Wheel somewhere, but also experience the Sun. The Sun's just come out just now as I'm writing. Go outside and experience it, let it just hit your face, just enjoy the sense pleasure of that. Okay, nothing might go through your mind, and you might not have any great insights, but nevertheless you are connecting to an ancient symbol, an ancient reality. A symbol doesn't just stand for something, it IS the thing, it IS the new life of the East. That's what Fire is, it's the new life in us that's always bubbling up. The Sun brings new life and growth literally in the natural world, and it is the same thing with our Spirit.

 

So there's that to be connected with, it's always there; it's in the nature of life to be always moving on, it doesn't stand still, it's always unfolding into the next stage. Who knows, the next stage might even be death? But that doesn’t mean less life, it's just life in a way that we don't necessarily understand.

 

We can sometimes have a sense of a design for our lives, a larger pattern that peeps through at moments of great change, or when we look back on our lives. Maybe even our death has that sort of sense – like Socrates, who needn’t have died when he did, but his daimon suggested otherwise. But death is also a cut-off point, it is a complete mystery. So the Sun is also all that level of things. And it's initiation. So there's all sorts of things we can talk about here.

 

But as I say, begin by going out and experiencing the Sun. There's an ancient power to it that can speak through you, it will feed you, and you’ll be paying attention to that new life in you. It's so important to do that, because of course we get caught up in the everyday. Just keeping life going life can just be about survival, it's maybe a luxury to think in terms of creating and bringing in the new. It's like, I'm just trying to put bread on the table, I'm just trying to make sure I can pay the next gas bill, I'm trying to get the kids off to school. Fair enough. But however much there is of that, there's always the new life, there's always at least a trickle of that, and you need to remain with that feeling. You may not be able to do an awful lot with it. But it may be just your ordinary life that has that trickle of new life, you may have young kids, you're watching them grow and you're keeping them growing, that is the new life it. Or it might be a new job that interests you in some way. So Fire may be coming out through the ordinary, or it may not be. If the ordinary is only needs must, then you need to find it one way or another.

 

Start inwardly: what is it in you that wants to live ,that isn’t being lived, that you would love to be doing, or or that you feel you have to do? Often we're on this kind of path because there's something we have to do, it's the daimon. The daimon comes in like an archangel from the Sun, from the East. So think about that in your life, what do I HAVE to do?

 

It can be good to look back on your life as well, look back on what's done it for you during the course of your life; what did it for you when you were a kid, what gave you that sense of magic and wonder and openness and imagination, adventure, excitement? It's all those kinds of qualities that are in the Fire of the Sun. And what did it for you as a teenager, and what did it for you in your early 20s and so on? Maybe write it all down and look at the connecting golden thread. You'll see there's this bigger design that's been unfolding all the time.

 

When I was a kid, there was a picture book with a wizard in it, and that has always stayed with me, it had a sense of wonder for me. In my teens, it was the occult, reading about that, that fascinated me. I liked to wear a dressing gown that stood for the magic. And eventually as an adult, after some wrong turns, it became Shamanism and Astrology: both grab me from deep within, and have done for years. And you can see the thread connecting all those things.

 

So trace your life back in those sorts of terms, come to know yourself in that way, to take that side seriously. Because society at large doesn't necessarily take it seriously, why would it? It's not the job of society at large to take it seriously, its job is to make sure that we're safe and that there is prosperity. That's what it's there to do. We can feel a bit railroaded by that, and maybe also by our parents’ ideas for us. But their job is just to get us to the point of being a functioning member of society. So there’s a good chance your aspirations and your imagination wasn’t affirmed, and that’s because most people are just normal, they are muggles, to use JK Rowling’s term for it. You just need to just claim it and take it seriously, and don’t rely on anyone else taking it seriously.

 

If you look back on your life, you'll see that when you were happiest, when you were most fulfilled, was when you were doing whatever that thing was that did it for you at the time. I had a big thing at the beginning of 2024, writing was no longer enough, whether it was books or regular posts for Twitter and Facebook. Something in me was going a bit mad, and I realized I had to speak. So I started making short videos, and everything came right, I flourished again. There's something in me that comes out when I speak, that isn’t there when I write, that is needed in the world, it’s not just about me, these daimonic callings usually aren’t.

 

Those things that drive you mad when you don't do them, that's the daimon, and it's ruthless. It may well sacrifice things The philosopher Kierkegaard arguably sacrificed his engagement, because his daimon required him to be unmarried. The same was required of the Jungian analyst Robert Johnson, via a dream interpretation from Jung himself. The daimon is not necessarily interested in our happiness. All that matters to it is that we do the thing we're meant to be doing. It may not give us ordinary happiness, but it will give us joy, and that is something worth sacrificing a lot for. I saw a manic-depressive talking on a documentary, and he said the extended misery he went through was worth it for those moments with the angels that also came. You can find a good exploration of this theme in Patrick Harpur’s The Philosopher’s Secret Fire.

 

Anyway, I’m making it sound more dramatic than it maybe will be for most of us. The point is there is always new life in us to be lived, and the Sun, the first point of the Wheel, if we spend time with it, will remind us of that, ask that of us, show us what that new life is.

 

And here is the 10 min video on which this piece is based:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IhZSdOPE-Sk