Enter the Throne Room
I've become Sun-obsessed and the Sun been making me think about crowns. I'm looking at photos of crowns, paintings of crowns. I'm dreaming of crowns. I imagine different crowns on my head, on other people's heads, on the heads of animals, upon the brow of the peonies in the vase on my desk.
Think of the Sun's glyph. It's a dot encircled ☉ Maybe I'm just in this place right now but, isn't it head crowned? Crowns are one way humans pretend to be the Sun. It's how they try to convey their connection to the divine. The crown is their radiance, their rays of light. They are not just a human made of stars. Crowned, they are a star. For some, this connection to the divine — to the stellar, to gods, to a god — is a given fact (or one they hope will be taken as a given fact) while others see it as a great responsibility that they must honor over and over.
I say “crowns” but really I'm talking about anything that humans put on their heads or faces to signal responsibility and power. There are so many types of head adornment, just as there are so many ways to define and earn (and steal) the leadership they convey. I imagine coveted crowns, crowns of blood, crowns of gold, crowns rejected, crowns despised — by those who wore them but also those subjugated in their name. The latter is why I've avoided the Sun for so long. It's cultural. The primary examples I have of kings and other leaders of large groups of people are not great. Maybe you feel similarly.
To me, the Sun glyph models something different. It is a double map of our world. It describes the Earth's relationship to the solar system. On the one hand, if we place ourselves in the center, then we are the dot and the circle is the ecliptic, the Sun's track. The ecliptic then becomes the Earth's golden coronet, bejeweled with the planets and patterned by the zodiacal creatures. It is equally true, that if we place the Sun as the center then the planets, including ours, encircle the Sun.
The glyph for the Sun is perfect in that it is both so simple and full of solar mysteries. Its double-map helps me think about hyperindividuality and diversity. Sometimes I am so fed up with how successfully the stress of being here keeps us apart from each other and I'm so tired of alienation and “self-reliance” that I oversteer. I start to sound like it's all a big soup of everyone is everyone, you are me, and I am you, and isn't that so beautiful? It is! But describing it like a soup is not always functional and it leaves so little room for difference. Difference is how we take care of each other. The idea that we're all unique isn't about aggrandizing ourselves but acknowledging that diversity is literally vital. The choices aren't “be an island” or “blur all edges always in the name of sameness.” The Sun's doubling map says you are the center while you are also the edge of other centers. Yes, do don your diadem. It is yours whether or not you wear it. It is your gift and your responsibility. With it on, never forget too that we crown each other.
The Sun is so much more than your purpose. The Sun is your very beating heart. It is the stamp upon your soul. It is your guiding compass and the heavy mantle you bear. Arise to your solar seat, not to dominant but to claim the power you do have. Only then can you play your note and add it to the cacophony.
Your crown awaits. Is it a daisy chain? Is it a coronet around a jester's hat? Is it a tiara of racoon bones? A heavy thing of dark gold and amethyst? Is it candlelit black tower full of creatures whispering to each other atop your head? Perhaps yours is a sprawling thing of peacock plumage. Or a coronet of silver spires, bright red velvet, and ermine fur. Or a fox cap wreathed in hellebore. Or a diadem of fennel fronds, dried seaweed, and black pearls. Maybe it is the very planets themselves whirling around you always.
Place your crown upon your head and the Sun will hand you your beating heart and show you powers that may still be a secret to you. To don the crown is to say yes, I am here. Here is my heart. Here is my courage. To don the crown is to say here is the power I hold as one small, marvelous thing. Like you.
What if the Sun is not so much The King as by what right does anyone step forward? What if the Sun is the honor and ordeal of being entrusted with what we can do for each other?
If you’d like to stare into the Sun and the fixed stars who burn in your corona with me, check out my “Rays of Light” Reading.
