The Sun, Our Unfixed Star
“That's how you get deathless, volchitsa. Walk the same tale over and over, until you wear a groove in the world, until even if you vanished, the tale would keep turning, keep playing, like a phonograph, and you'd have to get up again, even with a bullet through your eye, to play your part and say your lines.”
— Deathless, Catherynne M. Valente
The Sun is a golden zombie, a deathless thing, running a track made of animal bodies over and over and over. Simultaneously, the Sun sits still upon the throne of its own plasma-body at the center of everything. The Sun is a molten skypainter, season bringer, green unfurler, dawn’s own fingers, a cosmic sea dweller, the seeing searer, the burning and charring one. A prince at his coronation and a king abdicating, crown clanging on the palace floor as he makes his way into the dark wood of the underworld. The Sun’s descent and re-emergence marks our days. Every solar hero and god who wears our star’s face goes to hell.
When I see the Moon, I am overcome by its intimacy, that it is our satellite, our sibling-parent, our kin. The Moon is an outlier among the celestial bodies in our solar system for this closeness to us. The Sun is an outlier too but so strange, being both an outsider and at the center. The Sun is exceptional in our solar system because it is a star, more made of the stuff of Sirius than Saturn. The fixed stars are more remote, even less earthly, even less human — and yet, here is this star, not remote but the defining feature of our system. Here is this fixed star who moves. The Sun is not like other stars because it is our star, this one who seems to have been plucked from the outer freezing firmament and made to be the beating nuclear-fusing alien-heart of our world.
A few years ago, I noticed something: I don’t pay a lot of attention to the Sun in astrology charts. Embarrassing, really. I pay attention to aspects, combustions, and if the person is a Leo Rising, yes, of course, we will discuss the Sun. But generally, I tend to look elsewhere. I “yada yada” the Sun a bit. Perhaps an overcorrection from when I only knew about Sun signs or an overcorrection to “the Sun cult.” Perhaps it’s that the Sun’s keywords don’t compel me, or I don't admit that they do: “ego” “authority” “power” “illumination” “individual.” None of these words are bad news on their own. They can go either way. How easily, though, am I distracted by the Moon and her night sect companions who seem more unruly and relational and somatic by contrast.
In comparison to the multiplicity of the night sky, the Sun seemed a harsh bright light, illuminating a single answer where there ought to be so many questions. The Sun is too certain, heady, detached, hierarchical, linear. Its daytime reign is all booming with sky-gods, made of decrees and "objective" truth, eschewing the strange many-limbed underworld. Plus, the Moon is of the people, and the Sun the king. It’s not hard to choose — even though no one is asking me.
Even now, when I try to talk about the Sun it comes out all abstract and vague (again, see Jason Holley's work on this), or I find it too heroic, like a brute with a mission coming in when I’m rooting for the monster he wants to slay. Or else the Sun seems a tyrant, demanding everyone see only him. The Sun is too center, too everything, too brilliant, I can’t get a good look. You’re not supposed to look directly at the Sun anyway.
When I discover I have a bias against a planet or star, it is like someone flicks a sterling silver goblet. The sound rings in my ears. I see Mercury rubbing their hands together, gleeful, and tousling the hair on the head of the prejudice I hold. We’re about to fix a problem we’ve found by making it more of a problem. We’re about to make a rascal out of simplicity.
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The Gleaming Feast
The Gleaming Feast is a growing heap of plump devotions to the ones we find in the thick green and in the shining dark. It is where all of my writing lives and is an exclusively reader-supported publication. Take a peek!
