I woke before the sun this morning to head to my job as a social worker, much earlier than I am wont to wake. I don’t quite understand how people do so daily, though enough people in the world do so that there must be some sort of joy in it for them.
I’ll admit, though–watching the sun rise in the east, the haunting play of violet and rose upon clouds is quite enchanting. I see the sun most often in its setting, where slanted golds torch the ending day in dreaming sepia, but it is nice to be reminded of what it looks like to others, how it displays for them another beauty missed by we who prefer the moon.
The sun opens my piece for The Wild Hunt this month, as I’ve been thinking also of how closeness and proximity skews our recognition of influence. Like a close but quiet noise; an alarm clock in the morning, or perhaps a dripping faucet, drowns out all the other sounds farther from us which have more sustained effect. The stars are so distant that we can ignore their light, blinded when the sun’s light inflames the sheath of air around the earth, turning a black sky light-blue.
There is another mystery contained within the esoteric Black Sun easily missed by those who wield it as a talisman against people they don’t like. You can see the sun and the stars at once, at certain times and in certain rituals, when the sky falls away, just as you can see both flesh and spirit, separate and unending. The closest light is not the only light, the self-evident answer is not the only answer, and is sometimes the wrong one.
That piece tries to untangle quite a few threads of “self-evident” thought, particularly around gender and the cherished Goddess of (primarily Anglo-American) Paganism. I may have succeeded, or it may prove that those threads were actually strands of a web from which there is no viable escape. I’ll let you decide.
Also, there’s a short piece about ‘my’ forest on A Sense of Place this week. My bed this morning was full of the forest, as is sometimes my beard and definitely my floor. It just sort of follows me in-doors, though it probably also has something to do with my habit of laying down in it.
Rhyd Wildermuth 
I thought your TWH piece was good…and yet, it seems too many people missed the point entirely.
Gus’ response was, as anticipated, laughable (regrettably). I especially loved how he didn’t realize which of his (two!) books you had quoted, despite you giving the title…Who needs to learn to read now?
I’m also baffled at that “mptp” critter’s use of Antinous as a hypothetical…what? Would anyone allow someone on TWH to write a piece critical of Antinous? Because, you know, if they did, everyone in the internet would be outraged at it and come to Antinous’ defense…yeah, uh-huh. I don’t see what there was to gain in that rhetorical move on that critter’s part. ?!?!?
The dichotomy between Universal and Myriad still strikes me as a primarily post-Christian problem.
One of the things that really put me off of the Wicca I encountered was the insistence on shoehorning everything into a gender binary, which didn’t describe me or the Beings I find myself in relationships with.