Sun's Day

Sun's Day

• Sunday, January 22, 2017

The herb of the Sun Tarot card is the bay leaf; which being under the rulership of the 'solar light'; the spirit of justice, success and plenty, its virtue being both greed and charity, masculinity and fire, femininity and sovereignty.

The bay leaf when powdered and burned produces a piney and tangy smell which is pleasant and dispels feelings of tension and conflict.

The Sun is the star of success, and the luminary of the Solar Mysteries in which those who walk the green path obtain their keys of heliotropic gnosis.  The grand motif of the witch is as a moon-worshiping night-wanderer, but this was not always the case in history or lore and isn't now.  I'm one of those witches who leans towards that warm golden glow, drawing power from the drowsy daytime dream, the cold morning light.

The Sun is a positive virtue who bonds easily with Venus and Mercury; adoring balance, wealth, glory and justice.  According to medieval grimoire, The Picatrix, the Sun holds rulership over "those who observe the law, and those who keep promises to all people he gives delight in good things, a good reputation in the mouths of the people and high positions and official posts, making all legality and goodness," and also, "among stones, (the sun rules) ruby, and jacinth; among metals, gold; among trees, those that are lofty and beautiful-"
"Among herbs, saffron, roses, wheat, grains and olives,"- The Picatrix. In the religion of the Druids, the oak is a tree of the sun.  However, in herbal tarotology, typically the bay laurel leaf and the sunflower (an intrinsic part of the Sun tarot and Lenormand symbolism) is associated with the Sun.  

On the virtues of the gourd, green alchemist Daniel A. Schulke remarks in his work Viridarium Umbris;

"Many gourds shall be required of the Herbarius, in which to house the numerous Powders of Magic.  Diverse kinds of gourds may be so employed, but the best are those which ripen in autumn and whose husks harden, when dry, to the consistency and strength of wood."  

In Cuban Santeria, the gourd is a sacred vessel of Osayin, the lord of all herbs, and the gourd is decorated with a rainbow array pf beads and hung in a high place, fed favored omieros, rum and tobacco to honor the Ewè.

This gourd, as all my gourds, was not only grown by a family member and passed to me for my work, but it was consecrated, soaked, purified, anointed, oiled, polished and suffumigated and beautified by my own hand.  I like to keep only my finished dusts in consecrated gourds.  This one is for the Sun, and it contains the dusts of success and hope.