{"id":1604,"date":"2016-02-01T12:44:33","date_gmt":"2016-02-01T18:44:33","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/journeythroughtheobsidiandream.wordpress.com\/?p=1604"},"modified":"2016-02-01T12:44:33","modified_gmt":"2016-02-01T18:44:33","slug":"the-sun-versus-depression","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/journeythroughtheobsidiandream.com\/index.php\/2016\/02\/01\/the-sun-versus-depression\/","title":{"rendered":"The Sun versus Depression"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"midwest
Midwestern Gothic 22 by Wormwood Groves Photography<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

When Aradia and I set out to spend the year re-exploring planetary magic and reframing it in terms more accessible to witches, we started with the Sun for a variety of reasons.\u00a0 Firstly, we were beginning\u00a0at the Winter Solstice: the return of the Sun or – depending on how you frame things – the be beginning\u00a0of the waxing year.\u00a0 Secondly, from a naturalistic standpoint, if there is any planet that rules the heavens, then it is the life-giving Sun around whose gravity all the other planets revolve. Thirdly, as witches, the Sun is familiar and friendly to us, second only to the Moon.\u00a0 And, finally, we had hoped that the Sun would help me overcome the deep depression that overshadowed the second half of 2015.<\/p>\n

In this last, we found a ourselves to be very wrong.<\/p>\n

There are a lot of reasons. \u00a0The crash after leading the main rituals at Heartland last year (an event that I\u00a0still<\/em> haven’t written about). \u00a0My house flooding in the Biblical rains we had here in KC from April through June. \u00a0The implosion\u00a0of a long-standing friendship. \u00a0Family drama, in part political, in part related to the problems with my house. \u00a0Financial troubles. \u00a0All manageable, even taken together, except … I just didn’t have it in me. \u00a0This has been one of the worst years of my life for my mental health.<\/p>\n

Here in the depths of winter … even the Sun wasn’t enough.<\/p>\n

There were days … weeks when I considered abandoning the project altogether. \u00a0I thought that perhaps I should switch to an elemental experiment, to better prepare me for the rites of HPF 2016. \u00a0It got to where just walking into the room with the altars gave me panic attacks.<\/p>\n

In retrospect, I think that conjuring the Sun at the Winter Solstice was not the best plan. \u00a0The Sun is not the Moon, where it’s ebb is the flow of a different sort of power. \u00a0The Sun is always there, holding the spinning orbs in place, and the turning of the terrestrial\u00a0seasons has little bearing on the efficacy of traditional astrological magic. \u00a0But I was … am practicing witchcraft, and the turning of the seasons is the heart of that power. \u00a0And right now the Solar year is waxing, \u00a0but it is still … distant. \u00a0And cold. \u00a0And it is the\u00a0warmth<\/em> of the Sun that I needed to drag me out of my Abyss.<\/p>\n

Instead, I have been climbing out of my depression the other way available to those of us without the appropriate healthcare: by what Aradia describes as the ladder of anger and anxiety. \u00a0Fortunately, most of my friends are as mad as I am, and have been very understanding of how difficult it is to be around me.<\/p>\n

As I said, I very seriously considered giving up the experiment of planetary witchcraft. \u00a0But we did get\u00a0some very solid results early on, and in contemplating the Sun I did also gain some insight into how to more effectively proceed. \u00a0More importantly, though, I remembered something I learned from all my science friends:\u00a0negative results<\/em> are not the same thing as\u00a0a failed experiment.<\/em> \u00a0The things I learned from this round will help me execute the next.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

When Aradia and I set out to spend the year re-exploring planetary magic and reframing it in terms more accessible to witches, we started with the Sun for a variety of reasons.\u00a0 Firstly, we were beginning\u00a0at the Winter Solstice: the return of the Sun or – depending on how you frame things – the be … Read More<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[5],"tags":[38,134,203,204],"class_list":["post-1604","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-witchcraft","tag-by-the-way-im-crazy","tag-keeping-score","tag-planetary-magic","tag-planetary-witchcraft"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p8kUcm-pS","jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/journeythroughtheobsidiandream.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1604","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/journeythroughtheobsidiandream.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/journeythroughtheobsidiandream.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/journeythroughtheobsidiandream.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/journeythroughtheobsidiandream.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1604"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/journeythroughtheobsidiandream.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1604\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/journeythroughtheobsidiandream.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1604"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/journeythroughtheobsidiandream.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1604"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/journeythroughtheobsidiandream.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1604"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}