Legend: The Sun, Lleu

Sophie-David

The last remaining Major for our Study Group to introduce, The Sun, personified in Lleu, is a triumphant and joyful end to our apparently random sequence. A blonde man with a pure white shirt and a long passionate orange cape emblazoned with a symbol of the sun, raises his sword to the sky as his golden white horse rears with energy beneath him. Lleu celebrates at the edge of a small circle of sacred standing stones, set in a verdant green field. In the distance a golden sunrise emerges through the trees, and below the sun the Land glows with orange and yellow.

From the observer's viewpoint as the horse rears, Lleu's sword exactly pierces the Sun through its centre, and its rays wrap around the weapon. His sword appears to be the conductor of solar energy from which Lleu draws his power. Lleu's horse is the instinctual vehicle of his life energy or libido, and is a beautiful embodiment of grace and power. For me, the Sun is a key card of integration, a celebration of the extension of consciousness as the Fool or Hero is about to complete a cycle of the Majors, and the horse itself is an internal power animal without equal. As Anna-Marie Ferguson describes in A Keeper of Words, page 105:
The horse is a symbol of progress and wisdom. The Faery horses of the heroes were able to cover great distances in short periods of time. Often these Otherworldly horses were able to speak, passing on knowledge to their riders.
I am reminded of Gandalf's horse Shadowfax from The Lord of the Rings.

I feel a particular connection to this Welsh god, for the fay people of my mother's family have the name Llewellyn, a word combining two solar gods together, Lleu meaning "Shining One" and Belenus or Bel meaning "Bright or Brilliant One". The name is made famous by a succession of historical leaders: Gruffudd ap Llywelyn, the only native Welsh king to rule over the whole country; Llywelyn ap Iorwerth, Llywelyn the Great, perhaps the most successful Welsh king, who reigned and died in peace; and Llywelyn ap Gruffudd, the last Welsh Prince of Wales, defeated by Edward I of England.

Lughnasa, the summer festival of Lleu which celebrates the first harvest, is at this point the only public pagan festival I have had the privilege of attending. It was led by my daughter and her husband, and it is a fond memory from last year.
 

WalesWoman

Sophie-David said:
The last remaining Major for our Study Group to introduce, The Sun, personified in Lleu, is a triumphant and joyful end to our apparently random sequence.

I feel a particular connection to this Welsh god...

Llywelyn ap Gruffudd, the last Welsh Prince of Wales, defeated by Edward I of England.

Lughnasa, the summer festival of Lleu which celebrates the first harvest
Wow! These got my attention...I knew I loved this card, just because, but I am so slow to make connections sometimes with the obvious.
Lughnasa is August 1...my birthday and this is Prince of Wales Island, even tho' I know very well it was named for the then Prince of Wales at the time of Captain Cook who named just about everything in the area. Just thought this was too cool of yet another coincidence.

What a excellent day to post this David, just exactly what I needed to see and think about.
 

Sophie-David

I'm glad, WalesWoman. Me too.

I hadn't noticed either, but now you mention your birthday, I see that of course Lughnasa falls right in the middle of Leo's yearly reign, the sign of the Sun. Today in church the theme was of the light of God, the light of Christ, and I was the reader. I found this theme difficult because the Bible celebrates light and deprecates darkness. But yet both are worthy of our affection: in balance they make us whole. This is the theme of the two Beloveds, Sophie of the Moon, and Eirian of the Morning and Evening Star. Together with the intentional consciousness of the Sun they form a whole and perfect triad. As I wrote about Llewellyn, I remembered that Eirian too means "bright" or "beautiful" - so it is practically synonymous with Bel, the last part of the name Llewellyn. I did not consciously choose Eirian's name and had no idea of its meaning until I looked it up. The circle closes.

This week I had a dream in which I had entered a contest to play in a large stakes casino. I then won a large amount of money, $60,000. But to claim it I had to use my mother's name. Remember in Legend: Wheel of Fortune I mention how "I am a gambler (but with no interest in gaming for money)"? This is not a dream about winning money, since I only risk in order to serve my life's mission. I think the dream is suggesting that when I write my books I may need to use my mother's family name.

As I write this I am looking at August in Llewellyn's 2005 Astrological Calendar. The picture is all in tones of orange and gold. A Lion with a wonderfully deep gaze has stopped in the long grass of the savanna, looking over the left shoulder of the observer. A tree arches above his head, and three more stand in the distance behind him. The sky is lit by the Sun in the form of a gleaming white symbol of the Leonine Omega. Like the Aslan of Lewis, this Lion is the world's Alpha and the Omega. The circle closes again.

We have just been rewatching The Fellowship of the Ring. I am about to finish off with my DVD of Welsh Bass-Baritone Bryn Terfel singing the Wotan's Farewell from Wagner's Die Walküre (The Valkyrie) from the Der Ring des Nibelungen (The Ring of the Nibelung). I have been writing about that opera cycle for The Lover's Path Study Group. A day of rings and circles - it has been an interesting one!
 

WalesWoman

Sounds like it must be, I've seen the Ace of Cups come up in two different readings that I did and what is that but the fellowship of the circle, ring? Almost uncanny.

This is the first year I didn't buy that calendar...I don't know what I wasn't thinking when I did that.

Going with your mother's family name just might get you that jackpot whether you are interested in financial gambling or not, it sounds like a GOOD gamble. It is a rather well known name in this sort of circle and would help sell your work I'm sure. What a neat dream!

It's ok if the Sun shines...you can just close the curtains a wee tad, so it doesn't hurt your eyes too much.

What is great about the Sun is that you aren't in that tunnel anymore, you have totally climbed out and are ready to take on the whole world. You are in the shadow of NOTHING! No cold spots, just that radiant heat that gives off a glow of well being. The shadows actually become darker and more distinct, allowing you to really see them and what creates them. So don't be bummed by indoctrination, that light is good, so darkness is bad...it's mostly what you feel comfortable with.

From Huey Lewis..."The future's so bright, I got to wear shades"
 

Sophie-David

WalesWoman said:
Sounds like it must be, I've seen the Ace of Cups come up in two different readings that I did and what is that but the fellowship of the circle, ring? Almost uncanny.
Yes, the Legend Ace of Cups is the cauldron from Temperance, and the fellowship are the fay maidens who attend it. The amount of synchronicity in my life yesterday was quite overwhelming. Then last night was full of dreams. I know I'm learning something new or about to, but I'm just not quite sure what.

WalesWoman said:
This is the first year I didn't buy that calendar...I don't know what I wasn't thinking when I did that.
Of course this is the first year that I have bought it - previously I would have never considered doing so in my wildest dreams or nightmares. The Capricorn goat in the snowy mountains is quite wonderful: I don't think I've ever seen such a positive and inspiring image, Cappy usually looks so mundane.

WalesWoman said:
Going with your mother's family name just might get you that jackpot whether you are interested in financial gambling or not, it sounds like a GOOD gamble. It is a rather well known name in this sort of circle and would help sell your work I'm sure. What a neat dream!
Yes, I do think it would add a bit of zip as a middle name or hyphenation to the last name. There are so many David Wilsons already, and several are published. I had a similar dream or intuition about changing my name some months earlier, but I was taking it literally rather than thinking about it as a pseudonym.

WalesWoman said:
It's ok if the Sun shines...you can just close the curtains a wee tad, so it doesn't hurt your eyes too much.
Its when light or dark become too intense that in their polarities they become damaging. Unrelieved sun can produce a barren desert, and in unrelieved darkness almost nothing will grow. Or when I'm doing photography, it can be quite difficult working with the harsh light of the full sun with its high shadow contrast, and in near darkness I lose so much detail even with long exposures. In either case the extremes go beyond the capabilities of the film or digital sensors. The best days are those that are partly overcast, or in spring and autumn, or morning and evening, when the light is softer and most balanced (although not necessarily colour balanced). I think that in the metaphorical sense its the same, too much Sun or too much Moon, or too much Magician or too much Priestess, and the imbalance becomes problematic.

WalesWoman said:
What is great about the Sun is that you aren't in that tunnel anymore, you have totally climbed out and are ready to take on the whole world. You are in the shadow of NOTHING! No cold spots, just that radiant heat that gives off a glow of well being. The shadows actually become darker and more distinct, allowing you to really see them and what creates them. So don't be bummed by indoctrination, that light is good, so darkness is bad...it's mostly what you feel comfortable with.
I agree, the Sun and its light are glorious, both physically and metaphorically. What troubles me is that the fear of darkness seems so intrinsic in western culture, whether religious or not. It pervades our language: darkness equals evil, even within the ATF. I still see Tarot publications in which the primary characteristic of the Moon itself is fear and delusion. From my understanding of the neo-Gothic movement its not really helping either, since so often its darkness also equates with evil.

Until we can see and accept that half of darkness which psychologically equates with the positive feminine then I don't believe that we will have achieved social equality between the genders. Instead we've merely made it easier for women to buy in to the masculine dominated hierarchical power structures full of their dominator values. After all this time, our society is still ruled by violence and fear rather than partnership and love. Our technology and material comfort is wonderful, but the overall quality of human life has never recovered from the time the nomadic pastoral warriors killed and enslaved the agricultural goddess worshippers.

I've noticed that in both Der Ring des Nibelungen and The Lord of the Rings the golden ring is supremely powerful but also a deadly curse. As a symbol of the Sun, is this metaphor a warning about allowing ourselves to be wholly governed by the Sun's values, more specifically, to be ruled by corporate boards, committees and parliaments dominated by masculine ethics, and usually by men themselves?

Well, enough soapbox for today. The Sun and Moon need to live in harmony!

In a dream last night, the Creative Beloved and I live together in an apartment in Vancouver. We watch a TV sci-fi in which an alien spaceship floats on the sea, but we also seem to be a part of the crew on the ship. It needs energy to take off, so the captain has the ship focus a lightning bolt on the middle of the Lion's Gate Bridge - a beautiful suspension bridge that connects West Vancouver to Vancouver City, plunging from an urban shopping mall on one side into the large virgin forest of Stanley Park on the other. The lightning extracts power from the electric grid going across the bridge, creating a corona which turns into a small sun. We go onto our balcony and see that this is happening in "real life", and miraculously, "nobody was harmed during the filming of this production". The sight of the sun enveloping the centre of the bridge is wonderously beautiful. The Creative Beloved immediately decides that we have to be a part of this, and she drives us over the bridge in our small bus to West Vancouver where the studios are. We know they aren't hiring, but I persuade the male security guard to let us into the studio because my girlfriend wants to buy souvenirs. Reaching the female receptionist, I agree with her that I am not the type they are looking for on the show and I start to browse souvenirs. Then the point of view switches to the Creative Beloved and as her I successfully talk my way into the job and am soon chatting with a fellow actress on the set.

There's a lot in this dream, but one thing that strikes me immediately is that the wonderous alien vessel, a feminine image, was powerless without connecting to the masculine energy of the Sun - both were needed in balance.