Unearthly Powers 101

This page explains the basic correspondences of Sun, Moon and Star:

What are these energies? I mean, cosmologically?

Not sure yet. I think they're probably all aspects of a larger whole. The sun; the sun's pale reflection; and the sun turned inside out, the waiting implosion, the black hole at the heart of every star. But maybe they're just metaphors, a sort of mental "filing cabinet" for understanding concepts. I'll get back to you, and am accepting suggestions. I think all three currents are ways of focusing attention and magical energy in different ways, and looking at Powers from different perspectives, and channelling power for different ends.

Solar

Ordinary folk have always have a rather straightforward view of divinity: Powers were either a help, or a hazard, God or the Devil. Solar power represents the people's gods - the guardians of hearth and home, of kings, war, crafts, family, good harvests, good food, prosperity and peace. Solar power is associated most closely with human beings, and their place in our world; and with a rural, pastoral life. Solar Powers are most often approached with prayer, worship, simple acts of devotion, seasonal festivals, and so forth. Don't make the mistake that solar power is not greatly magical. Hunter spirits are generally solar, for they are linked to man's traditions, animals, and the forest. So are harvest spirits and Powers associated with fruiting and fertility. A lot of the more “useful” Powers are solar - you may wish to work with the hemlock, but you'll be more glad of the grain, the meat, and the fruits. The Sun has always been a friend to man. Solar powers also typically include the Greater Powers of the land, such as the sea and storm and established deities - all of whom can crush you like a bug.

Lunar

Lunar power represents the world unfriendly to man: witches, demons, devils, fairies, tricksters, the dead. The ancients knew these entities to be real - and unreliable - but also knew they could be spoken to and bargained with, for a price. "It's not natural", your neighbours grumble: and so we also understand lunar things as artificiality generally, including the urban environment, the idea of study or science, and things which seem somehow perverse or unhealthy, like spending a lot of time inside on your own instead of going outdoors for good, clean, healthy fun. Solar magic is a patient gardener, training an ivy up a wall; Lunar magic permits cheating, exploitation, impatience, taking what you want when you need it. Why bring offerings to petition the forest spirit, when you could yank it awake with a sigil and negotiate directly? So Lunar also becomes an attitude: self-interested, self-invested, amoral, internal, private, the characteristics that a people-shy academic hidden in her library, or the river fairy that repeatedly floods your village during parties without understanding why that is a problem. Oddly enough, Lunar powers are often extremely human: Solar powers are so often dignified, noble and generous; they are typically thickly-clustered with meanining, layers of divinity. The Moon is like people you have actually met.

Stellar

The third and final current in the system is Stellar. Despite the name, we're not exactly talking about stars here - but the space between them. The huge, fathomless black of space. The stars - the flashes of gnosis - are few and far between, and often veiled by cloud, or hidden by man-made lights which distract us from seeing clearly. The Stellan current is mysterious, huge and horrifying; it's a way of manifesting the unknowable terror of the Landweird directly. For obvious reasons, we don't recommend you do this.

I became aware of the necessity of Stellan energy in the system after the other two, and haven't really poked it yet to find out what it does. Stellar is an experience, and often an intensification of things we find in Solar or Lunar currents. A fishing boat is Solar, a net-spell is Lunar: Stellar is the inhuman immensity of being too far out to see the shore, or too deep too see the surface. When the Sun shines to make the wheat grow, that is Solar power: drought, cancer, sunburn, nuclear war is Stellar. When the Moon guides us to learn and understand, The Sun governs the Stellar is not a tangible energy: a wheat field is a Solar object, a poison mushroom is a Lunar one. Stellar energy is fundamentally not-human. When the natural world is Stellar, it is dropping our anthropocentric worldview and truly understanding that we cannot know what it's like to be a snake or a hawk, and the universe's vast, cosmic indifference to our survival. Stellar lore often invokes the idea of alien creatures, deep space or strange planets, as a way to understand the Powers and world around us. Too much The Stars are, in some sense, Solar and in others Lunar: they ar

And most things have both solar and lunar aspects. Greenwood the great, help to hunters and home to witch-women, is solar; the wildwood at night, tangled, haunted by wolf-legends and sickly with strange mushrooms is lunar. Fresh baked bread, your gratitude for the taste and the smell of it and the chance to share it with friends is solar. The sacrificed king buried in earth, to do battle with beasts who have hoarded the grain under the ground, and his strange return as golden bounty - is solar. We see deities who seem to have a solar and a lunar face - pretty flower fairies, terrifying fay creatures in the bogs and fens. The good witch Bride, and the winter witch Cailleach. Odin the Allfather in the sun. Odin the hooded master of magic under the moon. We can work magic by mediating between these influences, or looking to work with figures and concepts in either a Solar or Lunar current for various effects.