The state of the suncult

Upcoming Melbourne events:

Suncult Social:
2pm, 3rd June, Melbourne CBD
https://www.facebook.com/events/234918437260320/

Winter Solstice Ritual
16th June, Melbourne CBD:
https://www.facebook.com/events/202804910484241/

It’s been four weeks since my last post here, and it’s not from a lack of love or interest.
I have monstrously bad executive dysfunction. I’m taking steps to be better.

I’ve been mulling over in my mind the direction I want to the SGP to take, since it’s important to me for it to stay rooted in Anarchist principles, and it’s still in such an embryonic state. This raises the question of how much input to take on from others. I’ve concluded it’s a matter of trust in the core, indivisible, elemental spirit of the SGP. I have some people in my life who already grasp it seemingly instinctively, and I treasure their input.
Defining that spirit in a way that is easily transmittable to others will come later, but it is something that will be done.

In the meantime, softness and kindness are the most vital aspects of the culture of this tradition. This work hurts, it’s raw and vulnerable and real. It’s scary and confronting and challenging. But people will play much harder, push themselves so much further when they feel safe. We need to dig down past the defense mechanisms to get to honesty and truth, and with that comes powerful, liberating and dangerous vulnerability. And with vulnerability, the opportunity to dig out the shrapnel poisoning us from the inside out. The shame, insecurity, pain, grief and many other ills. No deflecting humor or minimizing cynicism. Just truth.
How to get to that point of truth and safety in play is something that we will develop and hone and produce; it’s a journey in itself, but also a skill that can be taught.

As I walked home tonight, massive squawking fruit bats flew overhead, and silent ringtail possums crept across branches. The half-moon lit up the cloudy night in that grey hazy way you only get when it’s cold.
The winter solstice is only three weeks away, and yet the ground is blossoming with mushrooms, lichen and moss. Even in the most downcast moments, so long as we are truly alive, growth never stops.

I feel capable. Not confident or energetic, but filled with a quiet determination. The SGP is slowly putting down roots, even if on the surface things seem slow, or dormant. But it’s growing, and it will be beautiful when it blooms.

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SGP Ritual for the Super Blood Blue Moon Eclipse

This ritual is designed to fortify ourselves with inner strength, cunning, bravery and the will to persevere. Into the underworld we roam like werewolves and creatures who trespass the boundaries of the normal, finding a sacred freedom there. It can be performed alone or in groups.

Background:

A Blue Moon is the second full moon in a month. For some Australians, it won’t technically be a Blue Moon as it takes place after midnight on the 31^st of January.
A Supermoon is a full moon that appears extra-large and bright in the sky; the moon is at its closest point to the Earth in its elliptical orbit.
A blood moon is a colloquial term for a total lunar eclipse. The moon will be passing through the darkest portion of the Earth’s shadow (the umbra); some of the light reflected off the Earth’s atmosphere will make it glow a luminous red.

The site timeanddate.com has useful information about times and the direction the moon will be travelling through the sky in your area.

Tools:
Spring water
Dragon’s blood stick incense
Clean bowl
Red candle

For afterward:
Salty snacks, journal & pen

Kitchen substitutes:
Chilled or filtered tap water, oranges/orange oil, roses, rose petals, other incense, ext. Hot water poured over herbs like a tea can produce pleasant scents as an alternative for people sensitive to smoke. A tea light in a red glass, ext.

Location:
An outside liminal space, such as the beach, a park, your yard, ext.
If being outside isn’t suitable, by a (preferably open) window.
The eclipse can also be watched live online here:
https://www.timeanddate.com/live/

Setup:
Create an altar to be the focus for the working, and practice/learn the chant.
Place the red candle in the center, with a stick of incense on each side.

Suggested altar items:
Black and red objects such as fruit or statues
Bones, mushrooms, and other items associated with death and the underworld
Sea salt
The Strength and Moon tarot cards
Red stones: sandstone, jasper, carnelian ext.
Moon-related stones: selenite, moonstone, quartz
If you’re a person who presently menstruates, related sanitary items
Sand or sea water

Chant:
Bathed in blood and clothed in flesh
Into the darkness we dare step

The ritual:
Prepare in a manner that befits your practice. Ground, ward, cast a circle, enter into magical space/headspace.

Read out the ritual intention three times (Once by the ritual leader, then thrice as a group if working with others).

Ritual intention:
Between the worlds, we embrace our birthright as the strange ones.

Have the ritual leader read out the liturgy:

Liturgy:
The dominion of the othered, the queer, the witch, the seer, is an ability to step between the worlds while fully inhabiting none. There is power in our unique perspective, value in our rarity. In the underworld we find cradle, truth and power. The fertile ground for challenge, growth, the hidden and obscene. Like the darkness, sovereign and strong, we cannot be denied.

Begin the chant.

At the height of the eclipse, direct your hands and arms upwards to the moon and envision using them to guide energy like a silvery light down into the bowl of water, turning it into blood.

Take turns drinking deeply from the bowl.

Let the chant naturally fade into a hum, and then silence.
Lay back and watch the rest of the eclipse, close your eyes or stare into the candle. Allow yourself to feel the power of the spring water coursing into your veins and enriching your blood, or engage in visionary experiences.

When it feels appropriate, return.
Blow out the candle, snuff the incense and close the circle, banish, thank, ground.
Eat some salty snacks or the food off the altar.
Journal your experiences.

SGP Glossary of terms/quick reference guide

So it occurs to me that OH BOY do I use a lot of jargon. Here’s a quick refresher guide.
Will be updated as needed. Last update 2/12/2017

SGP:
Acronym for ‘Sovereigns of the Golden Path’, affectionately known as the #suncult.

A Sovereign of the Golden Path:
A person who has made a commitment to sacred self-ownership and principles of the SGP.

Animism:
The worldview that all things have a kind of living spirit, including plants, rocks, chairs, ext.

Chaos magic:
A modern magical system which posits the power of belief as a tool and mental flexibility from the constraints of dogma.

Queens of Death:
Four saint-like figures representing a way of conceptualizing of death.
Lady of Green Death:
Rebirth, tranquility, forests
Monarch of Black Death:
Entropy, infinity, space
Monarch of White Death:
Inevitability, acceptance, cemeteries
Lady of Red Death:
Grief, pain, the hearth

Animal Regent:
A mythic archetypal being. Similar to the Westernized concept of ‘totem’, but created to avoid the cultural insensitivity of using an Ojibwe term.
Animal agent:
A physical, individual animal acting as a messenger for it’s Regent, such as a ‘sign’ in the form of a cat running across your path.
Over-Regent:
A Regent which encompasses many species of the same type, such as the Regent of the taxonomic classification of a genus. For example, Vulpes Regent, and their many species of children, the foxes.

Ecstatic practice:
A state in which an intense visionary experience is attained through trance/altered states of consciousness. Does not necessarily require entheogens/drugs. Sometimes also referred to as ‘gnosis’.

Shrine:
A place devoted to a being or type of magical working.

Altar: 
A place in which to do participate in/use as the focus for magical working.

Sigil:
A type of spell in the form of an abstract symbol.

Pop Culture Magic:
An offshoot of Chaos Magic which employs the symbols and cosmologies of the mythic or modern fictional media.

UPG:
Acronym for ‘unverified/unsubstantiated personal gnosis’. Personal experiences and understandings not backed up by established lore. For example, associating Haephestus, ancient Greek god of fire and forge with power tools.

Official unofficial SGP recommended reading list

Eager to get your research on? Here’s the Official unofficial SGP recommended reading list. Will be added to as I find (and complete) good books because I have a shockingly bad habit of not finishing them. Many of these aren’t directly related to chaos magic, but I feel they add an important dimension to personal understanding.

Last edited:
25/05/2018

Books:
Killing, Jeff Sparrow
A language older than words, Derrick Jensen
First we make the beast beautiful, Sarah Wilson
This is how, Augusten Burroughs
No logo, Naomi Klein
Delusions of gender, Cordelia Fine
Consolations of Philosophy, Alain de Botton
Chaos Protocols, Gordon White
Practical Sigil Magic, Ralph Tegtmeier
The artist’s way, Julia Cameron

Series:
Cosmos: A Spacetime Odyssey

Youtube channels:
Kurzgesagt
Crash Course
PBS Idea channel

Essays:
White Privilege: Unpacking the Invisible Knapsack
The History of Mana: How an Austronesian Concept Became a Video Game Mechanic

Zines:
Oven ready chaos, Phill Hine

Articles:
https://goldenpathreadinglist.tumblr.com

Sovereigns of the Golden Path

or, how I learned to stop worrying and start my own cult.

I refer to the SGP as a cult as a way of using humor to minimize the terrifying immensity the task; to start a magical tradition.
When envisioning something as purposefully heterodoxical as starting a cult, you’ve got to maintain a sense of levity, even if it is born from anxiety. I want to create a space, a haven for people who are too strange to fit anywhere else without ignoring or cutting bits of themselves off. Within that space, a conversation.
I want it to be like lichen, defying easy classification; something erased from people’s minds by the limitations of artificial constructs and poor education. Lichen is a symbiotic being, a unity of fungi, algae or bacteria. I love lichen for the same reason I love tardigrades and those alien creatures that live around the hot sulphurous vents in the constant darkness of the sea floor. Against all odds, they persist. They endure. Their regents are very, very old.
When the fungi from a lichen is separated from its symbionts in a lab environment, it is able to survive but loses its shape and structure, becoming a formless mass of hyphae; a purposeless blob. Sometimes I feel like a fungus-less lichen.
The SGP is my attempt to inject a bit of structural bacteria into my practice, along with a desire to spread, to survive. That seems like an inelegant metaphor but it’s going to be organic with a lot of junk DNA to start with that’ll get honed by evolution, and hopefully, helpful outside input. The average human body contains a staggering, uncountable amount of bacteria. Down to our very basest physicality, we are communities, conversations. No thing is born perfect. We grow through error.
The SGP will be about the pursuit of personal sovereignty and truth. The further we stray from truth, the more we suffer. Truth is a stand-in word for freedom, authenticity, spirit, unity, god, source, whatever ineffable, holy quality you need it to be. The name refers to the sun, but it won’t be a path in denial of shadows. The lights in the night sky after all, are themselves tiny distant suns. It’ll be animistic, BYO gods if you have them, a tool not a dogma. It’s firmly rooted in chaos magic, but the more it evolves, the family resemblance becomes less clear.
It’s early days yet, and not all offspring are viable. But I remain hopeful that one day this will grow into a conversation that can continue on without me.