Solar Daydream
A celebration of 200 subscribers.
When I started this substack back in February of 2021, I was guided only by a vague impulse to write down my experiences and thoughts, without much of a plan. The muses had prompted me to do something, but they left it up to me as to what that something looked like.
Writing is hard. The Devil’s Dispatch languished for a while, years in fact. I wrote here and there but so many other things presented themselves to be done, leaving me little time to write. I kept it alive in my mind, though. Even through doubts that I had picked a dumb name for it!
But here I am again. For me, writing is an act of resistance. It’s a way to meet the times as they are and co-create something better than what we have at the moment. At least that’s what I’d like to think.
Today I want to take a moment to celebrate and reflect on the fact that 200 of you decided to subscribe to the Devil’s Dispatch, and how much that means to me. I appreciate every one of you that have decided to come along with me on this journey.
I’m sitting here at my day job, looking out the window on a barren parking lot, mulling over current events. I suspect many of you are also at your various jobs when these words find you, looking out onto the same sky as I am. We are connected outside of time and space, in the eternal moment when I am writing this and you are reading it.
Writing is a form of magick. Reading is a form of magick.
The act of communicating falls under the domain of Mercury, but I would argue that writing is very Solar. You must have a clear point of view and a well-defined sense of direction. You must shed light on whatever topic falls to your pen to illuminate for your readers. In a way, writing is a form of leadership, paving a path filled with words for some unknown person to follow after.
In Qabalah, The letter Resh ר has the value of 200. It is a solar number, fiery in nature, symbolic of the Sun. On the Tree of Life, it connects the spheres of Hod and Yesod. The word Resh means “head” connecting it to consciousness and the pineal gland.
In Sepher Sapphires under the entry for the number 200, the author writes:
As 2 multiplied by a hundred, Resh represents the totality of the Universe, of interstellar space, of the myriads of stars and all the planets; all is conditioning of life and the life of conditioning. This is a great cosmic dwelling of life, which retains life manifested in accordance with its capacity (200). It includes the totality of nature, all existence: the myriads and myriads of water-drops, of blades of grass, of living cells, and the infinite myriads of elements living in the elements of algae.
Other words with the numeration of 200 evoke ideas like magic, divination, bone and body, and wings. These ideas illuminate the Solar gateway between the microcosm and the macrocosm. It is a highway leading straight into our heart centers. Things that fall under the domain of the Sun have to do with the connection between the head and the heart. Healing often works best if the two things are in accord, divination is the bringing forth of heart knowledge to a place where the head can understand and utilize it. It’s no surprise these two things fall under the domain of Solar gods like the Olympian Apollo.
The way things seem to be going, we are going to need a lot of heart knowledge to get through these dire times. The Golden Dawn title of the Sun card of the tarot is the Lord of the Fire of the World. The heart is a beacon and a bonfire. It knows what to do and calls for us to follow that knowledge and do something with it. It is with the fires of the heart that we stoke the engines of manifestation.
The tragedy of the LA fires fresh in our minds warns us that fire can be destructive, too. That’s why we have to do the work to make sure the heartfire we nurture is beneficial to ourselves and to our communities, or else it will corrupt us and the worlds we create. The result of feeding the heart-fire hate and ignorance is paraded in front of us daily on the news, and we don’t need a reminder of where that road goes.
I’ll leave you with this poem from The Book of Thoth:
Give forth thy light to all without doubt;
the clouds and shadows are no matter for thee.
Make Speech and Silence, Energy and Stillness,
twin forms of thy play.
This Substack is my flashlight so I can find the others in the darkness. Together, we can manifest a dawn our hearts know is possible.
Hello reader, thank you for ending up on my newsletter. I truly appreciate you! Since you made it this far and must have some passing interest in all things odd, I want to introduce you to a new podcast called Dispatches from Post-Reality. There’s a discord, too! Yes, I am in the Discord. I am creating the art for the show episode covers and social media posts. It touches on some of the same esoteric subject matter you’ve come to love from this newsletter but with a decidedly funnier and much more casual tone.
Just wondered if I was the magick 200th?