Neolithic Shamanism: Spirit Work in the Norse Tradition - Raven Kaldera 2012
Sundial
The Golden World: Sun
Sundials have been in use since people decided that it was important to know what time of day it was. The earliest known piece of a Babylonian sundial dates to 1500 BCE, and by 600 BCE they were all over Greece and later spread to Rome. From examining the earliest sundials, it seems that they were built as much to admire the solar cycle as to nail down part of the day. In the Iron Age, people were taught to tell time by measuring where their shadows fell; in the medieval era the Venerable Bede actually published a chart delineating the ratio of shadow-footsteps to hours. (One assumes that he had average-size feet.) Churches carved crude sundials into their walls in order to mark the monastic hours. The Saxons divided the day not into hours, but into “tides,” large multihour swathes of time from which we get noontide and eventide.
Sundials are not ancient, but they are useful tools for connecting with the Sun’s energies. Building any sort of sundial forces you to confront the solar cycle and learn a lot more about the doings of the Sun. While the details of building an elaborate sundial are too complicated to go in to here (and for these details, check the very good books on the subject listed in the Resources), we can describe a few simple kinds and explore how they would work as a way of connecting with the solar spirit.
Craft: Creating Sundials
The simplest form of sundial is the noon mark. In older days, noon marks were made on the sides of houses so that housewives would know when to call in the hungry workers for lunch. Many modern residents of these older homes never realize that those strange marks actually mean something. There are two ways to make a noon mark; one involves mathematics and one involves being at the same building at noon more or less every day for a year and continually making a mark as the shadow from a stationary object falls across a wall or windowsill or porch railing. We recommend, for all these sundial methods, that you work from the observational and empirical mindset rather than the mathematical one, not because the math is so terrible, but the point here is to learn about the solar cycle in a deep and organic way. Noon marks don’t have to be merely a series of lines; they can also be special symbols for different times of the solar year. Remember that many electronic devices are not set for actual noon wherever you are; they are set for the center area of your time zone, which can encompass up to a half hour’s worth of difference from your actual position.
The solar cycle can also be observed by sunbeams. If you make a hole in a piece of paper and put it on a south-facing window, the beam of light will make its way up and down the wall or floor throughout the year. Your noon mark should tell you when it’s noon on each day. If you take the right notes on your moving beam—again, details of how to do this are found in the sundial books we’ve listed—you will create a long double-teardrop shape, with one long loop and one tiny one. This is called an analemma, and the place where the two loops cross is at the equinoxes. You can create an analemma with tacks on the floor of a building, and this makes for a good inside Sun-worshiping spot.
You can set up a classic sundial with its triangular gnomon (upright marker) outside in any unshadowed place. Don’t buy decorative sundials in garden stores or supermarkets. They are often an artist’s fanciful rendition of a sundial, rather than an accurate tool. At best, they are accurately laid out for an arbitrary and often unspecified latitude. Accurate custom-made sundials are available from specialty craftspeople, but learning how to set up your own, from observation rather than mathematics, is an excellent exercise for connecting with the energy of the Sun. Classic sundials are basically altars to the Sun and can be used as such.
One of the most wonderful sundials for our purposes, however, is the analemmatic dial. This requires a fairly large unshadowed and flat outside space, and can be marked out with paving stones in a garden. The stones are set in two abutting parallel rows on a north-south axis, which can be determined very roughly with a compass and then adjusted by checking against Polaris, the North Star, at night. Each section of the two walkways corresponds to a specific time of the year; the solstices are at the ends and have tiny sections, while the middle sections are wide and correspond to the equinoxes. Most sources on laying out analemmatic dials divides them into twelve unequal sections for the months, but for shamanic purposes they should be divided into eight unequal sections for the eight periods of the solar year. This is actually easier than the rather arbitrary calendar months, which have no relationship to the solstices and equinoxes.
The ratio between the sections must be calculated mathematically, but once that is done, you can stand at noon on any of the sections and your own body becomes the sundial gnomon. A friend can mark where the head of your shadow falls, which will yield a semicircle of points over the course of the year. Then place a number of objects (which can be plants, statues, spirit houses, or whatever you like) on the points. When you stand on your analemmatic dial on any given day, you have the array of the whole solar year spread out in front of you, and you are literally the Sun’s point of measurement on Earth. It’s an amazing feeling and an excellent place to absorb solar energy on a psychic level, which works even through clothing if you are worried about ultraviolet rays.