If you look up The Black Sun on Wikipedia, you will find a symbol that is NOT the one I will be writing about. This Black Sun originates from Viking decorative designs but was repurposed by Nazis, The SS, Occultists, and the Alt-Right. If you see it someplace, run away.
By contrast, when I refer to “The Black Sun,” I’m referring to a poetic, psychological, archetypal, and metaphorical perspective on severe depression, or rather “melancholy,” which I plan to differentiate from depression.
These images of The Black Sun come from medieval alchemical texts, painting, and literature:
The Books that are guiding me are The Black Sun: The Alchemy and Art of Darkness by philosopher, and post-Jungian analyst Stanton Marlon.” Marlon writes about an “egoicide” through creative work, and despair as a fuel for transformation.
I’m also reading The Black Sun by philosopher, Lacanian psychoanalyst, and feminist, Julia Kristeva. Through art, literature, religion, and philosophy Kristeva writes of melancholia as a “noncommunicable grief” over a lost erotic Thing. “The Thing is inscribed within us without memory, the buried accomplice of all our unspeakable anguishes.” However, the heavy light of the Black Sun brings with it a “metaphysical lucidity.” Says Kristeva, “if there is no writing other than the amorous, there is no imagination that is not, overtly or secretly, melancholy.”
More on this soon. I’m still gathering my thoughts.