A Big Sip of Sun
The weather is warming up; let's toast to it.
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Hello, wonderful witches!
I have a little tea ritual that I bring out when the weather warms up. It’s simple, really: I make a hot cup of tea (currently I’m on a pu’erh kick), head out onto my deck, and watch the sky change as the sun rises. I go out again as it sets. It’s calming and sets the mood for my day, and it allows me to appreciate the changing of the seasons. I love feeling the warmth of the sun on my face, like a blissful cat snuggled up into a sun patch.
Today’s essay elicits that same feeling—the bliss of the sun’s warmth paired with a good cup of tea. Pour yourself a mug and toast to the season with us.
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When I Drink the Sun
By Linda H. Codega
In the first warm days of the year, I appreciate the sun more than ever. The world around me, slowly turning from gold to green, calls the sun down into its colors, the first bright thing in the Hudson Valley after winter.
I grew up in Southern Virginia, where you had to tell the waitress that you wanted your tea unsweet or it would come candied to the table. Sun tea, it must be said, is a different thing.
Making sun tea takes a full day. It’s a ritual, but not one that you have to mind much. You should have a sealed container to capture the heat like a witch’s glass, hung from the porch. Fill the jar with clear, cold water; remember where it came from. What river feeds your home? What reservoir do you draw from? Take a moment with this clear water and remember that you’ve been given a gift from the land.
Sun tea is most commonly made from a black tea. Blending teas has a long history in witchcraft and medicine, but for this ritual, even a few Lipton bags will do. Black tea is traditionally indicative of clarity, luck, and strength. Tea was made from fire and heat. Set your tea in the water, watch the first tendrils of smoke run out of the bag. Remember that it dried under the sun, that it withered, that it is tilled like the land out back; crush, tear, curl.
This is the last step, and it’s the most important. Set your jar up in a window so that it catches the sunlight, and then leave it alone. Walk away. The sun is greater, more powerful, and older than you, and it knows how to make something clear turn dark and dense and strong. The sun’s magic is in its heat, its strength, its potency, and it amplifies the magic it touches. You get to drink that in soon, but you must not dwell on it. The sun’s magic does not owe you, but it might rest for some time in your glass.
Sun magic is traditionally used to invoke clarity, luck, and strength. Matched with black tea, smoky, rich, and deep, it’s a powerful amplifier for intentions. The jar warms under the light, and it enacts its own transformation in the glass, fire reflected through a lens. Smoke spreads through the water, carrying a change with it. A current moves the water around in the jar, a warm water turning. This is the magic time; and it has nothing to do with me.
When I drink the sun, held in a cup of tea, it is not an act of magic, but preparation. This is a magic created outside of my own intentions, but there is concentrated focus manifested. I have collected the water, the earth, the fire. I hold it and breathe it in. I listen to the sun falling below the horizon, the rustle of leaves, the smell of a neighborhood in spring, grassy and blooming. I drink the sun and I prepare for the next ritual, bringing the sun with me, a small amplifying alchemy gathering under my tongue like an ember.
Linda H. Codega (they/them) is a queer, nonbinary writer living by a mountain in the Hudson Valley. By moonlight, they are a cultural flaneur, speculative fiction author, and narrative game designer. Their short stories and critical essays have been published by Tor.com, The Spool, Luna Station Quarterly, and various anthologies. Follow them on Twitter @_linfinn.
Coming Up Next Week…
Next week, we’re virtually heading to Taiwan to enjoy a tea planting ritual that’s recently returned.
See you then!