The talisman of the Sun: how and when to make it

What a Sun talisman is, and what it means

A Sun talisman, the talisman of the Sun, was in the Arabic tradition an image made in the Sun's own hour, while the Sun stood strong, for the matters the Sun governs: honor, vitality, leadership and appeals to those in authority. The word is ṭilasm, and Canopy's window page for it carries the name Tilsam al-Shams beneath its title. The great handbook of the art is the Ghāyat al-Ḥakīm, the Picatrix of its Latin readers, which ties a work addressed to a planet to that planet's day and hour.

The Sun talisman's meaning, in Canopy, is brief. Its purpose line reads "Fame, vitality, and the seen face of authority".

None of this is a sun amulet or a sun charm worn for its symbol: the tradition defined a talisman by the moment of its making, which is what Canopy computes. This page reads it as history and timing, and makes no claim that a talisman works.

How to make a Sun talisman: the materials Canopy shows

Canopy answers how to make a Sun talisman as the timing tradition framed it: with the Sun's matter and the Sun's moment. The matter is on the Correspondences screen, al-Munāsabāt, opened from the About & Correspondences page of any Sun window:

• Metal (al-Maʿdan): gold, al-Dhahab.
• Gemstone (al-Jawhar): ruby.
• Color (al-Lawn): gold and yellow.
• Fumigation (al-Bakhūr): frankincense, al-Lubān al-Dhakārī.
• Herb (al-Ḥashīsha): frankincense again; for the Sun, herb and fumigation are the same resin.

The window page's own Talisman Correspondences block agrees. All of it is drawn from the classical correspondences; Canopy gives no construction steps, only the timing, which for the Sun is the hard part.

The planetary hour of the Sun

The hours run in the Chaldean order, Saturn, Jupiter, Mars, the Sun, Venus, Mercury and the Moon, and the first hour after sunrise belongs to the planet of the day, so Sunday opens in an hour of the Sun. The hours are unequal, twelve for the daylight and twelve for the night, and because twenty-four is not a multiple of seven, the Sun's hours move through the week. Counted from sunrise, each night belonging to the day before it, the planetary hour of the Sun falls:

• Sunday: the 1st and 8th hours of the day; the 3rd and 10th of the night.
• Monday: the 5th and 12th of the day; the 7th of the night.
• Tuesday: the 2nd and 9th of the day; the 4th and 11th of the night.
• Wednesday: the 6th of the day; the 1st and 8th of the night.
• Thursday: the 3rd and 10th of the day; the 5th and 12th of the night.
• Friday: the 7th of the day; the 2nd and 9th of the night.
• Saturday: the 4th and 11th of the day; the 6th of the night.

In Canopy the hour is required: every Sun window falls in it, so the Hour Ruler box always names the Sun. The day is only scored, two points for "Sun rules the planetary day", with Sunday counted from sunrise to sunrise; on a Wednesday or Friday window the Day Ruler box names Mercury or Venus. For the planetary hour of the Sun today, try the free planetary hour calculator.

When to make a Sun talisman: at sunrise or at noon

The Talismans tab sums up the rule: a dignified planet on an angle, for its own virtue. Angular, for Canopy's talisman windows, means within three degrees of the Ascendant or the Midheaven, and the Sun can stand there at only two times of day: as it rises, and as it culminates at local noon, the sundial's noon rather than the clock's.

Set that beside the hours and the week narrows. Sunrise opens the first hour of the day, the Sun's only on Sunday, and closes the last hour of the night, the Sun's only on Thursday night. Noon falls where the sixth hour gives way to the seventh; the sixth is the Sun's on Wednesday, the seventh on Friday. So a Sun talisman window can come in four places only:

• Sunday, just after sunrise, with the Sun on the Ascendant. Day and hour agree, as the Picatrix asks, and the window can earn the points for both and for the Ascendant.
• Friday, just before sunrise, with the Sun on the Ascendant's degree but not yet risen. It is the briefest of the four and earns no day point: the planetary day is still Thursday's.
• Wednesday, just before noon, with the Sun on the Midheaven at the close of the sixth hour.
• Friday, just after noon, with the Sun on the Midheaven at the opening of the seventh hour.

The app does not print this pattern; it follows from Canopy's rules. Each window is brief, about ten minutes either side of its exact time, for the reasons in why a window lasts only minutes.

The year sets a second limit. Canopy refuses the Sun in Libra, its fall, and in Aquarius, its detriment, and wherever it is peregrine. It passes in Leo, its domicile; in Aries, its exaltation; in Sagittarius, through the fire triplicity it rules by day; and in its faces: the last ten degrees of Gemini and Capricorn, the first ten of Virgo and the middle ten of Scorpio. The Sun has no terms, so all of Taurus, Cancer and Pisces, and the rest of Gemini, Virgo, Scorpio and Capricorn, give no Sun window, however good the hour.

The Sun talisman election: what Canopy requires

A talisman window is an election under stricter rules: a moment that fails any test is set aside, not marked down. The tests shared by all seven planets are set out in why a window is refused; on the Sun they fall like this:

• Hour and angle. An hour of the Sun, with the Sun within three degrees of the Ascendant or the Midheaven.
• Dignity. Never Libra or Aquarius; elsewhere domicile, exaltation, triplicity or face.
• No combustion or retrograde test. Those fall on the five other planets.
• The Moon by sextile or trine. A Moon close enough to apply to the Sun by conjunction is combust, and a combust Moon is refused, so she must be closing on a sextile or a trine: four stretches a month, two as she waxes and two as she wanes, each the better part of a day.
• No affliction. The Moon clear of the South Node, and neither the Moon nor the Sun applying by square or opposition to Mars or Saturn.

A moment that passes is scored out of 18 points and needs 50 percent to be listed. Dignity weighs most, from five points for Leo to one for a face; the Ascendant earns three and the Midheaven two, and Sunday adds two more. Only a Sunday sunrise with the Sun in Leo can reach 100 percent.

A Sun window set aside, and one that passes

In the first imagined sky it is Sunday, minutes after sunrise: the Sun's hour, the Sun on the Ascendant, the Moon applying to it by trine. But the Sun is in Libra, the sign of its fall, and the moment is set aside before it is ever scored.

In the second it is a Wednesday shortly before noon, and the Sun, in Leo, stands within three degrees of the Midheaven. The Moon is waxing and applying to it by sextile, clear of the South Node and of any square or opposition to Mars or Saturn, and the Sun applies to neither. The moment passes. With no aspect from Venus or Jupiter, five points for the domicile, two for the Midheaven, three for the hour, one for the waxing Moon and two for a Moon waxing and not void of course make 13 of 18, about 72 percent, which Canopy rates Excellent. There is nothing for the day; Wednesday is Mercury's.

Finding the Sun's window in Canopy

Open Talismans, then Planetary Talismans, and choose the Sun alone among the seven bodies. Check the location: sunrise and noon differ from city to city, so a window holds only where it was found. Choose the dates, up to six months in one search; with at most four short chances a week, a long span often makes the difference. Then tap Search Planets.

The filters narrow the results without changing what is admitted: Angle set to ASC shows only the sunrise windows, MC only the noon ones. Each result opens on a page headed Sun Talisman, Tilsam al-Shams, with the TIMING boxes, "Why this time?", whose factors include "Sun rules the hour", and About & Correspondences. Set Reminder alerts you thirty minutes ahead; Save to Calendar adds it to your calendar. Birth data is optional.

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