The sun was not straightforward: it was light and dark, creator and destroyer, bringer of both plagues and healing, a mass of unpredictable energies.Įven as scientists made the cosmos less mystical and more mechanical, the sun kept its contradictory character. Both Sekhmet and the Aztec Huitzilopochtli, whose body was made of the souls of warriors transformed into hummingbirds, were also gods of war. Egyptians worshipped the sun as Ra, supreme ruler and order-bringer, but also the lesser gods of the sun’s rising, its setting and, in Sekhmet, its scorching of the land. Alongside Apollo came Helios, a more workaday god who drove his chariot from east to west and back again until he was tired, and lingered with lovers until he caused eclipses. Yet gods had multiple moods and characters, and the sun was no exception. Christians in church still face the rising sun, the natural direction for morning prayer. The Gayatri Mantra from the Rig Veda, holiest of all the Hindu mantras, addresses the sun unreservedly. The Greeks had Apollo, god of order and poetic metre as well as light, with his hair curling down in golden rays, never to be cut. Innumerable civilisations have made the sun a god, giving light and life to the world, marking out time, all-seeing.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |