Sun Gods Essay, Research Paper

You climb the steep stairs of the temple. As you look around, you see the blood of your fellow prisoners pooled on the floor. You see the priests. They are caked with the blood of their former victims. You hear the drums start. They will muffle your screams. The time is 1531. The place is the great Aztec city of Tenochtitlan. You are about to have your heart ripped out of your still living body to appease the angry gods. This is an example of sun worship. In some cultures, the sun was a blood-hungry deity that required human hearts to shine. To others the sun was the creator of the earth and every thing on the earth. The three most noteworthy cultures that had solar religion were the ancient Egyptians and Aztecs. All of these civilizations had a belief of sacred kingship and an extremely well developed urban culture. For example, when the Spanish conquistadors came to the Aztec capital of Tenochtitlan they were amazed by the city. “We were amazed .on account of the great towers and temples and buildings rising from the water, and all built of masonry. And some of our soldiers even asked whether the things we saw were not in a dream.” 1 Their rulers governed by the power of the sun and their royal families believed that they were descended from the sun. Forms of sun worship still exist today, in the mien of some of Christianity s most revered holidays and our modern customs. “Cults of the sun, as we know from many sources, had attained great vogue during the second, third and fourth centuries. Sun-worshippers indeed formed one of the big groups in that religious world in which Christianity was fighting for a place. Many of them became converts to Christianity and in all probability carried into their new religion some remnants of their old beliefs. The complaint of Pope Leo in the fifth century that worshippers in St. Peter s turned away from the altar and faced the door so that they could adore the rising sun is not without significance in regard to the number of Christians at one time had been adherents of some form of sun worship. It is of course impossible to say precisely in what way their influence manifested itself. We do know, however, of analogues between Christ and the sun; he was designated the Sun of Righteousness; and our date of Christmas falls on the date of the festival of a popular sun-god in Rome.”

Like mentioned previously, almost every civilization had a deity who represented or personified the sun. To the Celts who lived in central Europe, their sun god was Lugh. The god of the underworld, and leader of the evil Fomorii, Balor was his grandfather. According to a prophecy, Lugh was to kill Balor. When Balor tried to prevent this from happening by attempting to kill Lugh, Lugh went to live with Manannan and became an expert warrior. When he was an adult, Lugh joined the people of the goddess Danu to aid them in their battle against the evil Fomorii and Balor. Balor had an evil eye that killed whoever looked at it. Lugh threw a magic stone at it and killed Balor. To the Greeks, Apollo was the god of the sun, reason, logic, music and healing. He was the son of Leto and the king of the gods Zeus. Leto traveled all around Greece for a place to give birth to Apollo and his twin sister Artemis. She came upon the island of Delos, and the island agreed to allow the birth of the children, if Apollo would found a temple on the island. Leto agreed and when Apollo reached manhood, he made the island of Delos into a beautiful paradise. The most famous temple of Apollo was at the site of Delphi, where the Oracle of Delphi was located. The Fon people of West Africa had a sun god named Liza. His sister-wife Mawu, was the moon-god. With the help of the cosmic serpent Da, they created the universe. Liza s son Gu shaped the world. Liza was the god of heat, work and strength. The ancient Chinese people believed that there were ten suns that appeared, each in turn, in the sky during the Chinese ten day week. Each day, the ten suns would travel with their mother to the Valley of The East. When they were there, Xi He would bathe her children in a lake and put them in the fu-sang, an enormous mulberry tree. From the fu-sang, only one sun would travel the sky for the journey to the mountain Yen-Tzu in the Far west that took all day. The ten suns, tired of this routine, one day they appeared together. Their heat made life on earth unbearable. The emperor, Yao asked the father of the ten suns, Di Jun to make them appear one at a time. The ten suns would not listen to their father, so Yao sent the magical archer Yi, to frighten the suns. However. Yi shot nine of the ten suns so only the sun that we see today stayed in the sky. The father of the suns, Di Jun was so angered by the death of his children the he cursed Yi to live as a mortal. Amarterasu is the sun goddess in the Shinto religion. When her brother, Susanowo treated her badly, she hid in a cave. Her actions made the world a dark place where evil spirits reigned. The other gods tricked her by putting a large mirror in front of the cave and Amarterasu came out of the cave to see her reflection. In the region of Mesopotamia, three thousand years ago, lived the Sumerians. According to their mythology, Shamash was sun god who could see everything on the earth. Each morning, Shamash appears when the gates of the east open. He makes his way across the sky and by dusk enters the gates of the West. At night, he travels through the Underworld to begin in the East each morning. His symbol was a solar disk that had a four pointed star in it.

For the Native American tribe of the Navajo s, Tsohanoai is the sun god who every day, carrying the sun on his back, crosses the sky. He rests the sun at night on a peg inside his house. The Inuit people of Greenland believed that the goddess Malina represented the sun and her brother Anningan is the moon. One day, in a fit of anger, Malina spread grease all over her brothers face. She ran into the sky as far as she could go, in fear. This way she became the sun, while Anningan, who chased after her became the moon. This story is significant, because in this case the sun is personified by a female, not a male which is very rare. In the oldest Indian religion, Hinduism, the is god is Surya. He is a red man with four arms, three eyes and he rides in a chariot drawn by seven horses. In two of his hands he holds water lilies and in his other he encourages worshippers and he blesses the worshippers with his fourth and final hand. Surya is believed to be a compassionate deity, who can heal sick people. According to Norse mythology, the god of peace and fertility, Freyr, was closely connected to the sun. His parents were the giantess Skadi and the sea god Njord. In all of these cases the sun god or goddess is a benevolent deity who usually bestows life, justice, strength and wisdom.

One of the most remarkable civilizations that worshipped a sun god was the one of ancient Egypt. Their sun god was Re. He was most often depicted with the body of human and the head of a hawk. On his head he wore a fiery disk. He was the creator god and creation was an ongoing cycle of renewal that was repeated every day with the rising and setting of the sun. The ancient Egyptians believed that Re hatched out of an egg that rose out of the water. His children become the sky and the clouds. Their children were Nut and Geb, the earth and the stars. Their sons were the evil god Seth and another important Egyptian god, Osiris, who was the father of Horus. His symbols were the sun disk and the obelisk. Originally, the worship of Re was a local cult, but by the time of the Old Kingdom, worship was widespread. His chief temple was in the city of Heliopolis. When worship of Re became a state religion in the fifth dynasty, the city grew in importance. Later, Re became associated with the gods Horus and Amon. Egyptians sometimes called themselves “the cattle of Re.” They brought religion into every aspect of their life, they believed that everything that happened anywhere was arranged by the gods. In fact, the religion of the ancient Egyptians pervaded every aspect of their civilization. They were very superstitious and they constantly thought of pleasing the dead, for the basis of Egyptian life was the afterlife. The process of mummification is a good example of their devotion to their dead. The Egyptians would put a boat in the tomb of a dead pharaoh. This was because the Egyptians believed that every day Re and the pharaoh traveled down the life source of Egyptian life, the Nile. At night, Re and the pharaoh would travel through the horrible depths of the underworld. This had to be completed every night for Re to be reborn each morning. To ensure that the pharaoh would travel safe through the underworld, his mummy and his sarcoagous were inscribed with magic spells.

The Aztecs who lived and dominated the area of central and south Mexico from the 14th to the 16th century, were another civilization who are known for their somewhat gruesome habits of habits of sun worship. It is estimated that each year 10 000 to 20 000 people were sacrificed to appease the gods. The Aztecs believed that heavenly blood was spilled to create the world and that without human blood offered to it, the sun would not move in the sky and the world would be destroyed. But the Aztecs also believed that to die in a sacrifice to the sun was to die the most honorable death. The Aztecs would fight wars called the war of the flowers, whose main purpose was to collect prisoners to sacrifice. When the time came for the prisoner, he would climb the stairs of the Great Temple. The priests that would greet them never washed or cut their fingernails and their hair. Their bodies were said to be rubbed with a mixture of burned rubber, tree sap, spiders and scorpions. When the sacrificial victim had finished climbing the stairs, he was seized by the priests and as drums beat to cover the sound of the victims screams, a priest would cut out his heart and raise it to the sun as an offering. The priests cut off the head and put it on a rack full of skulls. The limbs of the victim were cut off and sometimes they were given to the warrior who had captured him in battle because it is believed that the Aztecs practiced ritual cannibalism. The Aztecs had a solar calendar called xlhuitl (stem of grass). This served to schedule annual events. It was divided into 18 months of 20 days each. The remaining 5 days in their year, nemontemi, were considered unlucky. Every 52 years, this calendar and the other calendar of the Aztecs merged. This was the most sacred time for the Aztecs and smashed their pottery, put out all their fires and cleaned out their houses. Women were locked in granaries, so they would not turn into animals and devour the men. These times were also the most frightening because the end of the world was expected on the final day of the 52 years. The people in the empire would prepare for a ceremony called Toxiuhmolpilia (Binding of the Years). The people of Tenochtitlan (present day Mexico City) would climb a large hill outside the city. The priest would track the process of the stars across the sky and when a certain star reached the center of the sky, the people believed that all was well because the sun would raise the next day and life as they knew it would continue. The priest would take a sacrificial victim, light a fire on his chest and ripped out the victim s heart. The priests would continue to feed the fire until the fire was huge fire that everyone could see. When the people of the city saw the fire they knew that the world would continue, at least for another 52 years. The fatalistic beliefs of the Aztec people made them pessimistic and superstitious people who were always afraid of angering the gods. They believed that if they made a big mistake or enough little mistakes, the world would end.

Many of the traditions and customs that we assiocate with Christian holidays like Easter and Christmas date back to ancient sun worshipping festivals. The name of Easter has two explanations behind it. One is that the name Easter is derived from the name Eostre, a goddess of spring and dawn. The other is the connection between “east” where the sun rises and the name Easter. Spring is the time of new life and renewal and the ancient peoples of Asia and Europe would have celebrations to encourage the sun to make their crops grow. The early Church in Rome no doubt took the pagan celebrations of resurrection of the earth and adapted it to give it Christian meanings. Customs like Easter eggs, and rabbits are actually pagan in origin. Dating back to the oldest civilizations in the world, the egg has always resented creation and new life. It is believed that ancient civilizations traded them at spring festivals, the time when the sun revived all things in nature after winter. To the early Church they represented the resurrection of Christ. The custom of the Easter Bunny dates back to the sacred hare of the goddess Eostre. The hare was a symbol of fertility and return of spring. The Roman festival of Sol Invictus (Unconquered Sun) was on December 25 and celebrated the god Mithra, a solar deity. Christians eventually took the date to clear up to clear up confusion regarding the actual date of the birth of Christ, which the Bible shows is actually no later than October. In Japan, the imperial family claims descent from their sun goddess Amatersu, and the sun is featured as a symbol of their nation. Things like our calendar and the 24 hour day come from ancient Egyptian sun worship. Julius Caesar took the Egyptian 365 day solar calendar to replace the Roman lunar one. Today, we still use a form of this calendar. The 24 day goes back to the belief that Re traveled half the time through the twelve domains of the day and half the time through the twelve realms of the underworld.

Therefore, we now know that virtually every civilization had at one time another worshipped the sun or had deities that symbolized the sun. Some of our modern day customs can even be traced to habits of sun worshippers and other pagans of the ancient world. But we must now ask why? Why did civilizations worship the sun? Why did the Egyptians believe that the sun was the center of existence? Why did the Aztecs kill thousands of prisoners every year to the sun? We can make some generalizations about certain civilizations that practiced forms of sun worship; they were located in tropical or very hot climates and their cultures were, in a sense, very rigid and pessimistic with the concentration of the people on death and the afterlife. To them the sun was the vital life source, the creator, they owed their very existence to it s presence. Without it, they would not abide on the earthly plane. The ancients knew this. So, it is very possible that they took their knowledge of the “debt” they owned the sun and tired to pay it back by associating creation myths with it and tried to appease it with worshipping it and in the extreme case of the Aztecs, sacrificed thousands of souls a year to it. But we view the Aztecs with the eyes of our so-called civilized eyes. “Clearly, it is difficult for us to come to a true understanding of what human sacrifice meant to the Aztecs. The Spaniards, so sincerely moved by the cruelty of the native priests, nevertheless massacred, and tortured with a clear conscience. We, who shudder at the tale of bloody rites of ancient Mexico, have seen with our own eyes civilized nations proceed systematically to the extermination of millions of human beings “