All Gods Are Sun Gods
Sun Halo at Winter Solstice
Credit & Copyright: Philip Appleton (SIRTF Science Center), Caltech
Explanation: Sometimes it looks like the Sun is being viewed through a large lens. In the above case, however, there are actually millions of lenses: ice crystals. As water freezes in the upper atmosphere, small, flat, six-sided, ice crystals might be formed. As these crystals flutter to the ground, much time is spent with their faces flat, parallel to the ground. An observer may pass through the same plane as many of the falling ice crystals near sunrise or sunset. During this alignment, each crystal can act like a miniature lens, refracting sunlight into our view and creating phenomena like parhelia, the technical term for sundogs. The above image was taken in the morning of the 2000 Winter Solstice near
The Winter Solstice is coming up on 22 December at
In every culture from the murky past to the present day, there have been Sun Gods. Robert Ingersoll (1833 – 1899) makes a good case for the gods of all religions being gods of the sun. Indeed, most gods, including the monotheistic one, are described as "the Light."
The writing below is excerpted from The Works of Robert G. Ingersoll
Volume II (Lectures)
[1900]
http://www.sacred-texts.com/aor/ing/vol02/index.htm
"Myth and Miracle" chapter III
http://www.sacred-texts.com/aor/ing/vol02/i0172.htm
In all probability the first religion was Sun-worship. Nothing could have been more natural. Light was life and warmth and love. The sun was the fireside of the world. The sun was the "all-seeing"--the "Sky Father." Darkness was grief and death, and in the shadows crawled the serpents of despair and fear.
The sun was a great warrior, fighting the hosts of Night. Apollo was the sun, and he fought and conquered the serpent of Night. Agni, the generous, who loved the lowliest and visited the humblest, was the sun. He was the god of fire, and the crossed sticks that by friction leaped into flame were his emblem. It was said that, in spite of his goodness, he devoured his father and mother, the two pieces of wood being his parents. Baldur was the sun. He was in love with the Dawn--a maiden--he deserted her and traveled through the heavens alone. At the twilight they met, were reconciled, and the drops of dew were the tears of joy they shed.
Chrishna was the sun. At his birth the
Hercules was a sun-god.
Jonah the same, rescued from the fiends of Night and carried by the fish through the under world. Samson was a sun-god. His strength was in his hair--in his beams. He was shorn of his strength by Delilah, the shadow--the darkness. So, Osiris, Bacchus, Mithra, Hermes, Buddha, Quelzalcoatle, Prometheus, Zoroaster, Perseus, Codom Lao-tsze Fo-hi, Horus and Rameses were all sun-gods.
All these gods had gods for fathers and all their mothers were virgins.
The births of nearly all were announced by stars.
When they were born there was celestial music, voices declared that a blessing had come upon the earth.
When Buddha was born, the celestial choir sang: "This day is born for the good of men Buddha, and to dispel the darkness of their ignorance--to give joy and peace to the world."
Chrishna was born in a cave, and protected by shepherds. Bacchus, Apollo, Mithra and Hermes were all born in caves. Buddha was born in an inn--according to some, under a tree.
Tyrants sought to kill all of these gods when they were babes.
When Chrishna was born, a tyrant killed the babes of the neighborhood.
Buddha was the child of Maya, a virgin, in the
So Typhon sought in many ways to destroy the babe Horus. The king pursued the infant Zoroaster. Cadmus tried to kill the infant Bacchus.
All of these gods were born on the 25th of December. [Ages ago, December 25th was the approximate date of the Winter Solstice. Due to calendar reforms over the centuries, the solstice now occurs around the 21st of December. ~Michelle~]
Nearly all were worshiped by "wise men."
All of them fasted for forty days.
All met with a violent death.
All rose from the dead.
The history of these gods is the history of our Christ. He had a god for a father, a virgin for a mother. He was born in a manger, or a cave--on the 25th of December. His birth was announced by angels. He was worshiped by wise men, guided by a star. Herod, seeking his life, caused the death of many babes. Christ fasted for forty days. So, it rained for forty days before the flood--Moses was on
These things are not accidents--not coincidences. Christ was a sun-god. All religions have been born of sun-worship. To-day, when priests pray, they shut their eyes. This is a survival of sun- worship. When men worshiped the sun, they had to shut their eyes. afterwards, to flatter idols, they pretended that the glory of their faces was more than the eyes could bear.
In the religion of our day there is nothing original. All of its doctrines, its symbols and ceremonies are but the survivals of creeds that perished long ago. Baptism is far older than Christianity--than Judaism. The Hindus, the Egyptians, the Greeks and Romans had holy water. The eucharist was borrowed from the Pagans. Ceres was the goddess of the fields, Bacchus the god of the vine. At the harvest festival they made cakes of wheat and said: "These are the flesh of the goddess." They drank wine and cried: "This is the blood of our god."
The cross has been a symbol for many thousands of years. It was a symbol of immortality--of life, of the god Agni, the form of the grave of a man. An ancient people of
In our blessed religion there is nothing new, nothing original.
Among the Egyptians the cross was a symbol of the life to come. And yet the first religion was, and all religions growing out of that, were naturally produced. Every brain was a field in which Nature sowed the seeds of thought. The rise and set of sun, the birth and death of day, the dawns of silver and the dusks of gold, the wonders of the rain and snow, the shroud of Winter and the many colored robe of Spring, the lonely moon with nightly loss or gain, the serpent lightning and the thunder's voice, the tempest's fury and the zephyr's sigh, the threat of storm and promise of the bow, cathedral clouds with dome and spire, earthquake and strange eclipse, frost and fire, the snow-crowned mountains with their tongues of flame, the fields of space sown thick with stars, the wandering comets hurrying past the fixed and sleepless sentinels of night, the marvels of the earth and air, the perfumed flower, the painted wing, the waveless pool that held within its magic breast the image of the startled face, the mimic echo that made a record in the viewless air, the pathless forests and the boundless seas, the ebb and flow of tides--the slow, deep breathing of some vague and monstrous life--the miracle of birth, the mystery of dream and death, and over all the silent and immeasurable dome. These were the warp and woof, and at the loom sat Love and Fancy, Hope and Fear, and wove the wondrous tapestries whereon we find pictures of gods and fairy lands and all the legends that were told when Nature rocked the cradle of the infant world.
Credit & Copyright: Vasilij Rumyantsev ( Crimean Astrophysical Obsevatory)
Explanation: If you took a picture of the Sun at the same time each day, would it remain in the same position? The answer is no, and the shape traced out by the Sun over the course of a year is called an analemma. The Sun's apparent shift is caused by the Earth's motion around the Sun when combined with the tilt of the Earth's rotation axis. The Sun will appear at its highest point of the analemma during summer and at its lowest during winter. Analemmas created from different Earth latitudes would appear at least slightly different, as well as analemmas created at a different time each day. The analemma pictured to the left was built up by Sun photographs taken from 1998 August through 1999 August from Ukraine. The foreground picture from the same location was taken during the early evening in 1999 July.
Links to related posts on the topic of sun, god(s), and solstices:
The Astronomy of Christmas and the Epiphany
The Meaning of God (etymology of the word God)
The word God could derive from root words in several language families, and includes a combination of meanings, but the core idea of what God is seem to boil down to just a few definitions showing that ancient peoples regarded supreme beings much as we do today.
1 – to shine (indicative, no doubt, of the connection between God and the sun/sky)
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