As is generally known, traces of sun worship are found in almost every
country of which we have a record. In Egypt Ra was the supreme sun god
where there was very elaborate worship conducted in his honor. In Greece
Apollo was attended with similar festivities. In the Norse mythology, many
of the myths deal with the worship of the sun in one form or another. In
England, Stonehenge and the entire system of the Druids had to do with solar
worship. In Central America and Peru, temples to the sun were of amazing
splendor, furnished as they were with wonderful displays of gold and silver.
The North American Indians have many legends relating to sun worship and
sacrifices to the sun, and China and Japan give numerous instances of the
same religion. Sun worship is so readily shown to be fundamental with
primitive races that we will not discuss it in detail at this time, but
rather will give the conclusions of certain writers who have explained its
meaning.
At the present day, the sun is regularly regarded as a male being, the earth
a female. We speak of Mother Earth, etc.; in former times, the ancients
depicted the maternal characteristics of the earth in a much more material
way. Likewise the sun was a male deity, being often the war god, vigorous
and all powerful. We readily see to what an extent the male sun god was
portrayed in mythology as a human being. In many myths, the god dies during
the winter, reappears in the Spring, is lamented in the Fall, etc., all in
keeping with the changes in the activity of the sun during the different
seasons.
The moon was associated with the female deity of the ancients. Isis is
accompanied by the moon on most coins and emblems. Venus has the same
symbols. Indeed, the star and crescent of our modern times, of the Turkish
flag and elsewhere, are in reality the sun and crescent of antiquity, male
and female symbols in conjunction. Lunar ornaments of pre-historic times
have been found throughout England and Ireland, and doubtless explain the
superstitions about the moon in those countries. The same prehistoric
ornaments are found in Italy. In the legends of the North American Indians,
Moon is Sun's wife.
The full extent of these beliefs is pointed out by Mr. John Newton in
"Assyrian Grove Worship." Here we see that the ancient Hindus gave a much
more literary relationship between the sun and earth than we are accustomed
to express in modern times. He states, "This representative of the union of
the sexes typifies the divine Sakti, or productive energy, in union with the
pro-creative or generative power as seen throughout nature. The earth was
the primitive pudendum or yoni which is fecundated by the solar heat, the
sun, the primitive linga, to whose vivifying rays man and animals, plants
and the fruits of the earth, owe their being and continued existence."
It is not possible to discuss Sun worship at any length without at the same
time discussing phallicism and serpent worship. Hargrave Jennings, who has
made careful study of these worships, points out their general identity in
the following paragraph. He states: "The three most celebrated emblems
carried in the Greek mysteries were the phallus, the egg, and the serpent;
or otherwise the phallus, the yoni or umbilicus, and the serpent. The first
in each case is the emblem of the sun or of fire, as the male or active
generative power. The second denotes the passive nature or female principle
or the emblem of water. The third symbol indicates the destroyer, the
reformer or the renewer, (the uniter of the two) and thus the preserver or
perpetuater eternally renewing itself. The universality of serpentine
worship (or Phallic adoration) is attested by emblematic sculptures or
architecture all the world over."
The author of the "Round Towers of Ireland" in discussing the symbols of sun
worship, serpent worship and phallicism, found on the same tablet,
practically reiterates these statements. He says: "I have before me the
sameness of design which belonged indifferently to solar worship and to
phallic. I shall, ere long, prove that the same characteristic extends
equally to ophiolatreia; and if they all three be identical, as it thus
necessarily follows, where is the occasion for surprise at our meeting the
sun, phallus and serpent, the constitutent symbols of each, embossed upon
the same table and grouped under the same architrave?"
By a number of references, we could readily show the identity of all these
worships. The preceding paragraphs give, in summary form, the conclusions
of those writers who have made such religions their special study. We shall
not exemplify this further, but will now point out the general relationship
of sun worship to the religious festivals and mythology of the Ancients.
This relationship becomes important when it is appreciated that the sun
worship expressed in the mysteries is also a part of phallicism. On some of
these festive occasions the phallus was carried in the front of the
procession and at other times the egg, the phallus and the serpent were
carried in the secret casket.