Because the sun is always, predictably, invincibly there -- in temperate and tropical climates, that is -- it was deemed to be all seeing, all knowing, all powerful. Omnipresence = omniscience = omnipotence. An eye is the symbolic expression of this concept. Several African tribes regard the sun as the eye of the supreme deity. The Samoyeds of the Arctic see the sun and moon as the eyes of heaven. Sulis, the name of the old Teutonic Sun Goddess, comes from suil, which means "the sun's eye. " In Indian myth, the Sun God Sûrya is the eye of Varuna, the God of the Heavens. In Greece, the sun -- Helios -- is the eye of Zeus; in Egypt, the eye of Ra; in Northern Europe, the eye of Odin; in Oceania, the eye of Atea; and in Islam, the eye of Allah.
Thou eye of the Great God
Thou eye of the God of Glory
Thou eye of the King of creation
Thou eye of the Light of the living
Pouring on us at each time
Pouring on us gently, generously
Glory to thee thou glorious sun
Glory to thee thou Face of the God of life.
- From Ortha nan Gaidheal, a traditional Gaelic Song To The Sun
Since it determines both the cycle of the day and the circle of the seasonal year, the sun provides the structure of our existence, the framework within which our world revolves. As such, it seems to suggest all celestial and earthly order. Due to its dependability, the sun stands for authority, for law and order. In Egyptian lore, the sun, Ra, sailed through the skies accompanied by the Goddess Maat, the embodiment of sunlight and the rightness of things, the natural order -- the cosmic mandate.
Civil law is an extrapolation of the structured order of the universe. Hammarabi, who in the 18th century B.C. codified Babylonian law, is always pictured standing on a stone column inscribed with the code of the king. He is facing Shamash, the sun, in whom all justice dwells. It is he who has sent down the law. Shamash was known as "Great Judge of Heaven and Earth," and his Sun Temple was "the house of the judge of the world." Varuna was the guardian of the cosmic laws in Vedic India. He measured earth, sky and air and cast the four directions. Suryâ, the sun, acted as his calipers.
While the sun is the seat of celestial order, organized government is the center of civic order. Civil sovereignty was first established by the authority of the ruler of heaven. Royalty traditionally traces its lineage and aristocratic entitlement, to the sun. Monarchy is seen as rule by divine right. The sun was the golden ancestor of the imperial families of ancient Egypt, India, Peru and Mexico. The High Chief of the Chumash of old California was called Paha, "Image of the Sun." The priest-chief who ruled the lower Mississippi Natchez theocracy was also the earthly representative of the sun, by whose sanction he commanded.
Honour the King, the Eternal, in your bodies;
resort unto the Lord in your hearts. For he is
Understanding and knoweth the secrets of the
heart, his eyes search out all men. He is the
Sun by which all mankind sees. He illuminates
the Two Lands more than the sun.
- Traditional Egyptian Invocation
The emperor of Japan has always asserted descent from the Sun Goddess, Amaterasu Omikami. In 1946, the American occupation demanded that the emperor abolish the state religion and abdicate his own divine standing. He complied. Nonetheless, twice each year he continues to don the mantle of his inherited role of sun priest and prays for the well being of his people in great ceremonies held at the summer and winter solstices. Official solar symbolism has also prevailed and the red sun still blazes in the center of the Japanese flag, proclaiming, "The Land of the Rising Sun."
In Europe, too, kings and queens have claimed kinship to the cosmos. The first Christian emperor Constantine I was a sun worshipper. His coinage carried its radiant countenance along with a dedication to "the invincible sun, my guardian." In 17th century France, Louis XIV, "the Sun King," surrounded his court in solar imagery and gilded it in the pure gold of the sun as pronouncement of royal alliance with the "Powers That Be." When Queen Elizabeth II of England was crowned in 1952, she wore a golden gown beneath her ceremonial robe. The officiating archbishop prayed that her throne "may stand fast in righteousness forevermore, like the sun before her and as the faithful witness in heaven."
How could our eyes see the sun,
unless they are sunlike themselves?
- Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
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The Sun in culture - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Margaret W, Preston, UK
The sun, even though it is no longer our official ruler, certainly still rules our mood, even in a culture where we are so separated from the natural world. I love it when I hear someone say something like "better now that the sun is shinning" or " any day the sun is shinning is a good day".
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