Solar Deities

The Aten as the sun disc

Throughout a large portion of recorded history, humans have religiously worshiped aspects or embodiments of our sun. There are even recorded events when two radically different cultures who come into contact are simultaneously worshipping different solar deities, such as the Roman Empire and Egypt. Aleister Crowley, an influential occultist in the early 20^th century, was raised in an astrological cult known as the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn. This “cult of the sun” can be traced back through spheres of influence to the Psalms as well, which Alter brings attention to and mentions The Great Hymn to The Aten. Why has the sun so thoroughly imprinted itself in the religious philosophy of humans?

Astrology, or a belief system based on the correlation between observable phenomena in space to events in our human lives, has played a major role in our conceptualization of man and the cosmos. Humans and their preoccupation with their orientation within the universe have produced some of the most pervasive ideas in all magistrates of thought. The modern model of our universe was preceded by those which religious astrology influenced. Placement of the sun is all important in these ideas. We measure of time in relation to the suns movement, we depend on it as an energy source and therefore our thoughts about the sun seem to concern everything we ever think about.

Certainly the importance we place on the sun primes us to idealize it, personify it and represent it symbolically. This accounts for its preservation as a theme throughout history. It may seem deductive but I wonder if the sun will continue to play an ideological role in our culture 100 years from now in the future based on our past.