Solar myth

“ A GREAT solar-myth underlies all the ancient mythologies. It commemorates the death and resurrection of the sun. It signifies the destruction of the light by the clouds, the darkness, and the eventual return of the great luminary of the world.
The Syrian Adonis, the sun-god, the Hebrew Tamheur, and the Assyrian Du-Zu, all suffered a sudden and violent death, disappeared for a time from the sight of men, and were at last raised from the dead. ”

“ Beginning with the sun, we find, as Mr. Tylor says, [1] that "in early philosophy throughout the world the sun and moon are alive, and, as it were, human in their nature." The mass of these solar myths is so enormous that only a few examples can be given, chosen almost at random out of the heap. The sun is regarded as a personal being, capable not only of being affected by charms and incantations, but of being trapped and beaten, of appearing on earth, of taking a wife of the daughters of men. ”

“ When treating of Indo-European solar myths, we saw the unvarying, unresting course of the sun variously explained as due to the subjection of Herakles to Eurystheus, to the anger of Poseidon at Odysseus, or to the curse laid upon the Wandering Jew. The barbaric mind has worked at the same problem; but the explanations which it has given are more childlike and more grotesque. A Polynesian myth tells how the Sun used to race through the sky so fast that men could not get enough daylight to hunt game for their subsistence. ”

“ One of the prettiest, oldest, and most universally favorite solar myths is the one which represents the Sun as a divine being, youthful and of surpassing beauty, beloved by or wedded to an equally powerful goddess, but meeting a premature death by accident and descending into the dark land of shades, from which, however, after a time he returns as glorious and beautiful as before. ”

“ Yet it has been thought, though the evidence is not clear, that there are geological indications of considerable variations in the amount of solar radiation in past time, and the famous myth of Phaeton driving the chariot of the sun and getting so far out of his road that he endangered the earth and made it smoke with unwonted heat, has often been referred to as a possible tradition of some extraordinary outburst of solar heat within the period of man's existence. ”

“ They are all annual solar high latitude myths, and not low latitude solar myths of the dawn.
(2) They can all be traced to somewhere in the Arctic circle as their point of origin; the total disappearance of the sun in winter and an excessive degree of frost and cold being essential elements their composition.
(3) The hero is never the sun, but invariably the latent force of organic life, conceived as somehow instrumental in bringing back the sun, by conquering the forces of death and cold on the earth itself. ”

“ In certain cases, however, the distance between the castle of silver and that of gold would be increased. The mysterious disappearance of the sun into the underworld for a considerable period of time is sufficient to account for all the various Indian and Egyptian solar myths as well as those of Central and Northern Europe and Asia; but no other natural phenomenon is in the least degree sufficient—eclipses are too rare and intermittent, the diurnal disappearance too brief, frequent, and commonplace. ”

“ When we look with curious eye into the glowing furnace of a steam-engine, we have to shade our face from the fierce glare, and survey the bars and boiler-tubes in detail. When we look into the great central furnace of the solar system, we need a screen too, and the moon admirably serves the purpose. It most effectually intercepts the light and heat of the central parts, so that we may descry the fainter objects round the circumference. Night reveals to us a new glory of the heavens, by unveiling its innumerable hosts, and the darkness of the eclipse has revealed to us a new glory of the sun. ”

“ I have addressed hundreds of audiences in Great Britain and America on the subject of recent solar discoveries, and I have conversed with many hundreds of persons of various capacity and education, from men almost uncultured to men of the highest intellectual power; and my invariable experience has been that solar research derives its chief interest when viewed in relation to the sun's position as the mighty ruler, the steadfast sustainer, the beneficent almoner of the system of worlds to which our earth belongs. ”

“ It is true that Sir William Herschel thought the sun might be the abode of living creatures; and Sir John Herschel even suggested the possibility that the vast streaks of light called the solar willow-leaves, objects varying from two hundred to a thousand miles in length, might be living creatures whose intense lustre was the measure of their intense vitality. But modern discoveries had rendered all such theories untenable. The sun is presented to us as a mighty furnace, in whose fires the most stubborn elements are not merely melted but vaporised. ”

“ What principle of conservation of energy is it possible to apply to the vast quantities of light and heat which constantly disappear in the interstellar realms of space? How to account for this enormous emission of solar energy during the long period of time requisite for the development of the earth during its past geological ages. How to explain why the moon always presents the same face to the earth. Why, if the law of gravity prevails there, there are no visible traces of atmosphere or moisture in the moon. ”

“ The sun-spots, for thousands of years unknown, and for centuries after they were known regarded as mere matters of curious and idle speculation, are now linked indissolubly to the whole scheme of activity which we observe upon earth, and of which we are ourselves a part. Even the famines by which nations are periodically desolated seem to be connected with this intermittence of solar energy. ”

“ If there were no other celestial bodies of very low temperature and very large dimensions which absorbed the heat of the bright suns, the dark celestial bodies, the meteorites, and the dark cosmical dust would soon be so strongly heated by solar radiation that they would themselves turn incandescent, and the whole dome of the sky would appear to us like one glowing vault whose hot radiation down to the earth would soon burn every living thing. ”

“ The sun is only a little more than a hundred times its own diameter away from the earth. Why, then, with the subtle connection between them afforded by the ether which conveys to us the blinding solar light and the life-sustaining solar heat, should it be so difficult to believe that the sun’s enormous electric energies find a way to us also? No doubt the impulse coming from the sun acts upon the earth after the manner of a touch upon a trigger, releasing energies which are already stored up in our planet. ”

“ Now, the question which has agitated astronomy during the past few years has been simply whether the glory of light seen around the sun is in reality a solar appendage, or may not be due wholly or in part to the illumination either of our own atmosphere or of some other matter (not necessarily atmospheric) lying much nearer to us than the sun does. ”

“ The question naturally arises, "If the Sun, to which the Earth is indebted for nearly everything, passes through a change in its activity every eleven years or so, how is the Earth affected by it?" It would seem at first sight that the effect should be great and manifest. A sunspot, like that of February 1905, one thousand times as large as Europe, into which worlds as large as our Earth might be poured, like peas into a saucer, must mean, one might think, an immense falling off of the solar heat. ”

“ Light is necessary to life; the world was a dead chaos before its creation, and mute disorder would again be the consequence of its annihilation. Every charm which spreads itself over this rolling globe is directly dependent upon luminous power. Colours, and probably, forms, are the result of light; certainly the consequence of solar radiations. We know much of the mysterious influences of this great agent, but we know nothing of the principle itself. The solar beam has been tortured through prismatic glasses and natural crystals ”

“ Though no fixed conclusions are yet established about the causes of the brilliant auroral display, yet, as the results of laborious observations, we are assured that the stabler centre of our solar system holds in its powerful sway the several planets at their respective distances, supplying them all with their seasonable light and heat, vibrating sympathetic chords in all, and even controlling under certain—though to us still unknown—laws the electric streamers that flit, apparently lawlessly, in the distant earth’s atmosphere. ”

“ Our globe appears to be little more than an accumulation of terrestrial materials introduced into the boundless ocean of the solar light, as a theatre on which it may display its exhaustless power and energy, and give animation, beauty and sublimity to every surrounding scene—and to regulate all the powers of nature, and render them subservient to the purposes for which they were ordained. ”

“ The next theme of study was the solar system, under the laws governing which our world exists, part of which it is, and upon the members of which, the sun and the moon, we are so dependent that without them life on our globe would be impossible. That magic power whereby the plant world grows and ripens its fruits abides in the sunlight. It is the sun’s heat which raises water from the earth in vapor, which returns to us in showers and dew. It is that same forceful heat, poured out on vast continents, that gives rise to the winds that cool our summers and speed the sails of our commerce. ”

“ On grounds as uncertain as those which sustained many of the exploded doctrines of antiquity, it has been too hastily concluded that the past career of the earth and the duration of solar light must have been comprised within the course of a few millions of years. It is even supposed that, within a like circumscribed period of change and activity, the myriads of solar systems in the wide domains of space around us came into existence from chaotic fire-mist which filled the entire universe. ”

“ If, however, we consider, as is generally believed to be the case, the sun itself to be the sole prime source of its visible energy, nothing but difficulty and vague speculation can be looked for on every hand; but by relegating the solar orb to its proper place, and taking as the starting-point the true source of all energy,—to wit, the hidden forces embodied in the vapors or gases of interstellar space,—the whole process and mode of action will logically follow, and obscurity and difficulty together disappear. ”

“ It is doubtful if the closest seeing would reveal the cause of the solar spots. The studies of the physicists who have devoted the most skill to the matter show little more than that they are tumults in the photosphere, attended by an uprush of vapours, in which iron and other metals exist; but whether these movements are due to outbreaks from the deeper parts of the sun or to some action like the whirling storms of the earth's atmosphere is uncertain. It is also uncertain what effect these convulsions of the sun have on the amount of the heat and light which is poured forth from the orb. ”

“ As the luminosity of these glowing particles must be very small compared with that of the photosphere, they will be invisible in the glare of ordinary sunshine; but if our eyes be protected from this, they may then be rendered visible, both by their own glow and the solar light they are capable of reflecting. They should be seen during a total eclipse, and should exhibit radiant streams proceeding irregularly from different parts of the sun, but most abundantly from the neighborhood of the spot regions. ”

“ But the believers in an atmospheric corona were not even yet wholly satisfied. Nay, before the recent total eclipse one among them even went so far as to say that the observations and photographs of 1870 and 1871, while demonstrating the solar nature of the glory immediately surrounding the sun, proved the long rays extending much farther from the sun to be non-solar phenomena. ”

“ It is now an admitted fact of science that the earth is dependent upon the sun for the chief portion of the energy by which terrestrial effects are produced. With the exception of the ebb and flow of the tides, all the forms of earthly power are recognized as having, directly or indirectly, a solar origin. Wind-power, water-power, steam-power, the activities of organic growth, all animal energy, and the great phenomena of changes in the crust of the globe, due to the circulation of waters through atmospheric agency, are caused by the forces of solar radiation. ”

“ At times these pores open under the influence of disturbances that arise upon the solar surface, and give birth to a Sun-Spot. For centuries scientists and lay people alike refused to admit the existence of these spots, regarding them as so many blemishes upon the King of the Heavens. Was not the Sun the emblem of inviolable purity? To find any defect in him were to do him grievous injury. Since the orb of day was incorruptible, those who threw doubt on his immaculate splendor were fools and idiots. ”

“ There seems no escape from the conclusion that the continuous loss of solar heat must still go on, so that the sun will pass through the various stages of brilliant incandescence, of glowing redness, of dull redness, until it ultimately becomes a dark and non-luminous star. In this final stage the sun will only pass into that state in which the majority of the bodies in the universe are already found. Every analogy would teach us that the dark and non-luminous bodies in the universe are far more numerous than the brilliant suns. ”