THE SUN GOD, by Stefan Seniuk Allen December 2007ce
The Mistletoe Rite at Tenbury Wells brings up different themes each year. This year (2007) we looked at the role of the male god within modern Druidry. It would seem that the male polarity of the horned god, Cernunnus, and the Green Man with his vague ancestry, hold all the major cards within the cross pollination of contemporary Druidic/Wiccan beliefs.
When I happen to talk to people about god, most people seem to have a similar basic idea or opinion. There is the universe in its entirety that people call God, or any number of terms that seem to mean more or less the same thing. Within our existence this is broken down into two polarities, male and female. From this comes the full diversity of duality, with all its shades of grey, creating life on earth as we understand it.
The goddess I strongly feel has indeed returned as the Great Mother with her various off-spring inhabiting the landscape and her 3 phases of the human life span. The Great Father is now pretty much genderless, for the obvious reason that it creates the crazy idea that the universe itself has a gender. But the son has not returned to the modern pagan revival?
It seems strange to me that the Sun itself does not hold the prime, focal energy of male polarity? Just as it did with our ancestors. Why is this? When I started to research the mistletoe I came across the triple deity of Teutates, Esus and Taranis. They are connected to the mistletoe because both the description of the gods by Lucan and the mistletoe rite by Pliny were observed and documented by Romans referring to religion in Gaul at around the same time. But still this did not take me to the place that the goddess can. She is real in the here and now, manifesting all around me.
The Albion Conclave distance learning course provides a free intro pack including Lesson 1: The Cycles of Life. In this lesson we explore the relationship of the Earth and the Moon in relation to the Sun. This lesson explains exactly how and why the solstices and equinox's occurred and also why they were so important to ancient civilizations, namely in our area of interest, the Druids. This understanding of the solar system was anthropomorphised by our ancestors. Which means they were given human or animal characteristics as a means of forming a personalized relationship with them, this provided spiritual meaning as well as a practical understanding.
It seems that if we go right back to the dawn of history, the Sun may have been originally female in anthropomorphised gender. This understanding may indeed have lasted for many hundreds of thousands of years, from the early Stone Age, through the Mesolithic to the beginning of late or New Stone Age of the Neolithic period. Many root names for the Sun, such as the Irish Grian are female in character. So at the dawn of human spirituality both the Sun and the Earth may have been perceived as female, with the moon containing male attributes.
This understanding also belonged to a time when women were believe to conceive from the wind, or from strange events, unusual coincidences, omens or other natural phenomenon, or the gods themselves. Because of the long time period between sex and birth, man's role in sexual union and child birth was not fully comprehended. Thus women were perceived to give birth to a miracle and of especial favour from the gods. This was the time of true Matriarchy. The main god has always been the Sun, but the moon may have been of prime importance to the hunters. That it seemed to shine of its own luminosity would have also added greatly to its mystery and power before it was realized moon light was in fact reflected sunlight.
One cannot understate the advent of farming and agriculture as perhaps the most dramatic influence on the entire history of humanity. This seems strange to say today as we become more and more alienated from nature and respect for farming dwindles. Technology continues to develop at a rapid pace and we value where our food actually comes from less and less. But more than rockets into space, electricity, cars, mobile phones, the internet and even the splitting the atom, farming and dominion over our environment has had the most massive effect upon our psyche. All the mainstream religions as we know them today are based around it.
It is at this point that a complete U-turn in religious thinking seems to take place. The Sun becomes male, the Earth if it was not already the case, by now definitely becomes a great Mother Goddess and the Moon appears to become a consort/daughter of the Great Mother, closely associated with Venus and also serpent symbology. With the wheel of the agricultural year our ancestors become totally obsessed with time and the calculation of time. The concept of time becomes a great mystery to our ancestors and those who understand its cycles weld great power over the community. Nearly all Neolithic art is based around calculating units of time in one way or another, ether solar or lunar cycle abstract art. This religious art is first depicted in burial chambers that are focused on ancestor worship and beliefs around death and rebirth.
So the sky becomes the Great Father, the Earth the Great Mother, the Moon becomes the daughter and the Sun becomes the son of this agricultural pantheon. Vegetation sun gods start to prevail. The sun/son are perceived as twin brothers who in Britain may have been Belenus and Bran. The Mabinogion, Geoffrey of Monmouth and Taliesens poem, The Battle of the Trees all hint towards this intimate relationship between Belenus and Bran. Indeed Bran may have been the older of the two and originally worshipped on his own, holding a similar status as the Dagda in Ireland.
By the time stone circles were replacing burial chambers as the main focus of religious ceremony, Belenus seems to have come into his true power and Stonehenge becomes his throne. We know this from Greek references to Apollo being worshipped at Stonehenge, Belenus is the Celtic Apollo. Bran, the Fisher King is banished to the underworld as the Raven with his cauldron bringing the dead back to life. So the inner mystery becomes one of the battle between day and night, summer and winter, life, death and rebirth and this becomes the key theme behind calculating the movements of the Sun and the solstices.
With the coming of agriculture the ancients had also become sophisticated star gazers and the Zodiac becomes a remarkable system of ancient science, marking out periods of time on huge scales, approximately 2150 years long. The countenance of god therefore seems to go through a process of changing interests. Taurus and bull worship gives way to Aries the Ram, these are the two main aspects of the pagan god since agriculture began. He is then usurped by Pieces and the Judeo platform of the Hebrew, Islam and Christian faiths. The Hebrew faith in fact began during the period of Aries, being birthed out of the much older Egyptian religion, which began with bull worship.
So the great Aeons of the Zodiac are believed to be the faces of god, who remains intrinsically connected to his sun/son and the great procession of the equinox's. God is perceived to transform and shift his influence upon humanity as the Aeons change.
The final stage of the pagan British religion seemed to take place during the mid Bronze Age. Although the group soul mindset of the early Neolithic, that really belonged the hunter gather peoples was already developing into the individual mindset of Kingship supported and upheld by the warrior caste. This final stage seems to have been triggered by climatic change on a global scale. It is now believed that a comet passed very close to the earth leaving behind it a dust trail blocking out the Sun. For a period of 18 years it rained almost continuously, causing the great flood, a universal story to all religions the world over.
It was at this time that offerings were starting to be made into bodies of water. Natural water sources such as rivers, lakes, wells, pools and especially marshes and bogs now seem to become sacred for the first time and the main focus of religious practice. The stone circles and monuments are abandoned and the landscape around them becomes a wasteland. It is thought by some archeologists that Flag Fen now becomes the main religious center for the whole of Britain. Perhaps it was at this sacred place were the main floods were entering into the island? And it was here above all else that the underworld water gods needed to be appeased.
It now seems that the old religion was reinvented, rather than invasions bringing with them a new religion. Solar worship remained, but no longer with the monopoly it once enjoyed. The old Neolithic religion seems to become relevant again to the Iron Age peoples, who once again turn to the underworld and the builders of the stone monuments become their gods. We see this clearly in Ireland with the Iron Age Celts worshipping the Dagda, a Neolithic god who is credited with building New Grange. Water however seems to have replaced the burial chamber.
Indeed the myths and legends of the pantheon of pagan gods documented by Christian monks do not record a specific Celtic Sun god and Belenus himself is very poorly recorded. Perhaps his role along with his brother Bran, like that of Apollo/Dionysus or Horus and Set was too close to the symbolism of Jesus Christ for comfort. However the Jesus Christ story, (he never actually having existed in the flesh) is just the latest Sun god myth, in a long line of sun/son gods that began with the invention of growing and harvesting crops well over 5000 years ago.
So for me it is indeed the Sun, not the horned god of fertility that holds the true male energy. Like mother nature, the Sun is as real, relevant and as tangible today as it was to our ancestors. So this is not about reconstruction, the old names and their precise meanings may never be brought back to life with all their flesh still on the bones. But the Sun itself like the Earth remains constant. The planet Earth has called out in her hour of need and we have responded, rediscovering the goddess along the way. But what of the mighty sun/son, born of the great virgin mother? The Sun also contains the inner mystery of the dying and rising twin brothers and to explore this understanding would without doubt provide deeper insight into the Druid tradition. Allowing Druidry to once again find harmony and balance within its polarities.
In Truth/|\
Stefan
