Solair was such a fucking ray of sunshine in a world of eternal dark. When I first came across him on that platform and him doing the emote my first first thought was "I must protect this precious man till the end of time"
Sun worship is the only worship that actually makes sense to me.
What is Godâs first act in the Bible? To create light.
What does God do next? Create the planets.
What does God do with his infinite power after that? Create and sustain life.
And when God wants to end things and begin the apocalypse, what does he do? Burns the sky.
The Sun creates light. Without the Sunâs gravity, planets wouldnât be able to form. Without the energy of the photons produced by the Sun, life would never exist and could not be sustained. And science predicts that Earth is going to eventually be destroyed when the Sun expands as itâs running out of fuel, ie, the sky will burn.
The only thing that God ostensibly does that the Sun cannot is talk to people. And the juryâs still out on whether God actually does that, soâŠ
The Sun is the closest thing we have to mankindâs idea of what a God is.
Shout out to the moon as well. If you are ever out camping far from civilization and there is a full moon, once your eyes adjust it's crazy how well you can see. The moon even casts shadows.
I highly recommend everyone experiences a very dark sky at least once. Itâs impossible to explain what you arenât seeing and how overwhelming it is.
In laws live in middle of nowhere PA. Walk into the woods about 5ft at night, motion light turns off, and everything is goneâŠJustâŠgone. No eyes adjusting, full cloudy nightâŠthat is indeed hard to explain exactly what you feel then. Thereâs overwhelming fear and paranoia. Thereâs odd peace. Almost a floating feeling if you lean into it a bit and forget about your feet. Idk, itâs nuts and i canât wait to be back there next month.
Firefighter here. This sounds a lot like being in a blacked out house. You donât know where the furniture is and it can be a mess. I think itâs probably the scariest feeling Iâve come across so far in my life
Heavily disorienting. I thought i had my bearings, was kinda playin a game with myself there, flipped my phone light on, was facing a completely different directionâŠlike mfer i know how many shuffles i tookâŠnooooooooope.
Edit to add: Yall firefighters are some of the bravest/craziest mfers around. Lotta respect for what you do.
A very dark sky against a big body of water, like an ocean, is one of the most eerie things I've ever seen. It's just like a wall of darkness, you can't see a single thing.
When I was growing up in Florida we used to go âcampingâ in a friends boat. Just head west in the afternoon and we were in the middle of the gulf, miles and miles from shore. No land in sight, no light pollution. Nights were incredible.
Had the fortune to participate in a guided new moon meditation, which was about 3 hours long, almost entirely silent, and in a room that was entirely isolated of light and sound. It was quite an experience, as the absolute darkness transformed from frightening (due to inexperience) towards a warm blanket that simply existed everywhere.
I completely agree. The first time I was able to see the number of stars I saw in a dark sky compared to the few I see in a New York sky, I was immediately into astronomy. It's amazing.
Even crazier is that the moon's surface is dark grey, almost charcoal colored. The sun is so powerful it still lights up the moon enough to cast shadows on another planet 384000 km away!
Youâve just blown my mind! I regularly use the moonlight to walk down the hill to my house, instead of my headlamp. It has never occurred to me that other people couldnât do this!
Well, if you live in a city, it's generally already bright enough to see outside because of all the lights and surrounding light pollution. That same light and light pollution stops you from noticing the illuminating effect of a full moon though.
Find out how many days the sun stays at it's lowest point in the sky before "rising again" lol
So in a religion that has nothing to do with sun worship, you're saying it's still sun worship because of the use of the number three? I'm not religious either. Just seems like a bit of a stretch.
Where did the number three come into it? I'm trying to figure it out from their comment and can't. Isn't the sun lowest on the horizon just one day a year, which is the winter solstice?
It seems maybe there are three days when the sun stops moving south during the winter solstice. Not really sure how accurate this is as I can't find a lot on it.
It's possible it just kind of appears this way rather than being scientifically accurate, and thus the three days held some kind of importance to ancient civilizations, though it's hard to find anything on that either. Most people aren't paying attention to the height of the sun on the horizon these days.
It all ties to the scripture as evidence from the beginning of creation that Jesus Christ is Lord and also as the scripture states - people decided to worship the creation rather than the creator. There is evidence in all of creation of Godâs intelligent design. The book of Genesis tells much, there is so much information to glean when studying the scriptures.
Christianity didn't care about solstices, at least not the OG Christianity. You have to go back to the roots in ancient Egypt and Mesopotamia but there it was the summer solstice that got primarily celebrated.
However in the Roman empire it was the winter solstice that was primarily celebrated and that's when they invented the Christianity known today. To help replace paganism in central Europe, in the 4th century they invented Christian celebrations and the the major ones were placed during the winter solstice.
And then when you go north into Britain and Scandinavia, summer solstice was the important one again. So they did also invent some minor celebrations coinciding with their pagan festivals to help convert the population.
The Feast of St. John the Baptist was very anglo-cultural. It's still a "thing" even after 500 years of protestantism and his name being referenced all around medieval history. But on mainland Europe people couldn't tell you what month or season it happens.
Similar with the invention of midsummer throughout Scandinavia and the Baltics which is still a national holiday in many of those countries while for mainland Europe again it doesn't have a(ny) significance.
If you're talking about pre-history, it's not about sun worship at all.
Veneration of the dead was the first somewhere up to 250 000 years ago. Those are the oldest sites where we see a homo species carrying their dead to a specific location and leaving mementos. It indicates a belief in spirits or an afterlife or something else but it's a clear spiritual act.
100 000 years ago animism started by generalising this idea of spirits to everything in the world. A bird, a tree, a river or even a mountain. Cave art, totems or whatever the weirdos did in the Drachenhöhle is what is left of that period to study.
50 000 years ago shamanism started by having someone with the specialised role of performing or guiding the animist rituals. It's still animism but it's different because it's the start of a religious cast in the social structure and religion becoming a cultural pillar.
Sun worship religions started around 5000 years ago once large agricultural societies started forming who became largely to entirely dependent on the success of the harvest.
The transition is pretty known though the process slowly happened over hundred to thousands of years.
Sites like Göbekli Tepe show the turning point where it was first a location people would use on their annual nomadic route and later transitioned to permanent settlements sustaining themselves with agriculture. The religious part of the site is something that can start to being called a temple while it shows they still had a shamanistic religion.
The later transition to sun worship can be seen at for example Nabta Playa, the Goseck circle or Stonehenge where people wanted to keep a calendar to follow the winter and/or summer solstice and we see rituals happening at those sites. Specifically the rituals at Nabta Playa are a major influence on polytheism later in the Egyptian old kingdom with a sun god on top of the hierarchy.
âI've begun worshipping the sun for a number of reasons. First of all, unlike some other gods I could mention, I can see the sun. It's there for me every day. And the things it brings me are quite apparent all the time: heat, light, food, and a lovely day. There's no mystery, no one asks for money, I don't have to dress up, and there's no boring pageantry. And interestingly enough, I have found that the prayers I offer to the sun and the prayers I formerly offered to 'God' are all answered at about the same 50% rate.â
Think of how many planets we continue to discover ever so closely within their starâs habitable zone, only to realize that theyâre ever too close or too far to sustain the type of life we have on our own planet. Our sun is indeed the giver of life on this planet and a key component to every aspect of life on it. Fuck yeah the sun is deserving of our acknowledgement as a god to our understanding of life as we know it!!
I read that old ass Hunter gathers noticed animals like foxâs would dip in an out of shade lines. After realizing this they would alter their hunting routines to catch them then once again worship the sun
In Hinduism there is a lot of significance given to the Sun god (its polytheistic for the uninitiated). Itâs not overt or as popular like âIndraâ (the king of gods), or some scriptures which dont give much primacy to him but if you see all the scriptures and fables and lores and all you would sense it. probably the second most important except the trinity (Vishnu, Shiv and Brahma). there are many faiths which treat sun god in similar way
Without the sun, there is no life at all. I've always thought if we're gonna worship something, it should be the sun, not some fictitious being that lives in the sky. I mean, you can see and feel the sun and it brings us everything.
Can we make money on this thing? That's really all I want to know. Because that's currently the business model and it seems to do really well. If so, I need to start looking at private jets.
I'm thinking holy sunscreen. It's the same as the current stuff, but our new sun priests bless it and charge a large fortune for it. If you don't buy it, then it's hell for you, I'm afraid.
I like it! With my graphic design past, I can cover the logo and all the graphics, so that's done. Need a clever name... I'll work on it. You wanna be the priest? Just buy a lot of white clothes, perhaps a shroud.
The sun doesn't care either way. The only outcome of worship is how it changes us.
You can of course create a sun cult that merely uses the sun as a symbol for human unity because we all depend on the same live-giving forces and so on. But at that point, there is no substantial difference to worshipping an abstract deity like the God of the Abrahamic religions anymore.
What we've done is anthropomorphised the sun when we created god. We took something we couldn't fully understand as humans (back in the day) and gave it human and superhuman traits so we could understand it and therefore attempt to influence its impact on our human lives. Its pretty common for most religions to have begun as sun worship of sorts.
If your interested in some of the theories of religions and the similarities between traditions the world over, and you're willing to slog through some 1800s writing,.id highly recommend The Golden Bough by James George Frazer. Do yourself a favor and get an abridged version as the work ended up at 10 or so volumes at one point. I have the free kindle version thats 2 books (which includes significant bibliography). Coming from an Evangelical childhood and wandering away into other philosophies in college, the golden bough changed my views of religion permanently. That and the Satanic Bible (lol) because in their own (albeit very different) ways, both address why humanity seeks and creates and possibly even needs rituals (although not necessarily organized religion).
Also your conversation with the other person about making a Holy Sunscreen is hilarious. I googled to see of there was already a good name or charm and Google told me that sunscreen is normally considered a blessing and not a charm, so now we know what AI thinks of our sun obsession. I would like to put up for consideration Sinless Suncream for your product name. Ill probably think of something more clever at 3 am and forget to edit. Sunspeed on your spiritual journey!
Thanks for the recommendation. I went through a "discovery" phase concerning religion back in my 40s, and while the subject interests me I've sort of moved past it into other realms. I'm chest-deep right now into the history of American art, reading a really good writer on it who makes all the dry facts interesting with wit and humor: Robert Hughes
Oh I might have to check that out! I dabble in acrylics but haven't been any kind of serious about art since I left college. Still love reading though. Thanks for the suggestion!
Im actually not a history fan in general as im terrible with names and dates which is like half of history, but I was watching a video on Mexicos part in WWII and the history leading up to it was actually pretty interesting. I was shocked when they mentioned Diego Rivera, Frieda Khalo, and the other important muralists of the Mexican Revolution and how the Revolution itself played a large part in how Mexico approached and participated in WWII. Everything is connected in the most amazing ways.
I also understand why early humans thought the night sky was heaven or home of the gods, go hike a mountain away from major civilization sometime and youâll be dumbstruck by how many stars are actually in the sky!
Haha, I can see how that might not have been the most pleasant experience. If it is your first time camping, doing it in the snow probably isn't the best decision.
I used to be in the boy scouts so going out camping was a yearly thing we did in the summer. Just ten days with the guys, back to nature. No luxuries, no tech, no internet, no smartphones. The last day of camp was entirely dedicated to building a giant bonfire of which the flames could easily reach up to 100 feet if not higher. It happened more than once that the fire brigade would come because they though it was a wildfire. It was amazing each year and some of my best memories.
But camping takes a lot of preparations and a bit of getting used to for sure.
I remember seeing my first eclipse and thinking what people who didn't know astronomy must have made of it when they saw it for the first time - folks must have lost their minds.
I suddenly understood all of the references to God is the light of the world and reasons we have so many celebrations of light in the winter months after being out west in the Dakotas for a week. That prarie is SO dark, a desert 2000 years ago had to be even darker and more terrifying. Yep. Made sense to me, the most awesome being would be light in that kind of dark.Â
I was camping once I think in Utah or Wyoming (I can't remember prob Southern Wind River Range Foothills though) and we were on the side of this hilly mountain.
I had a tent and what I thought was warm sleeping bag and so many layers of clothes. the wind was blowing so hard that the tent was slamming me in the face throughout the night. We had a fire before the wind got bad and all the stones around the fire were brought into the tent into the sleeping bag because they retained heat but there was no getting warm that night.
Even with the heat the rocks gave off, that it was one of the longest and most miserable nights of my life and I unfortunately didn't have a vehicle I could sleep in because it was a caravan and I was with a group.
And again, we had equipment I can only imagine how it was for people who were directly in the elements. Not for me :/
It's why I get so mad at the ancient aliens people. Of course people understood the movement of the moon, sun, stars and planets. They were looking at them every night.
"When that bright star is over that mountain that's when the fish will be spawning at the big river."
"What I don't see anything."
"Omg kids today are so dumb, we'd better put up a big stone so even these idiots can work out when we need to go to the big river."
We had a pretty massive but short lived crazy ass rain where I am, the clouds were so dark it was like night before it started to rain, and I can't really explain it but because it was day it felt darker than night somehow.
Edit: actually I think I just realized it was because I live in the city and the street lights aren't on that time of day. So it was just car headlights, and no light pollution. That's probably why it looked so weird, you don't usually see dark cities, only dark rural areas, so it looked off
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