Yesterday, I stared at the sun. It really hurt. Yet, as I stumbled down Prez Lawn barefoot (#freethefoot) with holes burned into my retinas, I began to realize something about my fiery, eternally-smiling foe: Without the sun, the world would be a much darker place.
This joking fact has not gone unrealized by the masses of human history. Sun gods are present in cultures across all seven continents, barring Antarctica. And the sun is certainly no celestial slouch, being frequently depicted as a supreme, life-giving god.
The Egyptian tradition of Atenism is arguably one of the oldest monotheistic faiths, reaching a peak in the 14th century B.C. when it was adopted as the state religion by the pharaoh Akhenaten. Aten, a manifestation of the sun, was represented as a single disk releasing rays of light that produce the entirety of the universe and god itself. Adherents believed that Aten remade the world every day when the sun emerged, and thus death simply was the continued darkness of night. There was no afterlife or pantheon of sympathetic gods, only the cyclical totality of the sun.
A similar tradition emerged centuries later in the Roman Empire, with the cult of Sol Invictus, or “unconquered sun,” being first introduced by the unpopular Emperor Elagabalus in A.D. 219 and then later codified by Emperor Aurelian. This domineering god arguably set the stage for Christianity to later flourish within the Roman Empire, as his monotheistic and light-giving nature bridged well to the early Christian doctrine. Constantine worshipped Sol Invictus for over a decade after converting to Christianity, while the Feast of Sol Invictus, a symbolic rebirth of the sun following the winter solstice on Dec. 25, became our modern Christmas.
While the sun is often glorified as fearsome or invincible, Apollo, the Greco-Roman god, displays the more tender qualities of our star. In one story, Apollo’s lover, Hyacinthus, is struck by his own discus and killed, pushing Apollo to create and consecrate the hyacinth flower in memory of his grief. The great being, which surpasses all human and earthly endeavors, can still reach with care to small, worldly matters — our sun, like Apollo, cares for every flower through its gentle light.
In my fifth-grade science class, I learned a surprisingly similar lesson: Solar energy is indirectly the source of almost all energy and life on Earth. Light from the sun feeds photosynthetic plants, which then feed herbivores, who then feed carnivores and omnivores (like ourselves), who then feed detritivores, who ultimately feed the soil. Almost every ounce of life energy that enters our complex food chain can be traced back to the delicate rays of light warming the outside of my eyelids on a sunny afternoon. Even our artificial lights, those bulbs that intend to outstep our sole light-giver, generally trace themselves back to the sun — fossil fuels are imbued with the dormant solar energy of a living being, while the sun’s heat creates the wind that drives our turbines.
We are all, at base, children of the sun. We subtly embody its radiance in our every deed; we consider the world with all the clarity it deigns to provide; we smile when it smiles down on us. And yet, with all we have been given, how often do we turn our eyes to the sky? How often do we look at and appreciate this one unchanging fixture of our world, this purveyor of warm life? The sun that burnt my eyes is the same sun that beat the sun-baked Akhenaten into submission. Tomorrow, we know the sun will rise. So, how can our future be anything but bright?
