Sun Cult Research Articles

Solar sacrifice: Bataille and Poplavsky on friendship

ABSTRACT This article reconstructs the forgotten friendship between Georges Bataille and the Russian émigré poet and philosopher Boris Poplavsky. Comparing their solar metaphysics, I focus on conceptions of friendship, sacrifice and depersonalisation. First, I retrace Bataille’s relationship to early Surrealis and Russian circles in interwar Paris, with a focus on his friendship with Irina Odoevtseva. I then offer a novel reading of Poplavsky’s poetry through the lens of Bataille’s philosophy, analysing a recurring motif that I call ‘dark solarity’. Uncovering a hidden intertextual dialogue between Poplavsky and Bataille, I argue for Poplavsky’s lasting impact on Bataille’s anti-Icarian sun cult. Finally, my paper demonstrates how Poplavsky’s writings on solar sacrifice, excess and friendship left marks on Bataille’s vision of a solar community, embodied in the secret society Acéphale. The dialogue between Poplavsky and Bataille, I finally suggest, is a missing piece in the entangled history of Russian and French philosophy, as well as an original contribution to discourses on friendship in twentieth-century continental thought.

Worshipping the Sun at the End of Time: Neoplatonic Solar Cults in Mughal India and Barberini Rome

ABSTRACT This article delves into two notable instances of imperial solar cults during the long sixteenth century. One concerns the Mughal emperor Akbar in India, while the other revolves around the Barberini pope Urban VIII in Rome. Both cases will be examined through the lens of the longue-durée Great Tradition of Neoplatonism, taking-off from the earliest Neoplatonic sun cult as designed by Roman emperor Julian in the fourth century. Despite being centuries and worlds apart, the emergence of the Mughal and Barberini sun cults coincided with a period of rapidly expanding horizons amidst intense millenarian anxiety. Moreover, both cults were crafted by a team of avant-garde Neoplatonic intellectuals – mostly cosmologists and antiquarians – striving to bolster the imperial claims of their patrons. By exploring the intriguing Neoplatonic parallels between these two coinciding solar cults, this article advocates a truly global approach to intellectual history that transcends conventional temporal and spatial boundaries.

New dawn in Mughal India: longue durée Neoplatonism in the making of Akbar's sun project

AbstractIn this article, we explore the longue durée philosophical background of Mughal Emperor Akbar's sun worship. Although Akbar's sun project may have been triggered by contemporary Hindu and Zoroastrian ideas and practices, we argue that Akbar's Neoplatonic advisers reframed it as a universal cosmotheistic tradition that, at the start of the new millennium, served as the perfect all-inclusive imperial ideology of Akbar's new world order. The astonishing parallels with the much earlier Neoplatonic sun cult of Roman Emperor Julian demonstrate that, although having characteristic of its own, Akbar's sun project was not that unique and should be seen as a fascinating late example of a so-far completely forgotten ancient Neoplatonic legacy of seeing the philosopher king, via the Sun, via illumination, connected to the One.

Ales Stones in Southern Sweden: A Remarkable Monument of the Sun Cult and Advanced Astronomy in the Bronze Age

Ales Stones is a famous stone ship in southern Sweden. Besides its size (69 m) and location right beside the shore of the Baltic, it is a remarkable monument of the Sun Cult and very advanced knowledge of astronomy by the Bronze Age people. This paper summarizes the findings, and puts it into the context of other monuments in southern Sweden. Also presented are a new time-correction of the sunrise at Winter solstice 700 BC and a remarkable sun-wheel on the Island of Bornholm of astronomical dimensions almost identical to those of the Ales Stones monument: the Madsebakke Sun-wheel. It all provides a congruent picture of intensive Sun Cult activity and close connections between of southeast Sweden and the Island of Bornholm.

Theoretical reconstruction of the Solar Altar in the Templeof Hatshepsut at Deir el-Bahari

In a recent article Andrzej Ćwiek (2015) criticized on ideological grounds one of the hypotheses concerning the reconstruction of the Solar Altar in the Complex of the Sun Cult of the Temple of Hatshepsut in Deir el-Bahari. The theoretical reconstruction in question, presented as one of the possibilities in an earlier text by the present author (Dziedzic 2013), called for two obelisks and a sacrificial table standing on the Solar Altar located in the open courtyard of the complex. Ćwiek also pointed to the practical difficulties associated with transportation and placement of stone obelisks. This article describes the technical aspects of transporting and placing obelisks in two different locations. It also contains calculations concerning the weight impact of the altar elements (obelisks) on the altar structure.

An Investigation of Internet Solstice Celebrations of Supposed Prehistoric Sacred Places

The sun, moon, stars and planets have been worshipped in many cultures in different historical periods. At the beginning of the seventeenth century in the German region of Upper Lusatia some people were caught ‘redhanded’ by their parish priest praying to the sun at rock formations at sunrise and sunset. At the summer solstice 2012 a group of hobbyist archaeoastronomers established an Internet interconnection between similar rock formations in the same region. All the rock formations involved were mooted to have been sacred sites of a prehistoric sun cult. Could this phenomenon be a revival of a longforgotten cult? This article explores the motivation of the organisers of and participants in the virtual interconnections at the summer solstice 2014. Surprisingly, these people were mainly interested in archaeoastronomy and local history, not in New Age spiritual ideas. Furthermore, they felt connected to an assumed pan-European sun cult which could have been ubiquitous at a time when borders between the European countries did not exist

Astronomy and Sun Cult in the Swedish Bronze Age

The Scandinavian Bronze Age started quite rapidly at around 1750 BC, and is marked by three simultaneous events: 1) importation of bronze from the east Mediterranean region, 2) export of amber from southeast Sweden to the east Mediterranean region, and 3) the carving of pictures of big ships on bedrock and boulders in southern Scandinavia. We take this as evidence of travel and trading by people coming from the east Mediterranean region on big ships via Gibraltar and the North Sea to Scandinavia. At the same time, the Sun cult flourished in southern Sweden and Denmark, as evidenced by monuments perfectly oriented with respect to the Sun’s daily and annual motions over the sky (e.g. Ales Stones), rock carvings of solar symbols and in solar alignment, and a number of ritual objects related to the Sun Cult (e.g. The Golden Sky Dome). In this paper, we summarize and update available data, especially the data from Southern Sweden.

Sun Worship Of The Bai People And Its Reflection In The Folk Art Zhima Of The Yunnan Province

The article is dedicated to the research of the Sun worship practiced by the Bai people, who live in the Yunnan Province in the south-west of China. Various forms of the Sun Cult taking place nowadays within the Dali Bai Autonomous Prefecture are examined. The author presents the texts of the Bai myths and legends associated with the solar deity Tai Yang Shen and describes the traditions of worshipping the Sun as a source of life, a protector of agriculture and a divine patron of Bai villages. The article also analyses the iconography of the solar deity in the Yunnan Province’s temple sculpture and folk woodprints zhima. The origin of diverse Tai Yang Shen’s iconographic types is traced back through the study of the local legends and Chinese art. Special attention is paid to the solar symbols that appear in the Yunnan zhimas. Key words: solar deity, Tai Yang Shen, solar symbols, legend, folk beliefs, mythology, folk art zhima, image of fire sphere.

Funkcja krążków glinianych ludności kultury łużyckiej w świetle nowych znalezisk z Wielkopolski

Although the collection of “Lusatian” clay discs is quite significant, not much attention has been paid so far to their interpretation. The discs might have been used for various purposes in “Lusatian” society, e.g. as toys for children, or the Sun cult objects. They might have also played strictly utilitarian role of spindle whorls, polishing stones in pottery workshops, or miniature pads used in casting process. It would be difficult to accept any of the hypotheses exclusively, as it seems that the discs might have had various functions depending, among others, on the socio economic context in which they appeared.

Сведения о дуалистических ересях и языческих верованиях в "Шестодневе" Иоанна Экзарха

The article aims to present and analyze those passages of the Hexameron (Šestodnev) in which ‘heretics’, ‘Manichaeans’, ‘pagans’ or ‘pagan Slavs’ are mentioned. The fragments are compared with their Greek counterparts (as long as these exist); the Old Bulgarian texts (especially those that can be considered original additions or loose compilations) are utilized for interpreting certain elements of heterodox doctrines common to Manichaeism, Paulicianism, Massalianism and Bogomilism. The Old Bulgarian translation/compilation by John Exarch supplies important information on the cosmology, theological doctrine and liturgical life of the Neo-Manichaeans within the Byzantine- Slavic world. The original additions and passages that can be seen as loose translations or compilations testify to the relevance of anti-dualist polemics even in the later periods of the Byzantine-Slavic religious community. The old Gnostic and Manichaean concepts, adapted by later dualist heresies (as e.g. Massalianism and Paulicianism), coupled with Trinitarian and Christological deviations from the official dogma, infiltrate the 1st Bulgarian Empire and provide a hospitable environment for the appearance of Bogomilism. In this sense, the Old Bulgarian Hexameron turns out to be an important source of information on the predecessors of the ‘Bulgarian heresy’. The original additions and loose translations/compilations of certain passages uncover some ‘common areas’ characteristic of all medieval Neo-Manichaean doctrines: the dualist creation myth, the belief in Satan as God’s ‘first-born son’ and the related Trinitarian and Christological departures from the prescribed dogma. Especially noteworthy is the passage referring to the Trisagion (Trisvetoe). The rejection of particular elements of the Liturgy of the Faithful attests to the dualists’ more diversified attitude towards the official ritual – not an indiscriminate renunciation, but the exclusion of those elements that were considered to praise the Old Testament God and to be irreconcilable with the Neo-Manichaean beliefs concerning creation and forgiveness. The mentioning of a Slavic pagan sun cult should be analyzed not only in connection with the charges against Manichaeans and Slavs concerning idolatry, but also in a wider context of the refutation of antique astrological beliefs and soothsaying practices. The comparison of particular lexemes, phrases and larger textual units in John Exarch’s Hexameron on the one hand and the Sermon Against the Heretics on the other makes it possible to conjecture that Cosmas the Priest was familiar with his predecessor’s work and made use of it when composing his own anti-heretic text.

The Bronze Age in SE Sweden Evidence of Long-Distance Travel and Advanced Sun Cult

The Bronze Age of Scandinavia (1750-500 BC) is characterized by the sudden appearance of bronze objects in Scandinavia, the sudden mass appearance of amber in Mycenaean graves, and the beginning of bedrock carvings of huge ships. We take this to indicate that people from the east Mediterranean arrived to Sweden on big ships over the Atlantic, carrying bronze objects from the south, which they traded for amber occurring in SE Sweden in the Ravlunda-Vitemölla–Kivik area. Those visitors left strong cultural imprints as recorded by pictures and objects found in SE Sweden. This seems to indicate that the visits had grown to the establishment of a trading centre. The Bronze Age of Österlen (the SE part of Sweden) is also characterized by a strong Sun cult recorded by stone monuments built to record the annual motions of the Sun, and rock carvings that exhibit strict alignments to the annual motions of the Sun. Ales Stones, dated at about 800 BC, is a remarkable monument in the form of a 67 m long stone-ship. It records the four main solar turning points of the year, the 12 months of the year, each month covering 30 days, except for month 7 which had 35 days (making a full year of 365 days), and the time of the day at 16 points representing 1.5 hour. Ales Stones are built after the same basic geometry as Stonehenge in England.

Theios Sophistes: Essays on Flavius Philostratus' Vita Apollonii (review)

Reviewed by: Theios Sophistes: Essays on Flavius Philostratus' Vita Apollonii James A. Francis Kristoffel Demoen and Danny Praet (eds.). Theios Sophistes: Essays on Flavius Philostratus' Vita Apollonii. Mnemosyne Supplements, 305. Leiden: Brill, 2009. Pp. xvi, 405. $200.00. ISBN 978-90-04-17109-1. The Vita Apollonii (VA), Philostratus' lengthy work—whether it is correct to call it a "life" is disputed—on the first-century philosopher cum miracle worker cum mountebank Apollonius of Tyana, has finally come into its own, and with it, Philostratus himself. Once only valued for what light it shed on the historical Jesus and the New Testament, then for "aretology" and the late antique holy man, new literary approaches and broader historical perspectives have begun to demonstrate the value of the VA in its own right. This volume, produced from a four-year research project at the University of Ghent, synopsizes and advances this development. Its fifteen essays, mostly in English and mostly from European scholars both notable and new, derive from a conference sponsored by the project at the Royal Academy in Brussels in 2006. The book is formally divided into two parts, on the literary and philological aspects of the VA and on the historical, religious, and philosophical aspects; this review, however, will discuss the essays along themes that cut across their formal organization. To begin with the fundamentals, Gerard Boter makes the case for a new critical edition of the VA —on which he has embarked—and presents a new stemma codicum. Christopher Jones discusses the evidence for the historical Apollonius and evidence from the letters attributed to him. Specific scenes from the VA are the focus of two essays. Peter Grosshardt studies the visit of Apollonius to the mound of Achilles from a literary perspective, while Jaap-Jan Flinterman focuses on Apollonius' ascension in the context of religious and archaeological evidence. A number of analytical themes echo throughout the essays in this volume. Alain Billaut takes up the fundamental question of whether the VA can be considered a biography. He argues not only that the work sits firmly within the genre but that Philostratus constructs a metabiographical discourse in explicitly commenting on his choices and motivations for what to include in his account. This issue is also pursued by Luc Van der Stockt in comparing Philostratus' work with Plutarch, and by Marc Van Uytfanghe who examines the VA as a hagiographic discourse. As with Billaut, metanarrative is also the focus of Wannes Gyselinck and Kristoffel Demoen, who discuss the complex narration of the VA in their essay. Distinguishing between the author and the narrator's voice in the work, they see a metafictional discourse in which Philostratus plays with the very concept of fiction for his most sophisticated readers. Similarly, Thomas Schirren explores metanarrative irony in the VA, and brings to the fore Philostratus' mastery in creating a polysemic text. This polysemy can be seen in a series of essays that treat the VA from specific, and refreshingly new, perspectives. Moving from narrative to reception studies, Graeme Miles examines Apollonius' portrayal as an interpreter [End Page 382] in the VA, and presents reflections on visuality and the connection between word and image that are both cutting-edge and profound. Ewen Bowie asks what can be learned from studying the quotations and allusions Philostratus uses and offers valuable tables of citations as a prolegomenon to such a study. Equally thought-provoking is Graham Anderson's examination of the VA from the prospective of folklore. John R. Morgan approaches the work from the perspective of the Emesan sun cult, drawing intriguing comparisons to Heliodorus' Aethiopica, while Erkki Koskenniemi examines Apollonius as teacher. Revisiting an old theme with fresh eyes, Danny Praet assays the VA from a philosophical perspective and reaches a conclusion that characterizes much of the work in this volume: "Philostratus did something quite unique in the Vita Apollonii. He wrote a highly sophisticated literary work that functions on different levels simultaneously: it is a remarkable piece of literary entertainment but it is also a work that should be taken very seriously both in the history of philosophy and in the history of literary technique" (320). This volume demonstrates the truth of...

Heimdall's stones at vitemölla in se sweden and the chronology and stratigraphy of the surroundings

.Heimdall's Stones at Vitemölla is an archaeological monument of stones arranged in circles and where sightlines can be identified of the sunrise and sunset at winter and summer solstices and spring and autumn equinoxes. Therefore, this stone monument is likely to have served as an archaeoastronomic observatory. It is founded in a fossil land surface now covered by half a metre of eolian sand. In order to date this sand drift, sediment coring was performed in the nearby Sandefloen bog. Seven levels were subjected to AMS C14 dating. The first sand drift, correlated with the sand drift covering Heimdall's Stones, was dated at 500–600 cal. bc. Consequently, the observatory has to date back to the Bronze Age, fitting well with its Sun cult and with the rock carvings recorded on the individual stones. At the seashore 500 m east of the observatory and the bog, we were able to reconstruct the sea‐level changes. In conclusion, we combine the recorded sea‐level changes with the C14‐dated bog stratigraphy and the observed stratigraphy at Heimdall's Stones (covering an area of 500×500 m) into one unified picture. The chronostratigraphic position of Heimdall's Stones agrees well with the dating of the Kivik grave. The Vitemölla area is likely to have been an important cultural centre in the Bronze Age.

Symbolism and traditions in the society of the Bell Beaker - Csepel group

In the present paper, we called attention to a so far unknown religious idea of the Bell Beaker - Csepel group after observations made at the excavation of Budapest-Albertfalva, archaeo-astronomical analyses, two special shards with channelled knob ornaments and their analogues. The schematic representation of the Sun symbol appears, although rarely, in the accompanying material (“Begleitkeramik”) of the Csepel group (on grave ceramics, the Albertfalva fragment was probably originally intended to be placed in a grave). The custom of the building of round houses in the western group of the Bell Beaker culture and the burials with round ditches in the eastern group make us think. The orientation of the houses according to the winter solstice at Albertfalva and the existence of a territory enclosed by a round ditch between the houses render the role of the Sun in the daily and religious life of the population of the Csepel group even more emphatic. The representation of the Sun in various forms (gold discs, incised Sun motives) can be observed on nearly the entire territory of the Bell Beaker culture yet we do not want to interpret this phenomenon as a Sun cult. The religious beliefs of the Bell Beaker culture are extremely complicated, complex and colourful, and Sun, an environmental factor that defines daily life, could only be an element in it.

The Historicity of Papyrus Westcar

As it has been claimed that pWestcar reflects the rise of a sun cult to prominence in Dynasty 5, this article begins by examining the evidence contemporary to Dynasty 4 and 5, and by this it is shown that the sun cult was already prominent in Dynasty 4, and that, therefore, if pWestcar depicted such a rise, then its depiction would be an ahistorical one. Next, evidence within pWestcar is compared to evidence from Dynasty 4 and 5 to show that, in at least two places, the author sacrificed historical accuracy for literary beauty, with the ramification that the work was not written as a conscientious history. Finally, the work is examined as a literary piece to see whether its meaning involved the presentation of an account of the rise of a sun cult in Dynasty 5, and it is found that, from a literary point of view, this is not the case. Rather, the work was intended to describe a situation where there is trouble in the state in respect to the attitude of its kings, but that piety - manifest in the devotion of a new royal line to cult in general - will resolve it. It is suggested that these points, which are painted through literary oppositions, had indirect inspiration in the social and cultural context of the time in which the work was written.

Stenalderhuse på Knardrup Galgebakke

Stenalderhuse på Knardrup Galgebakke

The Origin of Belief among the Greeks in the Divinity of the Heavenly Bodies

It is a fact which is not justly appreciated that the Sun and the Moon had almost no cult in the early and classical age of Greece except for the Sun at Rhodes, a cult which is reasonably suspected to be of foreign origin. Helios and Selene were, of course, considered to be gods, but in mythology. Those scholars who have eagerly tried to find evidence for their cult ought to remember the statements of Aristophanes and Plato that Helios and Selene were barbarous gods. These two certainly knew the cults of their compatriots better than we do. On the other hand, the Sun cult was very popular and wide-spread in Roman times and became finally the last State religion of the Empire. It came from the Orient, and the mediator and the reason of its popularity was astrology. So the question arises: why did the Greeks accept the astrology which they rejected in an earlier age, and why did they begin to pay a cult to Helios to whom they had shown no veneration in earlier times? Did they simply succumb to a foreign religion or were there intrinsic reasons which contributed to this result?