Here Comes the Sun
Whatever else you may know about the Sun and deity, the best part is this: it shines.
The coincidence is hard to miss as a witch -- that Father's Day in the US comes around the same time as the pagan holiday Midsummer, the point at which the Sun is at its highest and most celebrated point.
The Sun's identity as male energy is something that we tend to accept as a tautology -- Sun gods abound. Apollo, Ra, Horus, Helios, Lugh -- all of them quite popular among pagans. We often look to midsummer as the time to celebrate male energy in the form of the sun, and the gods who are associated with the sun.
What is that energy?
One of the first things that you learn is that sun gods are out in the open. They are not gods that are worshipped in secret. They are as often keepers of knowledge in addition to their duties surrounding the lighting of the day. Apollo and Lugh in particular are revered as being very smart. One of the most famous myths surrounding Lugh is the one in which he obtains entry to the royal presence not because he is in possession of one skill, but because he is the only one who can perform a whole collection of useful skills. Apollo is associated with the all knowing oracle of Delphi, which was in his consecrated temple, and whose prophesies were delivered by the Pythia, Apollo's high priestess in the temple. In many of the Greek myths, it is Helios, who knows things because of his role at illuminating the sky, who often imparts knowledge to the gods such as who had an affair with whom, or where one's daughter might have been abducted to and by whom.
Sun gods are also about nourishment and abundance. Even before we had a full scientific understanding of photosynthesis, we understood that the sun was vital to growing things. That's why Ra is so closely tied with the harvest and with nourishment. It's why Helios has these incredible herds of cattle and sheep, and why the sun god punishes Odysseus's men severely for the crime of killing his cattle.
Sun gods are also often musical and charming. Apollo plays the Lyre with great skill and is considered among the most beautiful of the Olympians, and the god Lugh is likewise a bard of sorts, and a very charismatic storyteller.
What's not to love about a charming man who knows a lot of things, brings with him the promise of nourishment and abundance, and who knows how to sing? That's a guy I'd like to meet, and hang out with, and be in a relationship with. It's a great role model for modern manhood. It’s vastly preferable to the destructive emphasis on dominance and “alpha male-ness” that we see too often in white supremacist western Christo-Patriarchy
But here's the thing -- not all sun gods are male.
In the Norse tradition, the sun is a goddess -- Sol or Sunna, who (like Helios) drives her chariot across the daytime sky to bring light to the world, while her brother, Mani, is the moon. The Hittites also worshipped a sun goddess. Etain from the Celtic mythos, is also identified as a sun goddess. Both the Japanese and Chinese deity pantheons include sun goddesses.
It’s a thing that people often forget about Paganism. Yes, much of the Wiccan influence on western Paganism has kept focus on the idea of a male-female dichotomy embodied in “the Lord and the Lady.” And yes, there are still some in the mix who ascribe to the kind of gender essentialism that fails to recognize the spectrum that is gender identity in the modern world.
But the real truth that has always been buried underneath it all is that western Paganism’s recognition of male and female energy isn’t as prescriptive or as binary as it appears on the surface. All of us is capable of embodying divine male and-or divine female energy. And as you can see from our brief foray into sun energy, the notions of what constitutes male or female energetic signatures varies widely and embodies a lot of things that don’t fit the one note cartoonish image of gender roles that is offered on GOP Senator’s Christmas cards.
You can identify as male and channel goddess energy. You can be a woman and channel god energy. And gods and goddesses themselves do not always fit neatly into gender boxes. In fact, they often defy those boxes quite flagrantly. The truth is that gender, among the gods, just as among humans, is not always a hard and fast thing. Which is why the fact that Midsummer also coincides with Pride Month is so great.
Because in the end, the height of solar energy is about brightness, about light. It's about things appearing as they are. It's about things not being hidden or in darkness. And the thing that is most important about Pride Month is that we celebrate people being who they really are, in all their complicated glory, without hiding or apologizing. No matter what their gender identity is, or who they love.
This Midsummer, celebrate the gift of openness that comes from solar energy. What things do you want to openly celebrate about yourself? In what part of your life are you shining brightest? What things in your life do you want to shine a light on and show to the world?
Whatever else we want to believe about the sun -- that it's energy is male or female or both or neither -- one thing is inescapably true: it shines.