Knowing exactly how things work is obviously useful, but do you know what else is useful? Having a sense of wonder in your life to keep you slogging through this bog we call consciousness.
Even the sun itself, one of the great, magical presences in our life, science has pretty much already explained — and therefore, pretty much already ruined. It’s simply a massive ball of burning gas that we’re all forever beholden to. Wouldn’t you find it a little easier to go to work in the morning if you thought it was some sort of massive, fiery eagle, or was being carried in a heavenly chariot? Instead, we have to just acknowledge it as a utilitarian heat source that also sometimes gives us skin cancer.
Ra
Ra was the most powerful deity in the ancient Egyptian belief system, which is going to be a pattern in this article, because regardless of the depth of your understanding of it, the sun is, to anyone with eyes, very clearly a big deal.
Being represented by a human with a falcon’s head is more than enough to solidly place you in “very sick” territory, but Ra stacks other cool details on top of that. When you see the sun in the sky, that’s him piloting his godly barge before descending into the underworld every night. He’s also the creator of the other gods and the world, earning the almost unbeatable nickname of “The Self-Created-One.”
Amaterasu
The Japanese attribute the sun to the goddess Amaterasu. In her case, she’s the literal sun that provides light to the world. Except, of course, for a brief period when, according to a thoroughly awesome tale, she retreated into a cave and plunged the world into darkness.
She did so to protest the behavior of the horrible children of her brother, the storm-god Susanoo. To this, the world replied, “shit” and realized they needed to get her out of that cave ASAP. And so, they lured her out with a rooster-filled party, the loud sounds of which literally FOMO’d the light back into the world. It also explains why roosters crow at dawn, which is a great bonus.
Huitzilopochtli
Let’s start the discussion of Huitzilopochli, the Aztec sun god, with his own beginning. As the legend goes, he was born a fully-grown warrior — which seems like a rough day for his mother, goddess or not. Oh, and he was conceived from a ball of hummingbird feathers. None of these are things that lead to a future CPA. Not to mention, when he was born, his brother and sister tried to kill him, but he instead slew them, wielding the literal god of fire, xiuhcoatl the turquoise serpent, as a weapon.
With a backstory like that, you’d get humans sacrificed to you too.
Lugh
As you might be able to tell by the name that sounds like a magical bodily function, Lugh is a Celtic god. He was a warrior and a thinker, said to be extremely proficient in both ranged weapons and writing, one of the world’s original warrior poet figures. The reason he’s sometimes pictured with three faces or heads is that he was born with two siblings who both died, and it’s thought he absorbed their power as well, making him a particularly tough customer. He also supposedly slew the one-eyed Balor by hurling his spear directly into his lone peeper, which must have made for an incredibly story at the local Gods’ pub.
As if he wasn’t already guaranteed to be the coolest god in the room, he had a dog, Failinis, too, who was unstoppable in combat, turned its bathwater into wine and glowed in the dark.
Maui
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Maui, technically, is not the “god of the sun” in Polynesian culture, but he is the one responsible for bringing it to his people. Maui was an archetypal “trickster god,” which are obviously the most fun kind. As the story goes, before Maui’s intervention, the sun was further away and provided weaker light, making days short and cold. Maui, however, wrangled that sucker closer to earth to give the people warmer, longer days, which aided their civilization.
It was one of many favors he did for humankind, including stealing fire from the underworld and making birds visible to the human eye. He was superhumanly strong and could shapeshift into animals as well. All these things together earned him the highest honor our modern society can bestow: Being played by The Rock.