Forlong - Rivers of Life

Sun Worship.
are carried along on, whirling round us at the rate of 68,000 miles per hour, not to
speak of the direct onward sweeping impetus of 1038 miles in the same period?
In regard to the climatic effect of the sun’s heat upon us, Herschel wrote, that if
he were shut off from us for only forty-eight hours, every drop of moisture in our atmosphere
would be precipitated upon the earth in deluges of rain, snow, and ice, which
though by no means sufficient to cover the tops of all the highest mountains, nor yet
float Noah’s ark over the top of his supposed Al-a-lat or Ararat (which is not two-thirds
the height of the highest), would still envelope all life in a garment of death, for
the temperature would fall, this Astronomer calculated, some 200° to 300° below zero.
The quantity of ice and water, however, which would be precipitated, is not vague
and immeasurable. We know exactly what amount of fluid our atmosphere is capable
of sustaining, and that it only extends, and this in a very highly rarified state, to about
forty-three or forty-four miles over us. This enables us to judge correctly of those wild
old traditions which speak of water covering all the highest mountains of the world.
Every close observer of solar phenomena must have noticed, that all faiths have
clearly fixed their days and seasons of fetes and festivals with reference to these. Sol
brings about climatic changes which none may disregard, and most of which are times
of joy and gladness, and therefore seasons of ecstasy and emotion, which become
with most men periods of prayer and praise. There is no doubt whatever as to the truth,
that all quasi great events in the annals of faiths are placed at periods of the kalendar
fixed by solar phenomena, though it does not at all necessarily follow that these events
did not take place, and had not at first certain periods of their own. The universal
voice, however, of mankind—at heart and in the mass determined worshippers of Sol,
has ever and again swept all those tide-marls known as the quasi history of man’s
gods or hereos, into what I may perhaps call Sol’s great maelstroms, or the Spring,
Summer, Autumn, and Winter festive seasons. These engulph all, and the ephemeral
craft there adjust themselves as they best can. Let us now consider such somewhat
minutely.
Religious festivals will be found to agree somewhat with our Gardener’s Kalendars
of floral and cereal nature; and these, I find from the one now before me, 1 divide
the year horticulturally into six parts, in which we can easily recognise the cause
of man’s making them festal seasons:—
1. Candlemas, - - - 1st week of February, - That of early flowers.
2. Easter, or Old Ladytide, - 1st week of April, - - Opening Spring.
3. Solstitial Season - - 11th June, - - - Full Summer.
4. Fall of Summer - - 15th July, or about St. Swithin, Crops ripened.
5. St. Michaelmas, - - About 29th September, - All crops gathered.
6. The Winter, - - Bruman, or middle of December, Midwinter.
These are not, however, sufficiently minute for all zones, though perhaps suitable
1 Pocket Encyclopdia, “Natural Phenomena,” Introduction, xii, by Foster, London, 1827. [This is
perhaps an argument for the origin of these festivals in agricultural / vegetation cults rather than directly
solar worship, although of course syncretism and improved observation of natural cycles will erode the
distinction. Cf. the confusion over Osiris. — T.S.]
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