Conference hydra::dejavu

    Well, there are a number of traditions that engage in sun worship.
    For example, Egyptian, South American, North American, Wiccan to
    a limited degree (God (male form) is Lord of the Sun in the same
    way Goddess (female form) is Lady of the Moon).
    
    What exactly did you have in mind?
    
    Elizabeth

    re .0:
    
    If you're talking about a _personification_ of the sun as a god,
    than you can almost get lost in the ancient Egyptian religion. 
    The chief sun god was Re, of course, but other gods had solar aspects,
    such as Sekhmet (lioness-goddess; harsh-sun) and Bast (cat-goddess;
    gentle-sun), Heru, Aten ...
    
    If you're talking about worshipping the sun as The Sun ....
    
    Steve Kallis, Jr.

    <---
    
    Oh no, Steve!!  Just when I thought I had it straight!  There are
    more Gods and Goddesses in ancient egypt that I didn't know about!!
    
    Ahhhhhhhhggggggg!!!  ;^>
    
    guess it's time to hit the books again.....
    
    Leigh
    (the one with Horus for an amulet....)
    

    RE:0
      I don,t know much (In fact) I don't anything about sun worshiping;
    but I do know "OF" one Greek goddess called Isis. She known to be
    the egyptian goddess of fertility, sister and wife of Osiris, usually
    represented with a cow's horn surrounding a solar (or lunar) disk.
    That's where they get their supply of power OR strength from ( THE
    SUN)..
    
    LORENZO
    

    Re .3:
    
    Yes, the Egyptian countryside was almost acrawl with shrines, etc.,
    to different gods.  What happened was that they were very conservative
    in their worship, and whgen they encountered a new god, they just
    added it to their pantheon, generally.  There were, however, a small
    number of the greater gods, who together formed a sort of panel
    called the "Annead," [not to be confused with Virgil's poem :-)]
    which included Isis, Thoth, and Horus.  Interestingly, though, all
    these gods apparently were much less powerful than one supreme god,
    which can best be represented phonetically by "Neter Uay" ["neter"
    is the ancient Egyptian word for "god," and "Uay" seems suspiciously
    close to "Yaweh"].
    
    Re .4:
    
    Lorenzo, the Greeks usually equated the ancient Egyptian pantheon
    with their own, sometimes by hyphenation (e.g., Zeus-Amun); I believe
    the closest to the Egyptian Isis would be Demeter, but that's
    stretching it a bit (just as they tried to equate Hermes with Thoth,
    which probably had the Egyptian priests of Thoth rolling on the floor
    in hysterics of laughter).  Although Isis did have her, er, bovine
    element, the Egyptian Hathor (the goddess of love, which the Greeks
    more or less associated with Aphrodite [though Hathor was a more
    bloodthirsty number]) was the one most associated with cow horns.
    There was a solar disk between the horns.  Some Isis representations
    had a solar disk and wings as part of her insigne.
    
    A good call, though.  (Of some interest is that Osiris-Isis-Horus
    worship paved the way for early Coptic Christianity, by the way,
    as it made it easier for the Egyptians to understand and accept
    the Holy Family of Jesus, Mary, and Joseph.)
    
    Re .0:
    
    Perhaps the most interesting of the ancient sun worshippers was
    Akhenaton, an Egyptian pharaoh, who declared that the sun was the
    _only_ god (Aton), and thus laid the idea of a monotheistic religion.
    Aton worship (with all others suppressed) lasted through his lifetime
    and the reign of his son.  Then the Egyptians went back to worship
    their many different gods.
          
    Steve Kallis, Jr.
    

    Steve, wasn't Akhenaton resented by the Egyptians for doing away
    with the old religions?  From what I know about Atonism (very little)
    it seemed kind of lovely.
    
    
    John M.

    Re .6:
    
    Ahkenaton was resented by the priests of the other gods; the general
    run-of-the-mill citizen thought Pharaohs were semi-divine, and so
    went along with what he said.
    
    Atonism was a gentle religion, but [not a criticism] very passive.
    
    Steve Kallis, Jr.

    From what I recall, Akhenaten had a holy city built (rebuilt?) to
    deify Aten, and called it Akhetaten.  He scared his contemporaries
    by placing so much worship with aten, and ignoring the other gods.
     Upon his death, many representations of Akhenaten's name were
    scratched out or defaced so the other gods would be pacified.  By
    the by, Akhenaten had a nephew, originally named Tutankhaten....oddly
    enough, when Akhenaten died, he was renamed Tutankhamun for the
    reasons mentioned above.  
    
    -Jody
    

              About a year ago I became interested in Rune stones and
    became aware of a prayer to the Sun detailed in the description
    under one of the Runes:-
    
                             You who are the source of all power,
                             whoose rays illuminate the whole world,
                             illuminate also my heart,
                             so that it too may do your work.
                                                             [Gayatri]
    I have never found out what 'Gayatri' is.
    This is how I became interested in the Sun and I would be grateful
    if anyone had any further information on the Sun ,in this context,
    and indeed ,how about any information on ,Rune Stones.                               

    Runes, I have read, come from early times.  Apparently the God Odin
    made some (I can't remember exactly which) transgression, and was
    staked hand and foot to an elm (oak?) tree (or perhaps it was a
    trial to see how "strong a believer" he was.  He was told by the
    powers that be that the longer he stayed, the greater his reward.
     He stayed nine days and nights, and as a reward upon each leaf
    of the tree a rune and its meaning appeared.

    -Jody
    

    .10:
    
    I don't have any sources handy (oh Steve??) but if I remember aright,
    Odin had made a vow to the effect of "whoso wishes to obtain this
    wisdom must hang on this tree, offered to me" -- someone (Norse skald?
    later poet) described it as
    
    	Nine days I hung on that tree,
    	Myself offered to myself...
    
    Seems to me that there is a story behind that eyepatch as well, but I
    can't remember it at all.
    
    Dick

    Re .11 (Dick/Aristotle):
    
    From memory, Odin was _kinda_ tops, but after Ragnarok, all the
    gods would be destroyed, and the "Allfather," who was higher than
    Odin (and thus not unlike the "Neter Uay" of the Khemite religion,
    or "The" God, if you will), would create a new world.
    
    If I can (things have been hectic) I'll try to chase down the story
    the next day or two.
    
    Steve Kallis, Jr.

RE: .11
    
    Odin, knowing that the great war between the Gods (roughly speaking,
    order) and the Frost Giants and assorted others (roughly speaking,
    chaos) sought foreknowledge so that Asgaard could prepare.  He came
    to the well at the foot of the Tree of the World, and sought to drink
    the waters of wisdom so as to gain that foreknowledge.  The guardians
    of the Well (the Norns?) extracted a bitter price for that single
    drink -- he must leave his right eye.  So he plucked out his eye and
    threw it into the well, and then drank.
    
    He then learned that the eye was only the first and the lesser payment
    for that drink.  For while he learned how to stave off the final
    battle, for example how (at the terrible price of Tyr's sword arm)
    to chain the monster the Fenris wolf, he also learned that it would
    eventually be in vain -- that in the end the Gods were destined to
    lose, and this knowledge haunts him throughout his extended life.
    
    					Topher

re. 11 (Dick);
    
    	In the ancient times there were some special places here in
    	Scandinavia,where men and animals were sacrificed by beeing
    	hanged upon the sacred trees.The human victims dedicated to
    	Odin were regularly put to death by hanging or a combination
    	of hanging and stabbing,the man being strung up to a tree or
    	a gallows and then wounded with a spear.
    	Hence Odin was called the Lord of the Gallows or the god of
    	the hanged,and he is represented sitting under a gallows tree.
    	Indeed he is said to have been sacrifised to himself in the
    	ordinary way,as one can learn from the weird verses of the
    	H�vam�l,in which the god describes how he aquired his devine
    	power by learning the magic runes:
    
    		'I know that I hung on the windy tree
    		 For nine whole nights,
    		 Wounded with the spear,dedicated to Odin,
    		 Myself to myself.'
    

Svein Nordrum   

    Is there a single book that gives the history of the Gods? A place
    where I can get the history leading up to and after Odin went to
    the well of wisdom.
    
    Thanks
    Jerry

    Re .15 (Jerry):
    
    The closest you'll get to that is the _LaRousse Encyclopedia of
    Mythology_.  It's a big coffee-table thing, and some of the fine
    points might be debated, but all in all, they cover a lot.
    
    Steve Kallis, Jr.