“I went underground to escape
(my brother, the storm)
breaking everything
(the way he does)
his fists everywhere.
I hid there, taking the warmth
of my breath, my gold fingers.” – Amaterasu, The Sun Goddess, Returns, Jeanine Hall Gailey. [1]
It may seem contradictory that the sun Goddess was a dark Goddess, journeying through the underworld, yet to our ancestors her nocturnal disappearance was a subterranean mystery.
Her darkness transformed, whilst sparking the imagination. Chthonic ascent and descent tested the human soul, psyche and resourcefulness of those venturing into the Great Below. Darkness was conquered and battles were fought with inner demons and mythological demons, inhabiting the shadowy depths and the cavernous folds of the dark subconscious. The underworld was a subterranean workshop for judging, repairing and liberating souls and waking spirits. Bringing the solar flame, source of life, into the labial folds of Mother Earth: Into caves, tombs and temples, was a sacred occurrence, enshrined in mythology.
“Likewise the womb is assimilated to the sun – Bataille, George. 1981. La Parte Maldita. Barcelona: Icaria.” [2]
In Latvian mythology Viņsaule, ‘The Other Sun’ is where the sun goes at night [3].
Sun Goddess, Saulė’s daughter, Aušrinė, lit the fire in preparation for her daytime dance across the sky. Those guarding the solar flame, light of life, held prestige, a job entrusted to numerous hearth Goddesses and the Vestal Virgins, who were buried alive if they let the flame die, perhaps a grizzly reminder of the sun returning to the underworld.
I stumbled upon the existence of the dark aspect of the sun Goddess searching for celestial patterning within this figurine from Alaca Höyük, Neolithic Anatolia, (Mirroring Stars, RTM E July 24). Superimposing her over various star maps, I noticed there is cosmic order within her chaotic appearance and that night sky cosmology is encoded within her scratches and drill holes, including those in her halo, which I believe to be a Sun Course halo. When positioned over her third eye, these seven holes correlate to the seven stars in Ursa Minor, rotating a round the North Star. [visit Mirroring Stars for more in-depth conversations about her celestial coding].
It seems obvious to me that the Swastika, (before meaning was reversed by patriarchal forces) representing the cosmos in motion, is based on Ursa Major rotating around the North Star. It makes sense that it is also a Solar Symbol, embodying night sky cosmology, when the underworld aspect of the sun Goddess is considered. Link to Bronze Age sun Goddess decorated with spirals and Swastikas, riding a Dupljaja cart.
More on carts: Solar Goddess, Sol, blazed across the sky in a fiery chariot pulled by golden horses. Saulė’s chariot was made from copper. Xihe’s chariot was pulled by dragons.
In Hittite mythology the underworld sun Goddess was called the Sun Goddess of the Earth. Her Hurrian counterpart was Allani.[4] Too dazzling to look upon, the Hattian/Hittite Sun Goddess was represented as Sun Disc/Sun Course symbols, some with seven or eleven nodes. In Sumerian mythology the “cosmic 7” is encoded into accounts of underworld journeying. When Inanna, Queen of Heaven, descends to meet her sister, sun Goddess Ereshkigal, Queen of the Underworld, she passes through seven gateways. Seven Earths; seven heavens; seven underworlds; seven Hathors, feature in many mythological and religious cosmologies.
We all live under one sky, under one sun. In the northern hemisphere we see the same stars. Light, wrapped in darkness, courses through the universe, over time creating pattern within pattern, sparking the imagination of star gazers and artists, who tracked this motion, encoding what they saw into symbols, which were enshrined into mythology. Not all mythology was written down. It was drawn. Ideas were shared, inherited, built upon, over time and place. Even if languages died due to regional, socio-political change and assimilation of populations, symbols endure.
Sulis Minerva was decapitated and as she sunk to oblivion her light was eclipsed. This luminescent Goddess, radiating love, healing and light, once gazed over the sacred springs and temple spa at Aquae Sulis, a Celtic/Roman spa complex in the UK. It could be said Her solar return was over 1,000 years later. During sewer excavations, her gilt bronze head rose out of the silt, just as the peachy sun rises at dawn. Freed from her mud tomb, Sulis has emerged from the underworld, her head, albeit now bodiless and encased in glass, is a lucid and omnipotent presence once more. Her body has not been found.
Syncretized with Minerva, Roman Goddess of wisdom, Sulis is considered to be an oracular, solar deity, possibly associated with Celtic sun Goddess Sulevia. In old Irish súil means “eye sight”. She sees beyond the ordinary. The clue for me is not in the etymology but in the symbolism of gilding: She shines. Sulis Minerva embodies an underworld aspect of the solar Goddess that could (and can still be) experienced in situ, as a glittering luminary, gazing across the healing, geo-thermal waters, which rise to the surface from 2 km below ground, as deep Earth “knowing” emerges from darkness into the light, a sensory experience, as hot, mineral rich spring water gushes over rock and skin.
The sun Goddess was dynamic, moving between realms. Hathor greeted souls of the dead at the entrance to the underworld. Isis fanned her wings to waft energy down there. Shapash guided souls during their subterranean journeying. Macha collected decapitated heads, where the soul was thought to reside. Bast battled serpents. [5]
Saulė sleeps on a lake bed during her nocturnal journey. She was kidnapped, imprisoned in a tower and was rescued by the constellations! Yhi retreated into caves. Brigid emerged, in serpent form, from a frosty mound on the ‘browne’ day of spring.
Anticipating the sun’s return was laced with anxiety, since her cyclical dance was associated with fertility and survival.
“[Walu] then puts out her torch and travels underground through the night to return to her camp. This underworld journey was important in the designation of the Sun as female, whose torch bringing warmth and fertility to the interior of the Earth, causing plants to grow.” – Rowan. Walu, Aboriginal Sun Goddess. [6]
The sun Goddess dying underground (psychologically and emotionally) to be reborn at dawn, represents the dying back of nature, her solar flame sparking growth. This echoes Persephone and Demeter mythology.
“I provide here a new explanation of Hesiod’s prayer, connecting it to Hecate’s origin as an Anatolian sun-goddess of the underworld who mediated interactions between the upper and lower worlds.” Bachvarova, Mary. Hecate: An Anatolian Sun-Goddess of the Underworld. [7]
Images of Hecate [on an Attic vase 440 BCE] show her wielding two torches, which I understand to be Venus as the morning and evening star, framing the darkness between dusk and dawn. Hecate lit the way for Persephone to return to the honeyed warmth of sunlight, after Hades dragged her underground. During this ‘nocturnal’ rescue, Hecate exhibits the ability of an Anatolian sun Goddess to journey into the underworld [Anatolia was assimilated into the Hellenistic world].
The psychological and mythological emerged from observation of the cosmological.
Perhaps the anxiety projected upon the solar journey is best summed up in this ancient Chinese text, relating to solar deity Xihe, driving her chariot across the sky, marking the motion of time.
“[When the sun] reaches the Valley of Grief, this is called the Dinner Hour.
[When the sun] reaches Woman’s Sequence, this is called the Great Return.
[When the sun] reaches the Angle of the Abyss, this is called the Raised Pestle.” – Huainanzi, ancient Chinese text. [8]
Just as our ancestors were anxious about the solar return, the underworld sun Goddess asks us to confront our own anxieties and trauma. Persephone’s story asks us to face love and loss; our own patriarchal wounding; and the violence used to dominate women and nature.
Like seeds, we can retreat into darkness to heal.
“From the Great Above she opened her ear to the Great Below.” (Wolkstein and Kramer, 52) The Descent of Inanna (1900-1600 BCE approx). [9]
Inanna’s journey of descent, murder and eventual ascent, is one of transcendence and metamorphosis, teaching us to strip away old beliefs and let the ego die, so we can emerge lighter, wiser, awake.
The underworld sun Goddess illuminates wounding and healing, asking us to confront what lies beneath, but there is another aspect of her history to consider: Why Paganism was pushed underground.
They tried to drive us underground. Little did they know, we were already there.
References and further reading
[1] Hall Gailey, Jeanine. Amaterasu, The Sun Goddess, Returns. Poetry International. https://www.poetryinternationalonline.com/poet/jeanine-hall-gailey/
[2] Roche Cárcel, Juan Antonio. Images of the Mother Goddess in the Neolithic Sanctuary of Pla de Petracos (Alicante, Spain)—The Sacralization of Agriculture. 17 November 2020. MDPI. https://www.mdpi.com/2077-1444/11/11/614
[3] Saulė. Wikipedia. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saul%C4%97
[4] Sun goddess of the Earth. Wikipedia. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sun_goddess_of_the_Earth#:~:text=The%20Sun%20goddess%20of%20the,goddess%20from%20an%20early%20date.
[5] Woodfield Stephanie. Dark Goddess Musings. August. 2. 2011. https://darkgoddessmusings.blogspot.com/2011/08/sun-in-underworld.html
[6] Rowan. Walu, Aboriginal Sun Goddess. December.17. 2012. https://bookofeucalypt.com/2012/12/17/walu-aboriginal-sun-goddess/
[7] Bachvarova, Mary. Hecate: An Anatolian Sun-Goddess of the Underworld. May 2010. ResearchGate. https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Mary-Bachvarova
[8] Xihe (deity). Wikipedia. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xihe_(deity)
[9] Joshua J., Mark. (Wolkstein and Kramer, 52) The Descent of Inanna. Inanna’s Descent: A Sumerian Tale of Injustice. World History Encyclopedia. February. 23. 2011. https://www.worldhistory.org/article/215/inannas-descent-a-sumerian-tale-of-injustice/