The Visible Gods: Dawn, the Sun and Multiple Meanings

I watched the sun rise over a bank of clouds on the horizon while on my way to work a couple days ago. Watching the sun rise and the world stir and awaken to its light is a spiritual experience in and of itself. The birds sing for joy and beneath their echoing songs you can almost hear the sighing of the earth itself, as if its breath were quickening in anticipation.

Seeing this titanic (pun!) entity rise in the sky makes one aware of the presences of other divine beings that inhabit and govern the world. These are the visible Gods, so huge, vast–right there in front of our eyes! They are present, as apparent as the sun in the sky. Dawn is a Goddess heralding the Sun’s approach. The Moon is a Goddess riding her white bull across the night sky. The stars are daimones. The mountain is a God. In the trees dwell nymphs. This is how the ancients perceived the world. They didn’t have to “imagine” themselves into it with metaphors–it was a direct, 1:1 experience. Not “the sky is raining” but “Zeus is raining”: the rain is the presence of the God, His power, His manifestation, but also a small part of a greater whole.

That the ancient Hellenes experienced the sun and the rain as everyday occurrences in beyond doubt. Yet they never lost their sense of wonder at the world around them, either. This creative tension birthed the natural sciences as they struggled to understand the workings of that world. Eratosthenes of Cyrene calculated the earth’s circumference in the third century BCE, yet the earth didn’t suddenly stop being the Earth Mother or become dead matter as the result of scientific inquiry. The ancients could continue to reverence the awesome powers that give those everyday occurrences meaning but also view them with materialistic objectivity.

Polytheism is more than simply many Gods; it’s many meanings. We can never forget that the sun is a giant hydrogen ball of nuclear fusion, or that rain is condensed drops of atmospheric water vapor, thanks to the vast body of scientific knowledge we accrued. But instead of one sole claim to “Truth”–there is one True God; the sun is nothing but a huge ball of hydrogen (and, okay, a few other elements)–we polytheists can accept that truths occur simultaneously. In the face of so many meanings–wondrous, fecund, irresistible meanings–the claims to ultimate Truth, whether on the part of materialist atheists or monotheists, begins to look very thin indeed.