The Sun portrayed in these coins is not Oriental; he has the
features of the Greek Apollo, wearing a crown with solar rays.
Sometimes he drives a chariot drawn by four horses. Such
coins read: “To the Invincible Sun, companion of Augustus.”
Julian, called the Apostate, in his brief reign (359–362)
tried to bring back the worship of the sun. “From my child-
hood,” he writes in his prose hymn to the sun, “an extraordi-
nary longing for the rays of the sun penetrated my soul”
(Hymn to King Helios 130c). The Neoplatonists, with whom
Julian identified the leading philosophical school of the late
empire, believed in one supreme ineffable god but were able
to accept the sun as a symbol, “offspring of the first god.”
According to Julian, “His [Helios’s] light has the same rela-
tion to the visible world as truth to the intelligible world”
(ibid., 133a). Julian recognized three aspects of the sun god:
the sun of the intelligible world, of the intellectual world,
and of the sensible world, which last he identified with
Mithra.
The birthday of Sol Invictus and of Mithra were celebat-
ed on December 25, close to the time of the winter solstice.
In 353 or 354 CE Pope Liberius set this date as the Feast of
the Nativity, and a few years later he founded the Church
of Santa Maria della Neva, now known as Santa Maria Mag-
giore, which became the center of the Roman celebration of
Christmas. The Nativity gradually absorbed or supplanted
all the other solstice rites. Solar imagery came increasingly
to be used to portray the risen Christ (who was also called
Sol Invictus), and the old solar disk that had once appeared
behind the head of Asian rulers became the halo of Christian
saints. Excavations under Saint Peter’s Basilica, undertaken
in hope of finding the tomb of Peter, found a very early
Christian mosaic that showed Christ driving a chariot, with
rays above his head.
JAPAN. The national religion of Japan, Shinto ̄, is an extraor-
dinary combination of myth, national feeling, ancestor wor-
ship, and highly sophisticated mysticism. Japanese writers on
the subject assert that theoretical analysis in the Western style
is quite unsuitable for Shinto ̄; it is rather a system of rites,
feelings, and intense poetic appreciation. There is no doubt
that the performance of the rites has over the centuries given
the Japanese people a confidence in themselves and their
place in society and the universe. The sun appears on the Jap-
anese flag today, but the epithet “Land of the Rising Sun”
was perhaps invented by the Chinese.
Japanese cosmogony, first recorded in the seventh cen-
tury CE, relates how the islands came to be formed out of the
primeval waters by a celestial couple, who gave birth to many
other natural features. When the wife was burned and died
in giving birth to fire, her husband, fleeing from the sight
of her decomposing body, stopped to purify himself, and in
the process produced from his right eye the Sun (female) and
from his left eye the Moon (male). The Moon plays very little
part in the mythology, but from the nose of the original hus-
band was produced Susano-o no Mikoto, who represents vi-
olence, earthly qualities, and death, while the sun goddess,
Amaterasu, stands for light and purity. Susano-o no Mikoto,
realizing that the earth could only be created and peopled if
the two powers cooperated, tried to force his way into the
abode of Amaterasu, whereupon she hid in a cave and left
the world in darkness. There are a number of caves in mod-
ern-day Japan that are identified as the cave where the god-
dess hid herself. Eventually the other gods persuaded Ama-
terasu to emerge. Among the sacred regalia they employed
to ensure her emergence was a mirror—the mirror that is said
to be part of the ritual at the famous Ise Shrine.
Shinto ̄ teaching maintains that Amaterasu and Susano-o
no Mikoto represent not good and evil but complementary
qualities that are necessary to produce life on earth. Eventual-
ly the world as it stands was completed, and Amaterasu be-
came the ancestor of the first emperor of Japan. The sun god-
dess is the center of Shinto ̄ worship, which is intended to
bind the people together in reverence for her earthly repre-
sentative. The goal of Shinto ̄ is the maintenance of harmony
among humankind, nature, and the gods. The greatest reality
visible in the heavens becomes the symbol of the greatest re-
ality known and revered on earth.
The earliest records of Shinto ̄ derive from the seventh
century BCE, when writing was introduced, but the roots of
the system may stretch much further back. In the Middle
Ages, it was much influenced by Buddhism, but the two be-
came distinct in the eighteenth century. In 1946, the Ameri-
can occupation forces demanded that the emperor renounce
his divine status as part of their abolition of the state religion.
It appears that the formal renunciation has had little effect
on the symbolic relationship that has endured for centuries
between the sun goddess and the imperial family. On the
other hand, the retreat of state Shinto ̄, which had highly po-
liticized overtones and which was the basis for a fanatical mil-
itarism, in a sense returned the religion to the people. The
priests, without government support, turned to the popula-
tion. When it became time for the reconstruction of the
Grand Shrine at Ise, which is prescribed every twenty years,
there was an unprecedented outpouring of donations from
the entire populace. More than fifty million people contrib-
uted to the rebuilding of the shrine in 1953, even more in
1973.
The rituals have continued and the emperor has partici-
pated in the divine nature of his ancestors by praying for the
well-being of his people. In the great ceremonies at the end
of June and December (the solstices), the imperial families
and ministers of state pray for purification from sin for the
entire country.
THE AMERICAS. Many native North Americans regarded the
Sun as their supreme deity. In the Plains, the Crow thought
of themselves as descendants of the Sun and swore by it. In
lower Mississippi, the Natchez maintained a total theocracy;
their priest-chieftain was a substitute on earth for their su-
preme being, the Sun. For the Pueblo, the Sun is a powerful
deity but subordinate to others, such as the Corn Goddess.
They perform ceremonies at the summer solstice to slowSUN 8841