Hello Sunshine.

"In honesty it's been a while since we had reason left to smile. Hello sunshine. Come into my life" - Hello Sunshine, Super Furry Animals

Last Thursday night, following the example set by the London Fortean Society, I 'attended' my first SELFS (the South East London Folklore Society) online talk. We all know the reasons the pub wasn't open to host and we all hope that that will change soon (but only when it's safe enough to do so) but, while the threat of the virus is still so strong, these online events are proving a more than worthy substitute.

SELFS had gone a bit more low key than the LFS but the talk suffered not a jot for that. Our host George had lined up what was basically two YouTube videos and a Zoom Q&A for their 'Lore of the Sun' evening. Narrated and hosted by George himself, it told of how different cultures and religions have interpreted what the sun is, what it means, and how it affects our lives.

The yellow dwarf star we call the sun is 92.1% hydrogen and 7.8% helium, it's four and half billion years old, and it's ninety three million miles from Earth - and we would not be able to live without it. It provides us with our heat, with our light, and,  ultimately, with a bit of help from our parents, our lives.

So it's hardly surprising that throughout history humans have tried to make sense of what it is, what it does, and why it does it. Humans have a need to make sense of things and science, in the past, wasn't even close to being able to explain this vast yellow orb that appeared in the sky each morning and disappeared again each night. Some cultures feared that one night it would disappear forever.

Others (Egyptians, Incas, and in ancient India) made up sun gods to explain it. The Egyptian sun god Ra is variously portrayed as a scarab, as a serpent, and as a hawk headed human. Ra travelled, in the form of the sun, across the sky each night in a boat. When Papua New Guinea's 'Mr Sun' (the sun takes both male and female forms in different folkloric beliefs) fertilises the Earth a festival is held to celebrate. In Polynesia it was believed the sun moved across the sky too quickly so his leg was purposely broken to make him move slower and the day last longer. So more work could be done.

People's fear of the sun, or the fear of it not appearing, has often led them to do or, more honestly, imagine acts of great cruelty towards it - and each other. During eclipses ancient Peruvians fired arrows at what they believed to be a monster attacking the sun. Ancient Mexicans named the sun 'he by who men live' and sacrificed animal and human hearts to the sun to give him strength.

The Incas weren't so grisly about all things solar. When one of their own became ill they saw that illness as a blessing sent by the sun so that they could rest with their people. It's not the only time people have ascribed turns of events to the sun that it could surely not have influenced. As if providing all life on Earth isn't enough there was once a belief that sunspots (cooler parts of the sun emitting less light) had a bearing on world economies. Another theory relating to the sunspots is that they were caused when the moon, jealous of the sun's brightness, pelted the sun with mud.

Eclipses were an even bigger deal. It was, and often still is, globally common to be afraid of eclipses. Many felt a cosmic dragon was devouring the source of all warmth and light which, of course, could only lead to the death of every living thing on the planet. Some believed 'sky wolves' had swallowed the sun. Bad vibes, man.

Norse mythology held that the sun was made from the skull of the first man that ever lived and when the sun's not dominating global mythologies it's the source of many superstitions. It's been believed, over the ages, that it's unlucky to point at the sun and for the sun to strike a mourner at a funeral but that it's lucky for the sun to strike a brick. In Hungary, tradition had it that a girl who throws her sweepings into the sun will never marry.

The sun was given character, emotions, and motivations. Some belief systems had it that the sun danced when it rose on Easter Monday, joyful that Christ had risen. I would hold a belief that if the sun had emotions at all, Christianity would cause it to feel anger and resentment. Imagine giving every human on the planet life only to see them flock into churchs, cathedrals, mosques, and synagogues to worship mere men, mere mortals.

Hawkwind and Spiral Tribe at least had the right idea by celebrating solstices and sunrises with festivals, frenzied dancing, and pharmaceuticals. Conflating sun worship with Christian worship doesn't end with mistaken attribution for life giving properties. It was believed that the sun's birthday was December 25th. Because sun worship was so popular, early Christians moved Jesus Christ's birthday from January 6th to what became known as Christmas Day to capitalise on the sun's popularity for their burgeoning, lie based, religion. A bit like Boris Johnson supporting Brexit so he can become PM.

In 247AD the Roman Emperor Aurelian decreed sun worship as the official religion of Rome and based the Roman form of sun worship on the older Syrian cult of Mithraism. Mithraism still worked its way to London and, in recent years, a Mithraic temple in the City of London was discovered during excavations initiated by William Francis Grimes and Audrey Williams, two Welsh archeologist workings for the Museum of London. I visited last year with my friend Valia and plan to go again once 'this' is over.

George's talk continued to take in myths from around the world. I've not included all of them here (you should really attend the talks, you don't have to even be in London now they've moved online) but I've picked a few of my favourites. In Africa, the Congolese believed the moon had once been a second sun but people got tired of being hot all the time so one of the two suns suggested they both have a bath to cool down (!) but only one did. That sun became the moon.

An Angolan theory on how one sun became a moon is less pleasant. One sun killed all her children and they became the stars we see at night. The sun that let her children live became the sun we now know and there are no stars representing murdered children visible in the sky when the sun shines.

The Mexicans didn't stop at two suns. They had it that there were four suns that preceded our sun. One was drowned by torrential rain (causing everyone on Earth to die except those that turned into fish), the second one was destroyed by fire (those that didn't die became the animals), the third by an earthquake (no creatures seem to have been made by this), and the fourth sun turned all humanity into monkeys. I think I've got that right. It's a bit confusing.

The Chinese saw the Mexicans four suns and they raised them. In China it was once believed that there was a different sun for each hour of the day. One fateful day they all appeared in the sky at once and the heat was so intense it was feared they would burn all living creatues to a crisp. A skilled archer was tasked with shooting nine of them down. A feat, fortunately, he achieved.

There's Indian and Japanese mythologies, there's an Assyrian mythology of scorpion men who open mountain doors from which the sun god emerges to ride his chariot across the sky, and there's the Egyptian theory that the sun is a golden egg laid daily by a celestial goose. It was believed that pharaohs were sun gods reigning on Earth.

Sun gods like Helios and Apollo were placed highly in the Greek pantheon too and as if the being the God of the sun isn't enough responsibility the sun gods were also tasked with being deities for other spheres like music, building, and shepherding. Each morning, belief had it, Helios would rise from an Ethiopian swamp and ascend into the heavens, pulled in his quadriga by four horses, before eventually plunging into a distant ocean and out of sight. Only to miraculously reappear in that Ethiopian swamp the next morning and repeat the feat. A Groundhog Day for Helios.

Slavonic mythology attested that the sun had a golden palace in the East and, as we see so many times, rode a chariot pulled by varying numbers of horses each day to get there. In most cultures it's horse drawn chariots that take the sun/sun-god on their daily journey but in Egypt it's boats. I can't help thinking that's because in most ancient cultures people travelled by horses or horse drawn chariots but in Egypt, because of the Nile, river travel was more popular.

We touched on Celtic mythology, Finnish mythology (the Kalevala), and Roman mythology (Janus, a uniquely Roman god in the pantheon, was initially a solar deity before taking charge of the departments of doorways and gates - a job that having two faces, one to look in to the future and one to look back at the past, made him highly qualified for) before returned for another look at Mithraic beliefs. The followers of Mithraism wanted more purity and as such they venerated light. To create more light it was deemed that Mithra had slayed the sacred bull and sacrificed it to the sun gods.

It's no more bonkers than Christian or Islamic stories. None of it is. It was a fascinating talk that also took in Robert Graves, Newgrange, Stonehenge, the White Goddess, Ragnarok, Dorchester-on-Thames (where I have a TADS walk planned for next April), The Sun Wheel, Tacitus visiting the Baltic coast of Germany) and the sun-wise turn. Passing the port, stirring Christmas puddings, and arriving at funerals should always be done in the direction of the sun's travel apparently.

We learnt how Midsummer was often known as 'fire of heaven' and, in a rather Life of Brian Pythonesque way, the Ancient Druid Order and the Ancient Order of Druids are most definitely not the same thing. A brief Q&A took in Puritans, John Dee, Nicholas Culpeper, Ronald Hutton, the Danish influence on the English language, Kentish barrows, and the time when astrology was considered a science and, as ever with SELFS, the evening became stranger and more fascinating as it developed while always remaining as amiable as a night out in the pub with a group of close friends.

I had a great evening (sat in my front room) and can't wait to do it again on the 9th July when Matthew Hopkins:The Witchfinder General is under consideration. The sun doesn't always shine on TV but when there's a SELFS evening going on there it most certainly does.