-SM Stirling, Prince Of Outcasts (New York, 2017), Chapter Nine, p. 178.
"...the mist burned away and the sun came up.
"The eastern horizon flashed green as the burning arch cleared the horizon, with crimson the color of molten copper on the fringe of clouds. The stars showed as the mist cleared and then were gone in the greater light, fading away to a few scattered in the midnight blue of the western horizon for a moment. Ruan's young voice rose from the bows as he greeted the sun with the Dawn Chant."
-op. cit., p. 179.
Feldman quotes (?) "'Dawns like thunder'" and Deor quotes four lines beginning:
"'Between the Pedestals of Night and Morning...'" (ibid.) (see here) (Search result; scroll down.)
The sun rises every day and should be greeted appropriately.
5 comments:
Paul:
"Dawns like thunder" sounds to me like not a precise quote, but rather a reference to Kipling's poem "Mandalay," which says that in the vicinity of Burma
"...the flyin'-fishes play,
An' the dawn comes up like thunder...."
Charles Addams parodied this line in a cartoon of two fellows sitting out on a veranda in the tropics. "One gets used to the flying fishes, but that bloody dawn coming up like thunder is driving me crackers."
Thanks.
Kaor, Paul!
I can't agree with people who pray to the Sun as tho it was a god. Because I KNOW it's merely a giant ball of flaming gas which has been scientifically analyzed and studied to a fare thee well. The Sun is a physical and material object, not a god.
But, yes, I can see why many people in past centuries could worship the sun. It provides light and heat, which we all need. But it bothers me how so many in the post-Change years could have forgotten so much, even in those parts of the world, like Montival, which managed to preserve civilization. Would so much ASTRONOMY, including knowledge of what the Sun actually is, be forgotten so quickly?
Sean
It's actually more or less like using an image as a focus for devotion -- you're not worshipping the statue, and Classical and other pagans didn't do that either.
So the Old Faith types singing the Dawn Chant aren't worshipping the Sun in the rather literalist sense you're suggesting.
Their perception of spiritual things emphasizes immanence as opposed to transcendence; all things have a spiritual aspect, from a tree or waterfall to the Sun and other cosmic objects, all of which are aspects of things "Further In", both separate and part of the same thing.
Dear Mr. Stirling,
Then it seems to me these neopagans are soft rather than hard polytheists. And their view of "immanence" reminds me of Plato's speculations about "ideal forms." The Sun is only an "aspect" of the real sun. Needless to say, I would disagree with these persons and insist on the stressing the infinite transcendence of God, Creator and ruler of the Cosmos.
Sean
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