I came across the text after watching The Pagan Scholar on YouTube. The fellow who runs the channel, Travis, is an academic who reads and reviews scholarly works on contemporary Paganism. He had reviewed a title called Eclipse of the Sun, a book on sun goddesses, and I was really interested in reading it. However, when I went to order some books with a giftcard, I couldn't remember the title, nor could I find the video he talked about it in (I now know it was "Ouch, My Paradigm"). I ended up looking at other books on sun goddesses instead, and decided that this one looked promising. I ordered it, and am nothing less than pleased with it as a scholarly examination of the sun goddess narrative.
Author: Sheena McGrath
© 1997
Sheena McGrath is a practicing Pagan now living in California. She has been involved in groups in England and Canada, and has her degree in medieval studies.
McGrath's book opens with a proposition: that modern Pagans (and non-Pagan scholars, for that matter) who automatically associate the goddess with the moon and the god with the sun are looking at mythology too one-dimensionally. She proposes instead that the majority of pre-Christian Indo-European religions worshiped a sun goddess, with a corresponding moon god. She then goes on to prove this thesis with evidence from a plethora of Indo-European cultures, citing language, migration patterns, iconography, and surviving verses and folklore; she makes a compelling argument suggesting that, historically, the Greeks and Romans were really the odd ones out in terms of assigning gender to the luminaries.
McGrath begins by introducing the reader to the Indo-Europeans, describing how and where they lived, how language patterns (and in particular, gendered language regarding the sun and moon) changed, and why she chose to compare their mythologies. Namely, Indo-Europeans prior to Christianization had a mythological cycle which was identifiably similar across political, cultural, and ethnic boundaries.
She then launches immediately into describing known sun goddesses from across Western Europe, talking about what we know of their worship, the symbols they used, and what remains of their stories. McGrath starts with Sól in Germany, then moves to Sunna in England, and continues with Freya in Scandinavia, St. Lucia in Sweden, and Œstre of the Saxons.
Next, she looks at Eastern Europe, beginning with the Baltic Saule. She talks at length here about the myth cycle, comparing it to trends in other regions, and in particular examining the frequent pattern of a moon god who seduces the sun goddess' daughter, the sun maiden, as well as twin sons of the sky god who are to be the sun maiden's husband(s). McGrath examines some known sun maidens, and includes in her list Auszrine. She also describes the horse and the swans as being significant examples of sun goddess imagery.
The following section traces sun goddesses in Slavic mythology, looking at Solntse, who between Her and Her sun maiden daughter also fulfill a role in the cult of the dead. McGrath further describes Slavic goddesses of the solstices, a mysterious solar goddess frequently depicted on traditional wedding embroidery, and how even in the Catholic church, the Virgin Mary has come to have solar aspects in Russia.
Then McGrath moves to the Celts, pointing out Grian and Graínne, as well as goddesses of hot springs like Sul, and fire goddesses like Brigit. The Celts also worshiped a series of horse goddesses, and McGrath reiterates her position that equine goddesses usually have a solar aspect. These include Áine and Macha.
She also covers Arinitti and Nikkal of the Hittites, Arevhat of the Armenians, and Mtsekale of the Georgians.
While McGrath does acknowledge that the Greeks do not generally support her proposal (and indeed, notes that part of the reason for the dominance of the moon goddess, sun god narrative is a fierce historical obsession with neo-classicism), she does point out that it's not all so cut-and-dried as Helios or Apollo as the sun god with Selene or Artemis as the lunar goddess. McGrath brings up references to a female Helia, as well as the the strong solar imagery associated with Pasïphae (who mated with the very lunar bull in the story of the labyrinth). Other Greek women associated with the sun include Circe, Medea, the Hesperides, Eos, and even Helen of Troy.
Then the text moves on to India, where the sun god, Surya, has an aspect, Savitar, which is sometimes addressed as female. There is also his horse goddess wife, and a daughter, Suryaa, a sun maiden who marries twins, as in other Indo-European mythologies. Then there is Tantra, a fire goddess, and Ushas, goddess of dawn.
The next few chapters restate much of what has been said already, but categorizes information differently so that if one were looking for a specific piece of information, it would be easier to locate. One chapter discusses the relationship between solar goddesses and mazes, while others discuss the moon, sky, and thunder gods.
The final sections of the book switch from scholarly research to application, a pleasant surprise for me, as I had not expected this book to contain any information on ritual. McGrath provides a very simple ritual structure, and then offers several guided meditations and rituals by which to honor various sun goddesses and moon gods.
Whew. If that seemed like a long summary, it's because it was. This is not an especially thick book (177 pages, not counting appendices or the bibliography), but it is dense. There is a ton of information here to read through, all of it very completely researched. If I had one criticism of the book, it would be that the organization of chapters felt, at times, a little arbitrary, but that is a small, small complaint. The book is fully cited from other reputable researchers (including references to Eclipse of the Sun, which makes me chuckle), and I learned an incredible amount about goddesses I had never even heard of before.
Not only that, but this issue of assigning gender to the sun and moon (which in and of itself I feel is a fairly unnecessary practice, but that's a topic for another time) is an important one, because when we as a community get into this practice of automatically pairing the moon with women and the sun with men, we start leaving the door open for stereotyping and misogyny.
Why? Because it's never really just that we pair women and the moon, is it? We pair women with all of the other metaphysical associations we have with the moon, namely passivity and receptivity. Meanwhile, men get paired exclusively with the active, sending energy of the sun. This type of binary thinking isn't beneficial to anyone of any gender, because no person exhibits one sole type of behavior all the time, and to suggest otherwise is ultimately limiting.
Therefore, for that and other reasons, I feel that books like this are really critical for breaking the paradigm in contemporary Paganism, and coming to realize that mythology is complex, and that no one single narrative will ever fit every culture, nor should it, and nor should we try to make up or twist facts to suit a limited world view.
9.5/10, absolutely read through this if you have the chance.
