The Cult of the Sun
Hi everybody! Thank you for visiting my new site and for taking the time to read my blog page! Since my professional name is Solaris, I thought it might be fitting that my very first blog post be about the sun and its importance to me personally and also within human history and development. This blog is a compilation of my thoughts and experiences regarding our old faithful celestial friend, Mr. Sun.
The sun has always played a big part in my life, not only because I'm a warm-weather, summer-loving kind of gal, but also because I'm a sun sign Leo and the sun is apparently very prominent in my natal chart. For that nice little tidbit of astrological information, I owe many thanks to my Arcturian starseed sister, Amanda Galactica,...Amanda is an experienced spiritually-oriented life coach and she's absolutely awesome (check out Amanda on her new site www.amandagalactica.com), Anyway, it always felt like my very own cells and DNA were being recharged whenever I could spend some time in the sun. Being that it's wintertime here in the Northern Hemisphere right now and we are fast approaching the winter solstice, I long for the sunny days and warm weather.
But I digress....other than being the bringer of life and energy on this planet, why was the sun so important to humanity and was worshipped as a God in so many of the ancient Earth civilizations? Is there a personal connection we have with the sun within our collective unconscious ? Or is there even an extraterrestrial or galactic relationship? We all know that sun worship was prominent in many ancient cultures, such as Sumerian, Babylonian, Egypt, ancient Greece and Rome, Phoenician, Mayan, Aztec, African, Chinese...the list goes on and on. It's little wonder that the sun played a big part in the mythology and deities of many civilizations in Earth's history.
For the sake of brevity, however, I want to focus on the Inca culture today, since a few years ago I had the good fortune to visit the ruins in Ingapirca, Ecuador in the midst of the Andes Mountains during a family trip to the Ecuadorian highlands with Terry, my significant other. Ingapirca is the best preserved Inca ruins near the town of Cañar, Ecuador, named after the Cañari people who predated and co-exisited with the Inca. Although it pales in comparison to Macchu Picchu in Peru, it does have the only surviving sun temple from the Inca culture that is still standing today. The stonework alone seen in the temple is amazing....the stones used to construct the walls of the temple were so precisely cut, mortar was not needed as the stones fit together seamlessly. The location of the temple in the surrounding valley is impressive in itself; there is an otherworldly golden glow throughout the area which leads one to feel that this place is sacred and certainly higher dimensional, perhaps located on a leyline or energy vortex. Check out the picture I took of the complex below:
I'm not a professional photographer by any means, and this photo is in no way photoshopped or altered. It's just really tough to take a bad picture of the ruins as the golden light saturates the entire valley. Needless to say, the vibrational energies here are very high; it's almost intoxicating as one wanders through the ruins.
While we were here, we learned about Inti Raymi, the Inca Festival of the Sun. Inti Raymi was an Incan religious ceremony in honor of their Sun god, Inti. This festival took place on the day of the winter solstice, kind of like the Inca version of Christmas, perhaps? Interesting that just about every culture on this planet has a winter solstice festival...Christmas of course being the most well-known, but then there's the sun worship of the Persian sun god Mithra, who was also adopted by the Romans. The cermony of Mithra took place during the winter solstice, as it represented the rebirth of the sun after the shortest day of the year. Evidently Mithra was sometimes represented as a Lion being, which brings back the whole Leo/Sun connection. There seems to be this ever-present theme of sacrifice, death, and then rebirth with the Sun God, or even with our present-day Son of God, Jesus Christ...but that's a whole other topic.
Speaking of sacrifices, the Temple of the Sun at Ingapirca also has an altar where sacrificial virgins and animals were offered to Inti during cermonial festivities. Here's a picture of the altar with the permeating golden aura that glows from the rocks, despite the sinister activities that certainly prevailed there during the temple's heyday:
With the theme of sacrifice and rebirth that seems to be a constant with sun worship, how does this relate to us today on a metaphysical level? Does the winter solstice still represent a time for reflection, transformation, and rebirth as we modern-day humans move into the new year?
It is my understanding from my own personal research that the Incan Q'ero shamans practiced a form of light body activation during their cermonies where they connected the energy from their third chakra, the solar plexus, with the energy of the sun, and then forming a triad with the energy of the Grand Central Sun in our universe. if performed correctly (it would take a lot of practice, I imagine!), this exercise would activate the DNA sequencing to transform one's earthly body into a crystalline light body, transitioning one to ascend and move into higher consciousness. I posted the Inca sun mask from the Inca museum in Quito, Ecuador at the beginning of this post, as I think it beautifully illustrates the Inner Sun that is inherent in all of us who are working towards ascension and enlightenment.
Don Oscar Miro-Quesada, a respected Peruvian Shamanic Healer, explains the crystalline light body activation process much more eloquently than I ever could in his webinar and workshop Light of the Incas, which incidently was recorded on my birthday, July 25, of this year...there's that Leo/Sun connection again! Don Oscar's lightbody activation is so transformational but if you don't have the time to attend his workshop, Anrita Melchizedek offers a beautiful video, Crystalline Sun DNA Templates Activation, where all you have to do is press play and meditate along with her.
The date July 25 is also significant in the Mayan calendar as it signifies the end of the Mayan calendar year, the Mayan Day Out of Time. July 25th is the day that Sirius (the dog star) rises with the sun. The Mayan Day Out of Time also re-aligns the Mayan 13 Moon calendar to the solar year and re-aligns humanity into a renewed appreciation for our inherent divinity and connection to nature. Sounds like a good day to contemplate and reflect, right? As the winter solstice represents an end/rebirth after a sacrifice, the Day Out of Time represents a pause in time before the calendar starts again.
By the way, it is also my understanding that the Incas learned about the lightbody activation from their connection with the Pleiades and also possibly Arcturus and Sirius. I hope to explore this extraterrestrial connection more in a future post. :)
With this, I'll leave you with a picture of the sacred llamas I took at Ingapirca, for no other reason except that I like llamas and I was happy to see them cohabitate so peacefully at the Temple of the Sun. Perhaps they know a secret we have yet to discover?