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In the dream, I am being shown the amber robe of the Sun. Even untenanted, spread out on the ground, it is an awesome sight.

The golden omofor is covered—feathered, enscaled—with huge, smooth pieces of amber: pieces as large as my palm, the largest the size of my outstretched hand. I hadn't realized that natural amber occurred in such large pieces. The effect of so many together overwhelms me.

I stand unmoving in awestruck wonder. On the body of its wearer, radiant with Sunlight, the lordly robe, so masterfully wrought, would blind the eye.

I bow to the ground and kiss the largest of the amber disks, the one covering the wearer's heart.

Have you spoken with the Sun lately?

Have you said “thanks” recently for his goodly (and godly) gift of light? Of warmth? Have you thanked him for your very life?

If not, why not? Are you in the habit of taking gifts for granted?

(Of course, one might just as readily say “her” here; the Sun is a star and, as such, an ungendered being; or maybe “pangendered” would be better. But we, as humans, gendered beings ourselves, are—as ever—wont to project. He or she is not the point here; you is the point.)

Me, I speak to the Sun every day, individual to individual: when I can, at least. (Alas, it looks as if today, I may not get the opportunity. Historically, December is Minnesota's cloudiest month.) When first I see the Sun in the morning, I kiss my hand and greet him. I thank him; I tell him that I love him. (“Love to you, my Pahh.” ) When he nears the western horizon, I bid good-night, farewell, See you in the morning, kissing again my hand.

(Similarly, I also daily greet the Winds, the Moon, the River...the pagan's day—and life—is filled with gods.)

Does he hear me when I do this? No, probably not. But that obviates neither the relationship, nor the responsibly. The Sun burns in self-sacrificial love; this is his nature. We say “thank you” and “I love you”: this is ours.

What are we, we living beings? Are we not minerals and energy, minerals-in-motion? One from the Sun, the other from Earth. Truly, in the most literal way possible, we are sunlight and soil, children of Earth and Sun.

In us, they see, and think, and understand. In us, they know love and thanks. This is our “why.” Is this not a wonder?

Humans, we speak in words, and dance. Gods speak in what they do, and are.

Soon comes the Yule of the year. Now, we speak to the Sun on our own recognizance, one on one.

Then, we will do so together.

On a whim the other day, I did an image search for “Yule ornaments.” What I found dismayed me.

Or rather, what I didn't find dismayed me.

Pentagrams, runes, Thor's hammers, witches on brooms: pagan schmuckerei for pretty much every taste and tradition.

Out of the first two screens, maybe 150 images in all, I found one Sun.

One.

For a moment, I felt a sense of vertigo, as if I were falling: a giddy kind of kinship with the “Keep Christ in Christmas” folks.

Solstice is relationship: Earth, Sun, Us.

Monotheists have it easy. They never have to ask: Which god?

For the rest of us, things get rather more complicated.

In time of plague, as now, to Whom do you turn?

Well, when you need help, who do you usually ask for assistance? The near-by, those with whom you already have good friendship: kin, friends, neighbors.

In time of epidemic, for protection for you and yours, you turn to your luck-god, Whomever that may be.

(Bear in mind, of course, that intangible protections are always best used in partnership with tangible ones as well.)

But collectively, to Whom do we turn for aid in time of plague?

In the Old Ways, there's no wall of separation between reality and mythology. Let us start with a simple fact: sunlight kills covid.

Silent, ineluctable, the golden shaft of light streams into the darkness of my room.

Because the street-grid of Minneapolis is laid out East-West, on Evenday mornings the Spring (and Harvest) Sun rising due east shines in through the eastern windows, down the hall, and into my bedroom on the west side of the house.

It's like living in Newgrange, but with heat and running water.

They say that Zeus appeared to Danaë in a Shower of Gold.

They say that Shiva revealed himself as a Lingam of Fire.

I jump out of bed and stand in the Lordly Light. His godly touch gilds my naked skin.

In traditional societies as far removed as Zuñi Pueblo of the American Southwest and the Kalasha valleys of what is now northwestern Pakistan, the Winter Solstice is marked—among other activities—by footraces.

I've long wondered why this would be so, but this morning—watching the Sun leap up over the horizon—it suddenly occurred to me why.

It's sympathetic magic. The Sun is a runner.

Every day, the Sun walks across the Sky. Even on the day of his birth, he walks from one horizon to the other. Well, he's a god; he can.

(During the Bronze Age, when we became a Horse People, people began to say that the Sun drove across the sky daily in his chariot. In those days, nobles and warriors rode horses and drove chariots, unlike us common folks who walked; when we rode, it was in ox-carts. Surely, went the logic, the Sun was more like nobility and the warrior-kind: hence his chariot. These days, though, we understand that to walk is more sacred than to ride.)

Three-some weeks until the Evenday and his due Eastern rising. This morning he came up still considerably south of east.

“He'll have to run to catch up,” I thought.

Aha.

Hey, every little pagan gayboy harbors a Mithraic fantasy or two, and I was no different from the rest.

As gods go, Mithras is as cute as they get, not to mention that he gets to ascend to heaven and handfast the Sun, who's not only cute, but hangs out butt-naked all the time. What's not to like? In the end, they even share a couch. (Go ahead, check out the vignettes if you don't believe me.) Plus, it's an all-male cult. That's pretty hot.

I wrote these lyrics back in the 80s as a send-up of the classic American hymn Are You Washed in the Blood (of the Lamb)? They do not faithfully portray actual Mithraic practice. The taurobolium (blood baptism) characterized the cultus of the Magna Mater, not that of Mithras. (No sane person would ever try to bring a live bull into the intimately close confines of your average Mithraeum, much less sacrifice one there.) Likewise, surviving iconography makes it quite clear that Mithras ≠ Sun.

So what follows is best regarded as a lark, not a serious addition to contemporary pagan hymnody.

Still, I like to think that it successfully captures something of the fraternal joy that must have characterized ancient (and, no doubt, modern) Mithraism. Does anybody seriously believe that, after the wine had gone around once or twice, the Brothers did not sing a good, rousing anthem or two together?

Do you shine for the Sun,

and does he shine for you?

Are You Washed in the Blood of the Bull?

A Mithraic Anthem