A Prayer to the Sun

 In the Symposium, Plato has Alcibiades tell us this about Socrates:

One morning he was thinking about something which he could not resolve; he would not give it up, but continued thinking from early dawn until noon—there he stood fixed in thought; and at noon attention was drawn to him, and the rumour ran through the wondering crowd that Socrates had been standing and thinking about something ever since the break of day. At last, in the evening after supper, some Ionians out of curiosity (I should explain that this was not in winter but in summer), brought out their mats and slept in the open air that they might watch him and see whether he would stand all night. There he stood until the following morning; and with the return of light he offered up a prayer to the Sun, and went his way.

In this dialogue, Alcibiades is a bit of a dunce, and his understanding of Socrates is minimal; we are meant to work out on our own just what Socrates is up to. Earlier in the dialogue, Socrates himself has described the meditative practice which he learned from the priestess Diotima, which I have discussed in detail elsewhere:

 

For he who would proceed aright in this matter should begin in youth to visit beautiful forms; and first, if he be guided by his instructor aright, to love one such form only—out of that he should create fair thoughts; and soon he will of himself perceive that the beauty of one form is akin to the beauty of another; and then if beauty of form in general is his pursuit, how foolish would he be not to recognize that the beauty in every form is and the same! And when he perceives this he will abate his violent love of the one, which he will despise and deem a small thing, and will become a lover of all beautiful forms; in the next stage he will consider that the beauty of the mind is more honourable than the beauty of the outward form. So that if a virtuous soul have but a little comeliness, he will be content to love and tend him, and will search out and bring to the birth thoughts which may improve the young, until he is compelled to contemplate and see the beauty of institutions and laws, and to understand that the beauty of them all is of one family, and that personal beauty is a trifle; and after laws and institutions he will go on to the sciences, that he may see their beauty, being not like a servant in love with the beauty of one youth or man or institution, himself a slave mean and narrow-minded, but drawing towards and contemplating the vast sea of beauty, he will create many fair and noble thoughts and notions in boundless love of wisdom; until on that shore he grows and waxes strong, and at last the vision is revealed to him of a single science, which is the science of beauty everywhere. To this I will proceed; please to give me your very best attention:

 

He who has been instructed thus far in the things of love, and who has learned to see the beautiful in due order and succession, when he comes toward the end will suddenly perceive a nature of wondrous beauty (and this, Socrates, is the final cause of all our former toils)—a nature which in the first place is everlasting, not growing and decaying, or waxing and waning; secondly, not fair in one point of view and foul in another, or at one time or in one relation or at one place fair, at another time or in another relation or at another place foul, as if fair to some and foul to others, or in the likeness of a face or hands or any other part of the bodily frame, or in any form of speech or knowledge, or existing in any other being, as for example, in an animal, or in heaven, or in earth, or in any other place; but beauty absolute, separate, simple, and everlasting, which without diminution and without increase, or any change, is imparted to the ever-growing and perishing beauties of all other things. He who from these ascending under the influence of true love, begins to perceive that beauty, is not far from the end. And the true order of going, or being led by another, to the things of love, is to begin from the beauties of earth and mount upwards for the sake of that other beauty, using these as steps only, and from one going on to two, and from two to all fair forms, and from fair forms to fair practices, and from fair practices to fair notions, until from fair notions he arrives at the notion of absolute beauty, and at last knows what the essence of beauty is.

 

And so we can see that Alcibiades is narrating, from the perspective of one uninitiated, the meditation of Socrates. And notice that Socrates closes his meditation and opens his day with a prayer to the Sun. This is another clue to the nature of the practice, for in the Republic we learn that the physical Sun is an image of the eternal spiritual Sun, which is the IDea of the Good Itself. As the Sun lights the living world, so the Idea of the Good illumines the spiritual world. For a Christian Neoplatonist like Marsilio Ficino, this means that the Sun is an image of Christ. 

Every morning for some time I have, upon first seeing the sunrise, recited the following prayer:

Unto God I give thanks for all things.
In the presence of God I pray,



Hail Holy Sun, bringer of Light to the World.
Hail Divine Fire.
Hail celestial image of the Eternal Monad.
Hail source of Life and Health and Light.

As the Sun lights the living world,
May the Eternal Sunlight of the Spirit
Illumine my soul and guide my actions
In the ways of Perfect Justice
Today and always.

AWEN
 

Sometimes I say a variation, like

Unto the Sun I give thanks
For Life and Light and Heat and Health
And to the Earth I give thanks
For Solidity and Stability and Cold and Calm
And to the Middle World
For Fields and Farms, Towns and Trees
And all the phenomena I will meet with this day
 

Before closing in the same way.

I share these here; feel free to use them as is, modify them to suit your needs, or simply use them as inspiration to compose your own.