God in the Sun, God in the Light

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The Unity of Philosophy

There are some who say that the study of philosophy had its beginning among the barbarians. They urge that the Persians have had their Magi, the Babylonians or Assyrians their Chaldaeans, and the Indians their Gymnosophists; and among the Celts and Gauls there are the people called Druids or Holy Ones, for which they cite as authorities the Magicus of Aristotle and Sotion in the twenty-third1 book of his Succession of Philosophers.

So we read in the History of the Lives of Eminent Philosophers, written by Diogenes Laertius around 150 B.C.

In Barddas we read:

Question. Why is the face turned towards the sun in every asseveration and Prayer?

Answer. Because God is in every light, and the chief of every light is the sun. It is through fire that God brings back to Himself all things that have emanated from Him; therefore it is not right to ally one's self to God, but in the light. There are three kinds of light, namely: that of the sun, and hence fire; that which is obtained in the sciences of teachers; and that which is possessed in the understanding of the head and heart, that is, in the soul. On that account, every vow is made in the face of the three lights, that is, in the light of the sun is seen the light of a teacher, or demonstration; and from both of these is the light of the intellect, or that of the soul.

And again:

Question. Why do we say, Heaven above, and Hell beneath, where there can be no highest in respect of any being, or lowest in respect of any existence? And why God in the highest, and Cythraul in the lowest?

Answer. Because the light is always highest, and above our heads, and it is in the light that God is found, and there can be no Heaven, except in the light; and God and Heaven always go together with light. And the darkness is always the lowest, and Cythraul and hell go together with it.

Book VII of Plato's Republic centers around the famous allegory of the cave. Imagine, Plato writes, that you have spent all your life as a prisoner in a cave, chained to the floor in such a way that you can move your head neither left nor right. Behind you is a fire, before you the cave wall. Between you and the fire men are moving puppets about, and all you can see and all you have ever seen are shadows cast by the puppets upon the cave wall.

But the day comes, and you escape. Making your way up to the surface, out of the darkness, you find a world of dazzling light in which you are totally blind. You come out at night, and look at things in the darkness-- at night the trees resemble the shadows which you had been used to, and the starlight is reminicent of the flickering of the fire.

Last of all he will be able to see the sun, and not mere reflections of him in the water, but he will see him in his own proper place, and not in another; and he will contemplate him as he is.

He will then proceed to argue that this is he who gives the season and the years, and is the guardian of all that is in the visible world, and in a certain way the cause of all things which he and his fellows have been accustomed to behold.

Now this cave is our material world, and the fire our material sun. The master of puppets is the Sublunar Demiurge, who dazzles our eyes with unintelligible images. The true Sun is the Eternal Spiritual Sun, as he is named in the Druid tradition; the Idea of the Good, as Plato calls him. This is the image of the First Cause, the One Itself.

All things in our material world are the images of higher things, and it is through them that we make the ascent, out of the cave, into the light of the Real. And so we are enjoined to worship in the Sun and in the light of the Sun, that, uniting ourself to the material Sun, we may be drawn upward into the light of the Spirit.