Brother Moon, Sister Sun?

Question: Do you believe the worship of the male solar principle has affected our world, our earth?

Yes, of course, the worship of the male solar principle has affected our world/Earth. It has permitted men to dominate, and women to be subjugated; it has led to the false idea that human beings are of greatest value, and that everything else can be exploited for our supposed benefit; it has enabled the development of hierarchical power structures at all levels. Overall, it has resulted in total imbalance and ill health, of individuals, families, societies, nations, and the Earth herself.

One must, however, remember that women are not universally nice, caring, loving, or fair-minded!... and we will never know if the world would truly have been different if there had not been male dominance for so many centuries. I'm inclined to think that it's the dominance of one over the other that's the problem, rather than the gender issue. What's needed is the redressing of the balance.

I do understand that the worship of the Sun itself would have been a very natural inclination among early humans: we rely on the Sun for warmth, for light; it disappears every night, and reappears every morning; it can be hidden by clouds and storms and eclipses: it is easy to imagine it as a powerful Being in need of worship and propitiation.

Those days have long since been superseded, but it is interesting to reflect on why it was that the Sun was perceived to be male, after all, it is females who produce life, and who, to over-generalise, are warm and caring. I guess that since the Sun projects light and heat and energy, it is regarded as 'male', while the Moon, which receives and reflects the Sun's light, is seen as female... although in some ancient cultures the Sun was perceived of as feminine: Shapash, for example, was the Phoenician Sun Goddess, and in Germanic and Norse mythologies the Sun is female (Sunna/Frau Sunne/Sól) and the Moon is male. Other Sun Goddesses include Saule (Latvia & Lithuania), Paivatar/Beiwe (Sami people of Finland - Paivatar being replaced latterly by the Virgin Mary!), Bila (among the Adnyamathanha indigenous people of Australia), Sekhmet (Egypt; daughter of the Sun God, Ra), Maline (Inuit), and Amaterasu-omikami (Shintoism in Japan).