Stories of the Sun E-Book

Dawn Nelson

• Herausgeber: The History Press
• Kategorie: Fantasy und Science-Fiction
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2024

Seitenzahl: 284

Beschreibung

For millennia we have looked to the sun to provide us with light, food and warmth. Yet, in our attempts to increase the productivity of each hour, we have skewed our days and stretched them through the use of candles, electricity and LED bulbs, our faces glowing in the unnatural light of screens and electronic devices. Within the pages of this book lies the chance to reconnect with our primal life force through folklore, exploration of ancient cultures, myths, legends and tales of our past. By understanding the power of our ancient star through the wisdom of those who walked this land before us, we can hope to unplug ourselves from the synthetic glow that surrounds our lives and reconnect with the Stories of the Sun.

Leseprobe

First published 2024

The History Press

97 St George’s Place, Cheltenham,

Gloucestershire, GL50 3QB

www.thehistorypress.co.uk

© Dawn Nelson, 2024

The right of Dawn Nelson to be identified as the Author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without the permission in writing from the Publishers.

British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data.

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

ISBN 978 1 80399 604 2

Typesetting and origination by The History Press

Printed and bound in Great Britain by TJ Books Limited, Padstow, Cornwall.

eBook converted by Geethik Technologies

NOT TILL WE ARE LOST, IN

OTHER WORDS, NOT TILL WE

HAVE LOST THE WORLD, DO

WE BEGIN TO FIND OURSELVES,

AND REALIZE WHERE WE ARE

AND THE INFINITE EXTENT OF

OUR RELATIONS.

WALDEN BY HENRY

DAVID THOREAU (1854)

CONTENTS

Foreword by Tiffany Francis-Baker

Introduction

January – Tilting at the Sun

February – The In-Between

March – Clock Watching

April – The Hirundines Return

May – Fire Story

June – Standstill

July – Keepers of the Sun

August – Dog Days

September – Life-Giver

October – Adjusting to the Dark

November – Capturing the Light

December – Eclipse

Acknowledgements

About the Author

Bibliography

By the Same Author

FOREWORD

DAWN AND I HAD BEEN friends for many years by the time we booked tickets to the Stonehenge exhibition at the British Museum. We both live and work in rural Hampshire, but this visit to the heart of London remains one of my favourite days spent in her company. We crossed the river, sipped coffee and chatted our way over to Great Russell Street, then stepped into the world of ancient Britain and her people – into the world of Stonehenge. The whole exhibition was fascinating, but the highlight was being able to see the Nebra Sky Disc with our own eyes. This beautiful bronze disc is thought to be the oldest known map of the night sky, illegally unearthed by detectorists in Germany in the summer of 1999 and dating back almost four millennia. It is decorated with a handful of gold pieces, each believed to represent cosmic bodies like the crescent moon, stars and solstice markers orbiting that bright and blazing goddess of the solar system – our sun.

When I imagine Dawn researching, writing and performing her stories, I think of the disc upon which we both gazed in wonder that day, deep within the walls of the British Museum. The tapestry of Dawn’s craft is woven from voices all over the world, and she respects the cultural fabric from which every thread has been spun. But each of the stories she tells is like one of the Nebra stars orbiting the sun. At the heart of it all, these stories are about the very nature of existence; a connection with the earth, with each other, with the past, present and future. Whether it’s a Greek myth, a Slavic folktale or an Aztec legend, Dawn possesses the storyteller’s wisdom: the knowledge that despite all our differences, whether we are human, non-human or something in between, we are all just trying to understand our place within this mysterious world.

And where better to start than the sun? The beating heart of our world, giving life to everything we see – and, of course, enabling us to see it. It is remarkable to think that a ball of plasma 150 million kilometres away affects every aspect of our lives. Our relationship with the sun is so exquisitely balanced that even a cloud passing between us can make us cold enough for an extra layer. And although modern science has revealed more about solar power than ever before, there is plenty of wisdom in the old stories, too. Stories of birdsong and sarsen stones, midsummer days and solstice nights.

The beauty of this book is in its simplicity. Twelve moments with the sun as it rises and sets, sometimes solitary, sometimes not, but always in the company of the land and its turning seasons. Dawn tracks the changing rhythms of the year and reflects on how we have interpreted the sun’s presence, then tunes in more closely still. There is always an unsentimental respect for nature in her writing, because she admires both the light and darkness, the beauty and the sorrow found in the earth. So help yourself to a drink, take a seat by the hearth, and listen to Dawn weave golden-threaded stories of the sun. You will soon see each wildflower, hedgerow and sun-ripened apple in a completely new light.

Tiffany Francis-Baker

Author of Dark Skies and The Bridleway: How Horses Shaped

the Landscape.https://tiffanyfrancisbaker.com

INTRODUCTION

WHEN I WAS A TEENAGER I climbed to the top of the third highest point in England: Helvellyn. This was not the first time I had climbed this particular mountain in the Lake District, but it was the first time I had attempted it at three o’clock in the morning.

Our ascent was in the dark, negotiating the craggy rock face, bleary eyed and heavy with sleep, to bivvy bag on the top and watch the sun come up for the Summer Solstice.

It was an otherworldly experience and I still remember the warm glow of the sun as it started to appear on the horizon, our smiles widening with it and how the light danced on our faces. Sunrise and sunset are magical, liminal spaces and this experience cemented that knowledge within me.

Around ten years later I was working in emergency care and this liminal space was now well known to me. I witnessed many sunrises as my shifts both started and ended. Occasionally the crepuscular creatures of the twilight would cross our paths. The usual deer bounding across the back lanes, badgers thundering through hedgerows, hedgehogs scuttling along the gutters looking for a dropped kerb and, on one occasion, a tawny owl sitting bang in the middle of the road, dazzled by the blue lights.

Another ten years passed and I’m not sure when I became aware of it, but it had suddenly been over twenty years since that sunrise on Helvellyn. I’d had my head down achieving the career I thought was required of me, until I looked up and saw the world differently. I suddenly heard its rhythms in a very real and visceral way, and I saw these patterns very clearly in the stories I read. I devoured the anthologies of Wilhelm and Jacob Grimm, Joseph Jacobs, Giambattista Basile, Madame d’Aulnoy, Charles Perrault and many more. Stories reignited my desire to connect with the liminal spaces in life.

Another ten years, this time full of tales and lore, and now, as a storyteller, I work in a different liminal space; the space between reality and imagination.

When the pandemic hit in 2019, I realised how very privileged I was in having the South Downs on my doorstep, being able to step out into the country for my state-sanctioned exercise. As I walked, the knowledge and rhythms of all those stories that I had been studying, researching, crafting and telling created a bridge between me and the landscape. It spoke to me in a different way and everywhere I looked I saw stories. Stories of green women in the trees, tales of the epic journeys of the swallows and martins, and the lore of the boggarts who lurked beneath the hedgerows.

Through these stories, many voices spanning hundreds of years spoke to me. They spoke their rhythms and cycles over and over. The stories sang to my bones; they were part of me. Taoists refer to this as our ancestral Qi (chee). It is the spirit of our relatives and ancestors that we hold within us. We all have it; we’re just not necessarily listening. This Qi is a connection not just to our ancestors but to the land that we live on and the creatures that we share it with. Stories can help us find our way back to that Qi.

I chose to start the Sunrise Project in order to reconnect with the earth during that liminal space in the morning between sleeping and waking. I found a spot that faced east and had a clear view of the sun rising. I returned to this spot once a month for a year and recorded my long sits through nature journalling. I found that whilst I sat there, the stories of the sun also wanted to be heard – the ancestral Qi within my bones spoke of the many sunrises and myths, legends and folktales that recorded the power of our largest star. And so it was that I combined my sunrise journals with folklore and stories of the sun to bring you this book.

Before you read any further, I’d like to invite you to stop and listen, wherever you are. If you can, step outside – but if not, where you are is just fine.

Wherever your spot is, sit, stand or lie, however you feel comfortable, and then take a moment to listen. Listen to the hum of any nearby traffic, the susurration of the trees that line the street or the grass of the lawns and verges. Inside the house, you will find similar sounds in the appliances. The hum of the fridge, the thud and splash of the washing in the machine or the ever-so-faint whir of a light bulb. In a coffee shop? You may notice the chink of cups, the hiss of the steamer and friends chatting. Outside in the garden, birdsong perhaps or footsteps on the path, the chit of a spade turning the soil, or a clucking blackbird startled by a cat. Wherever you are, listen for the sounds, find the rhythm of that place.

Now bring it back to you. Listen to your breathing, consciously move the air in and out of your lungs, feel its rhythm. Listen to your heart, hear its rhythm.

Everything has a rhythm but often we are so focused on the tasks of modern life that they become a part of our subconscious not acknowledged as a necessary part of our being. They continue on within us and around us without us consciously engaging with them, but they are there.

We may even try and push against natural rhythms, such as those of sunrise and sunset, the phases of the moon or the turning of the tides. We may diarise our day, flex the hours that we work with synthetic light, use video calls to connect, but every time we do this, we are ignoring the rhythms our very being knows best. We are fighting against biophilic rhythms.

Within these pages Baba Yaga will show you the source of all light, Sol will ride her chariot many times across the sky, children will travel from the underworld to tell you their tales and flower-faced women will become creatures of the dusk. We will discover dark places, shine light into them and embrace the power of our light source and life force.

The twelve chapters, one for each month, each have a section of nature narrative in the form of a sunrise vigil. These vigils took place over 2021 and 2022. Within these vigils I explore nature, folklore and the stories that connect us with the sun. Each chapter has a story connected to my experiences during that sunrise and an invitation to carry out an activity to help you connect with the stories, the nature and landscape within them and, of course, the sun.

To help you further, as we follow the seasons and the four solar festivals within it, there is a downloadable PDF detailing the wheel of the year, via the website page that accompanies this book. You can also find further resources to help you with the various activities via this page:

www.ddstoryteller.co.uk/stories-of-the-sun

JANUARY

TILTING AT THE SUN

I SIT IN THE GRASS, damp from yesterday’s rain, waiting. Winter’s early morning voices have already begun to sing. Tawny owls call to each other in the trees above my sit-spot. I have brought with me a flask of coffee and a circular, sweet, orange, tortas biscuit. The sugar sparkles in the half-light and the orange pieces buried within it are like the sun I wait for, buried in the morning clouds. The sugary goodness from the Spanish flat-bread biscuit, once the favoured snack of stagecoach passengers, gives me much-needed energy. As I hit the alarm this morning to stop it from waking anyone else, the clock read 6 a.m. – a good hour earlier than I usually get up, but still not as early as I know I will have to, in six months’ time, in order to continue my planned year of monthly sunrise vigils.

The sky is paint-pot black and the stars are bright. As I walked to the dark spot on the hill I have chosen for this project, everything felt alien. I kept thinking I could hear fellow mammals in the undergrowth when in actual fact it was the rustling of my own clothes.

I am lucky enough to live in a little village nestled in the South Downs National Park, which is an International Dark Skies Reserve. This means that urban skyglow is kept to a minimum through planning and quantifiable guidelines on light levels. In turn this allows the skies above the South Downs to be perfect for star gazing, night hikes and, of course, our nocturnal neighbours.

The village has no street lamps and this, coupled with the new moon, means there is no other light. I was glad of my torch. I could have risen later when the atmospheric light was enough for me to see by, still well before sunrise, but I wanted to experience the shifting in the light, truly immerse myself in the space between night and day.

I am reminded of the stories I have read, listened to and indeed told about the Lincolnshire Carrs. The stretches of boggy marshland that hide all manner of nefarious beings: boggarts, boggles, will o’ the wisps, lantern men and disembodied dead hands. The folktale of ‘The Buried Moon’ tells of a time when the moon is trapped beneath the marshes with nothing to illuminate the night for months on end, until the villagers find a way to join together and free her. I am certainly able to empathise with the characters in these tales as the tree branches reach out of the hedgerows towards me, and the path, slick with mud from last night’s rain, sucks at my boots.

Once I find my chosen spot, I turn the torch off and wait. After ten minutes of sitting, the darkness starts to lift and I see a yellow line appear on the horizon. Behind me, in the copse, a tawny owl calls and more soon join it, their k’wik and t’woo contact calls echoing back and forth. Dogs bark in the village below and the light creeps slowly into the sky until there is just one star left above me, trapped in the skeleton crook of a tree’s branches.

In the wood, the tawny owls have found each other and their calls crescendo in a happy frenzy of voices until, just as suddenly, there is silence. Tawny owls have a variety of nicknames: brown hoolet, Jenny howlet, hoot owl and, in Sussex, the ’ollering owl. My particular favourite has to be the ferny hoolet, which combines its appearance with its call to create the perfect kenning for a Tawny Owl. The t’wit, t’woo that we classically associate with most owls is actually the contact call of the tawny owl and not just one owl but two. The t’wit or k’wik, as it is more commonly written phonetically, is the female and the t’woo or ho-hoo is the male. The two I had been listening to were a pair: a male and a female. A little early morning love story as the two of them found each other once more before retiring for the day.

As the darkness lifts, the clock strikes seven and the field of the day that I am familiar with comes into view, no longer the dark, unwelcoming expanse that it was as I struggled to find my way to the sit-spot. A finch bobs across my view from one set of trees to the next, its undulating flight unmistakable.

A splash of yellow appears above the trees; I can’t be sure if the sun has come up yet or not. I don’t think I’ve been up specifically to watch a sunrise since that morning on Helvellyn, and whilst I have worked night shifts in the past, I was working. You don’t necessarily have time to take in the dawn in all its glory, or even notice the different stages of light and the sun rising.

A cacophony of rooks leave their roost for the day and they wake the collared doves who coo sympathetically.

A robin greets the light loudly and hops down from the tree to drink from a muddy puddle, leaving in a flurry of feathers as soon as it spots me. Shortly after the robin, a blackbird tumbles out of the hedgerow and disappears again, tutting at my presence. It would appear I am sitting a few feet away from the best puddle in the meadow.

The robin in folklore can be quite onerous. This one was certainly cross, if nothing else. It is believed that a robin coming into your house foretells the death of someone in the household. This is true for a robin tapping on your window too. Conversely, the robin also became the subject of a murder mystery in the poem ‘Who Killed Cock Robin?’ There’s not much mystery to the story as the sparrow confesses within the first line; however, the story is well loved and ends in a rather fitting funeral for poor Cock Robin.

Owls are also considered bad omens in folklore, and given my early morning encounters with two dark messenger birds, I’m rather hoping that on this occasion this lore is not correct, and that I make it back down the hill and safely home.

It’s almost completely light and it feels like the sun must have come up by now, yet I cannot see it and there are no clouds. I start to doubt myself. Perhaps I am sitting in the wrong place, facing the wrong direction? I check my position on a map. No. I’m facing east. I’m in the right place.

The robin’s back and it trills at me as if asking permission to share the puddle. I, of course, acquiesce; it is by no means my puddle and I am pleased he has forgiven me.

It is now almost completely light; there are no more pinks, oranges or yellows in the sky. A Yaffle (green woodpecker) laughs at me from a nearby field. It knows I must be patient and all will be revealed.

At ten past eight, almost ninety minutes after arriving in my spot, the sun finally makes an appearance and, wow, is it worth the wait! Blinding shards of light spring forth through the trees and its warmth on my face is most welcome in the cold of that January morning.

It was by sitting in that field, on that January morning, waiting for the sun to appear, sitting through three stages of twilight, which I had yet to know had names, that I realised how little I knew of its habits and rhythms. So, once I was home in the warmth of my own living room, I started to learn.

In order to understand our ancestors’ connections, lore and stories of the sun it is helpful to know a little of the science, so humour me a moment and let’s delve into the heliophysics of our life-giving star.

The sun is a yellow dwarf star that is 4.5 billion years old. It is 26,000 light-years away from the galactic centre and is 150 million kilometres from earth. Its core temperature is 15 million °C or 27 million °F. It is the sun’s gravity that stops the planets flying around the solar system getting swallowed up by black holes like a giant game of Hungry Hippos. The sun is master of the seasons, ocean currents, climate, radiation, auroras and, of course, the weather. Without the sun we would not survive.

The sun is approximately halfway through its life and according to scientists we have around another 5 billion years left before our star expands and consumes the solar system. That is, of course, unless we end it first.

The route the sun takes across the sky each year is called an analemma. Technically, it’s our route, not the sun’s, and it’s not the sun coming up, it’s us tilting at the sun like Don Quixote tilted at windmills. But let’s go back to that analemma. There are scientists and photographers who have plotted the position of the sun throughout the year by using complex technology or patiently and painstakingly taking photos in the same spot every week for fifty-two weeks of the year. When they have overlaid these points or photographs, it has essentially created a figure of eight in the sky. This figure of eight has a small loop at the top and a larger loop at the bottom and sits diagonally across the sky. During the shorter loop the sun appears higher in the sky, and during the longer loop the sun appears lower, thus dictating the hours of sunlight we have. During the shorter and higher loop, the sun takes longer to make its journey across the sky each day. This is the summer. The lower and larger loop means the sun is not in the sky for as long. This is winter. It is because of the earth’s position and its route around the sun that we get this analemma.

The earth’s route around the sun and the angle at which it is tilted results in the seasons, and because of this, the seasons are different in the southern and northern hemispheres. It takes 365¼ days for the earth to move around the sun, and as it does so, different hemispheres are exposed to more or less light.

When the southern hemisphere is tilted towards the sun and the northern away from it, it is winter in the northern hemisphere and summer in the southern. When the northern hemisphere is tilted towards the sun and the southern away, it is summer in the northern hemisphere and winter in the southern. Hence Australians enjoy their Christmas celebrations on the beach and here in the UK we typically enjoy it around the table bingeing on carbohydrates, sugar and grease to get us through the cold weather.

Homo sapiens have been on the earth for around 300,000 years, and for at least 12,000 of those, our ancestors have tracked the path of the sun, knowing with every fibre of their being that the sun plays a major part in providing us with food, warmth and, well, life! Evidence of this tracking of the sun is apparent in monuments across the world and I will explore some of these throughout this book.

You might think it’s fairly easy to predict where the sun comes up: the east, right? Well, actually it changes and this is the very problem I had that morning. I was indeed facing east, but I was not looking to the right of me, so south-east, where the winter sun would emerge. As a general rule, in the UK winter months, December to February, the sun rises in the south-east, then from March to May it rises in the east, from June to August in the north-east, then from September to November in the east again. Our ancestors would have had to watch the sun and work out exactly where it would rise in order to illuminate the monuments, megaliths and mountains that became their sacred places during the summer and winter solstices.

As we tilt and spin our way around the sun, the seasons unfurl: winter, spring, summer, autumn. Each cycle marks a year in our calendar, and whilst we know now that the seasons are the result of our planet’s tilt and relative position to the sun, this was not always the case for our ancestors.

Many cultures have stories that explain the seasons. The most famous of these in the northern hemisphere is arguably the Greek myth of Persephone. Persephone was the daughter of Demeter, the goddess of the harvest. Whilst wandering in a wildflower meadow, Persephone is stolen. Hades, ruler of the Underworld, hides her deep beneath the earth. The grief of Demeter, mourning for the loss of her daughter, is so great that the fields and plants stop growing. To right the balance and stop the world from starving, the gods demand that Hades returns Persephone to her mother. There is just one condition: Persephone must not have eaten anything within the realm of Hades. So it is that, before she is released, Hades tricks Persephone into eating six pomegranate seeds whilst she is still in the Underworld. This results in Persephone only being able to return to the surface for six months of each year. During this time the light returns to the world and the fields flourish. When she is forced to return for six months in the Underworld, Demeter again mourns and nothing grows in the fields. For the ancient Greeks, this explained the seasons of summer and winter.

A similar story appears in Native American culture. The Blue Corn Maiden of the Pueblos people is the most desirable of all the corn maidens and so Winter Katsina comes down from the hills and steals her away. The Blue Corn Maiden misses her people and eventually manages to escape her frozen home in the mountains to collect enough Yucca leaves to make a fire to warm herself by. When she does this, Summer Katsina sees her and seeks to rescue her. When Winter Katsina returns from his travels in the mountains and finds Summer Katsina in his house, he is furious and battles him, but the fire of Summer Katsina is too strong and he melts Winter Katsina’s weapons of ice. Winter Katsina calls a truce and Summer Katsina returns the Blue Corn Maiden to the Pueblos people. But to keep the peace and stop Winter Katsina blowing snow and ice throughout the lands all year, every six months the Blue Corn Maiden returns to his house in the mountains, to live with Winter Katsina.

Some folktales tell of the months themselves as characters. One such story is a Slovak folktale of a young girl who is sent out into the winter woods by her cruel mother and sister, to find unseasonal flowers and fruit. She finds a circle of women in the forest who turn out to be the twelve months and they are able to provide her with the items she needs, despite it being the depths of winter. In other cases, it is a variety of different deities that are responsible for the different seasons or weather events.

Some myths explain not necessarily the seasons, but why the sun is in a certain position at a certain time of year. In the Hawaiian myth of how Māui slowed down the sun, the story is told of how a long time ago the sun, whose name was Tamanuiterā, travelled too quickly across the sky and the days were too short. As a result, Māui and his brothers had to work hard to get everything done that they needed to in the daylight. One day they became so fed up with this that Māui claimed that he would catch Tamanuiterā and teach him to slow down. Through cunning, team work and brute strength the brothers achieved this, and Tamanuiterā was so tired after struggling to get free that he no longer had the energy to travel so fast across the sky.

The Nart Sagas are a collection of stories from the ancient indigenous ethnic groups of the North Caucasus. These include the Circassians, Abazas, Abkhaz and Ubykhs, which became part of Russia in the late eighteenth century after the Russo-Circassian War.

During this time genocide was employed by the invading forces to gain control over the lands, and as a result much of the ancient traditions and myths of the Caucasus peoples was lost. Various scholars have subsequently translated the Nart Sagas and I first discovered the following story in a collection translated by John Colarusso. It gives a very ancient explanation as to the position of the sun at sunset.

It is important to remember that ancient and indigenous stories should be told with the care and respect they deserve. Whilst many of those translating the stories have sought first-hand accounts and knowledge of the culture from which the tales come, most translations of these tales are not written by those from this culture. This, coupled with the many changes that have occurred in this region over hundreds of years, means that these stories have inevitably been interpreted from the viewpoint of the translator and, in some cases perhaps, changed from their original forms, if only very subtly.

These influences aren’t always modern either. For example, Patricia Monaghan cites in her Encyclopaedia of Goddesses and Heroines that in the case of south-eastern Europe, as far back as the third century, there may have been outside influences at play in the telling and recording of these stories.

Below is my interpretation of this tale based on my research into these stories and the culture they have come from.

WHY THE SUN PAUSES AT SUNSET

Setenaya was a powerful goddess, a seer and the keeper of an apple tree, which could gift you health and immortality. Setenaya was a bewitching and strong-willed, life-giving woman. Her husband Warzameg would tell you she was a trickster and a wise woman, for she and he lived many a tale and Setenaya had many lessons to impart.

This tale is from long ago, in a time when Setenaya was renowned for her skills as a seamstress and weaver. One day she set herself the task of sewing a saya – a dress that used many metres of fabric and had to be sewn with the utmost care.

A young leatherworker overheard Setenaya set herself this challenge. He proclaimed that he would craft a saddle and that he too would complete it within the day.

The challenge proclaimed, they both set to work on their tasks as the sun began its ascent into the sky from behind the Caucasus Mountains.

The boy, despite his youth, worked expertly with the tanned hide, to cut, stretch and mould it over the wooden saddle tree.

Setenaya wove her fabric with deft hands, until she had enough to cut out the pieces for her dress, experience negating the need for her to measure.

With the sun almost at its zenith, Setenaya sat by the door of her house and began to sew. She held the fabric firm in her thumb and forefinger as her needle moved in and out of the cloth in tiny, neat, uniform stiches, the like of which no other could sew. Head down, she sewed and listened to the gentle hammering of the boy’s leatherwork as he tapped it into shape across the saddle tree.

The sun moved across the sky as they both worked on their creations. It watched as the boy wiped the sweat from his forehead and Setenaya unravelled her scarf, which had once kept away the morning’s chill.

As the sun began its descending arc, the boy started to etch carvings into the leather of the saddle and Setenaya began to hem her metres of fabric.

The boy finished as the sun was almost touching the horizon, and when Setenaya could no longer hear the music of his work, she looked up. She saw him, feet up and watching the sun as it threatened to turn the sky pink and orange.

Setenaya looked across to the sun and called to it, ‘If only you would pause a moment.’

The sun looked up from the horizon and saw Setenaya’s sewing. The light caught the delicate fabric of the dress and the perfect stitches, which were not yet quite finished. It looked across at the delightful saddle, polished and shining in the last of its rays, and it did indeed pause for a moment. It waited and watched as Setenaya sewed, watching each stitch as it was completed until finally Setenaya’s saya was complete. She held it up for the boy to see and then pulled it over her head.

‘See,’ she said, ‘it took me but a day.’

The boy did not argue, for the sun was indeed still above the horizon.

‘You are every bit as magnificent as they say,’ replied the boy, smiling at Setenaya.

It is said that from that day on the sun stops on the horizon every day. Perhaps it is to look upon the day’s creations, as it once did on Setenaya’s.

SUN SALUTATION

In this month’s chapter we have (very briefly) explored the science, rhythms and seasons of the sun. We still have many rituals that connect us to the start of the day and the return of the sun. This could be as simple as breakfast, the meal that breaks our nightly fast. A fabulous way to connect daily with the sun is a sequence of yoga poses known as a sun salutation.

Yoga comes from the Sanskrit word yuj, which is a root word that means to connect or unite something. The traditions held within yoga were passed down through the generations orally. They were first recorded in the third century in the Rigveda, a Sanskrit script containing hymns, which is one of four volumes known as the Vedas.

In the Hindu faith Lord Shiva, one of the primary gods in the pantheon and one of a trinity with Brahma and Vishnu, was the first to teach the practice of yoga.

Several centuries later, in the mid-nineteenth century, yoga arrived in the west with Swami Vivekananda, a progressive Hindu monk from India who was also an author and philosopher.

Sūryanamaskāra