The following excerpted from Tequila and Chocolate, The Adventures of the Morning Star and Soulmate: A Memoir.
“The herald of the light is the morning star. This way man and woman approach the dawn of knowledge, because in it is the germ of life, being a blessing of the eternal.” –Haji Ibrahim of Kerbala
Usually the accepted consensus is that indigenous cultures of the past worshiped the sun and moon as the primary deities. But that was not the case. Worship of the lord of light, sometimes known as the “Sun behind the sun” predates the worship of the sun and moon. With no doubt, the returning heroes were known as the “lightbringers.” These lords of light were also lords of wind such as Viracocha and Quetzalcóatl.
And then we have the Irish legend that tells us the sacred site of Newgrange was built by the tuatha de danann, “the lords of light,” six thousand years ago. Newgrange’s entrance is aligned with the rising sun on the winter solstice. At dawn, from December 19 to December 23, a narrow beam of light penetrates an opening known as the roof-box and reaches the floor of the chamber, gradually extending to the rear.
The most important of all things to life is light:
This the primitive savage felt, and, personifying it, he made Light his chief god. The beginning of the day served, by analogy, for the beginning of the world. Light comes before the sun, brings it forth, creates it, as it were. Hence the Light-God is not the Sun-God, but his Antecedent and Creator.
The light appears in the East, and thus defines that cardinal point, and by it the others are located. These points, as indispensable guides to the wandering hordes, became, from earliest times, personified as important deities, and were identified with the winds that blew from them, as wind and rain gods. This explains the four brothers, who were nothing else than the four cardinal points, and their mother, who dies in producing them, is the eastern light, which is soon lost in the growing day. The East, as their leader, was also the supposed ruler of the winds, and thus god of the air and rain.
As more immediately connected with the advent and departure of light, the East and West are twins, the one of which sends forth the glorious day-orb, which the other lies in wait to conquer. Yet the light-god is not slain. The sun shall rise again in undiminished glory, and he lives, though absent.
By sight and light, we see and learn. Nothing, therefore, is more natural than to attribute to the light-god the early progress in the arts of domestic and social life. Thus, light came to be personified as the embodiment of culture and knowledge, of wisdom, and of the peace and prosperity which are necessary for the growth of learning.[i]
The spiritual importance of light is one of the reasons why, when conducting the bathing ritual of the Northwest Coast First People, bathing is done not at sunrise but at first light, just as Venus, the morning star, brings the light out of the darkness. As we can see in the following:
“I, Jesus, sent my angel to give you this testimony for the churches. I am the root and offspring of David, the bright morning star.” Revelation 22:16[ii] (Please note that the “root” of David is divine nature and the “offspring” of David is human nature).
As well as this:
It is told that sitting meditation in the predawn hours of the morning the Buddha looked up and saw the morning star, a sight that occasioned his enlightenment. With the sun crawling up from the eastern mountains, he called out into the dawn, crying, “I am awakened together with the whole of the great earth and all its beings.”[iii]
It is important to note that too often we forget that without the dark, there would be no light. Our lives are usually organized into a separation between the symbolic light and symbolic dark with the light held up as our ultimate goal in spiritual/religious life. The true secret that most never realize is that light and dark are equal components that interpenetrate as one reality. True spiritual/religious teachings are then based on the acknowledgement of the interpenetrative aspect of dark and light within us and then the growth of our light or the divine aspect of our soul from the creative darkness of our humanity.[iv]
[i] Daniel G. Brinton, M.D., American Hero-Myths (Start Classics, 2013) 29 – 30.
[ii] Considering my soul vendetta against Christianity and my knowledge that it is based on the greatest lie ever told, it may seem strange that I would quote from a Catholic website, but considering the strange times we are living in, perhaps it’s not. This following is quoted from Stephen Beale, “Why Jesus is the Bright Morning Star,” Catholic Exchange, October 10, 2016 (https://catholicexchange.com/jesus-bright-morning-star):
“Before the sunrise: The morning star, which is actually the planet Venus, derives its name from the fact that it appears before sunrise. Its appearance, therefore, heralds the coming of a new day while it is still dark.
“Constant light: Stars twinkle; planets, especially Venus, don’t. The light of Christ never wavers, never fails.
“Morning and evening: Venus is not only a ‘morning star’ but also an ‘evening star.’ This makes it all the more fitting as a name for Christ, who is called the alpha and the omega and the beginning and the end in Revelation.
“The Shepherd’s Star: The fact that Venus appears in both the evening and morning has also lent it its own nickname. Certainly, while Venus may not have had that name in the first century, a shepherd keeping watch over the flocks by night indeed might have been among the few in ancient Israel—other than insomniacs and military guards—to always glimpse this star in both its evening and morning appearances.”
[iii] “All who follow the Buddha Way have read of that moment, seeing in the Buddha’s pronouncement whatever registers in their own hearts. But for me, his spontaneous outcry on sight of the morning star was the first and perhaps most penetrating revelation of the deep ecology that permeates Buddhist life, for the Buddha’s enlightenment was itself a realization that he, the star, and the whole of the earth were manifestations of one being. He saw that the surface of his skin was not the termination of self and that the ‘I’ for which he could no longer discern beginning or ending was as wide as the universe and as long as forever. The eye with which he looked upon the morning star was the one great organ of sight that awakens all our dawns.” [Lin Jensen, Deep Down Things: The Earth in Celebration and Dismay (Wisdom Publications, 2010), via Tricycle, December 8, 2010, https://tricycle.org/trikedaily/sighting-morning-star/.]
[iv] This is not the Jungian concept of the shadow but the actual and physical reality of dualistic concepts, such as light and dark, or spirit and matter, which interpenetrate. The dualistic separation of light and dark is the illusion, as our individual sense of reality (of separateness or duality) is an extension of the illusion of our basic core sense perceptions. Our eyes perceive separation between us and all things viewed. This constant reinforcement tricks us into thinking and believing that we are separate and an island unto ourselves. Similarly, our personal symbolic light and dark are not separate, but interpenetrate to define our wholeness as individuals. Additionally, the two sides of our inner darkness also interpenetrate. There is no separate shadow, just a darkness that is both creative and destructive at the same time.
This concept of the dark within us is known as “the beast within.” According to the Coptic Gospel of Thomas, Jesus said, “Blessed is the lion which the man eats, and the lion will become man, and cursed is the man whom the lion eats, and the lion will become man.” The Beast Within is explained fully in my book Do You Like Jesus –Not the Church?