Super Glossary

Solar Myth

Entertainment / Literature / Solar Myth: Alvin Boyd Kuhn and Max M????ller were philologists who attempted to explain the origin of a number of myths and religious practices by linking them to the animistic worship of various celestial phenomena including meteorological events (weather gods), sky gods (e.g. Ouranos), and astronomical bodies (stars, planets, moon, and most especially the sun). The name 'Solar Deity' refers to such a god generally, and 'Solar Myth' is thus the term most often linked with this school of thought. Scholars in the 'Solar Myth' school tend to trace multiple deities or heroes (even in a single narrative) back to primitive sun worship and identify analogues in various legends of sun gods. Some medievalists like Roger S. Loomis have gone so far as to trace various Arthurian characters back to Celtic Solar Deities. The theory fell into disfavor in late twentieth-century scholarship partly because of its reductive 'one-size-fits-all' approach to mythology, and partly because some of the claims of Kuhn and M????ller have been demonstrably proven false. For instance, while Solar Myth theorists first argued that various tribal deities and heros in Homer and in Hindu mythology were later incarnations of early sun deities, later archeological or philological evidence showed some of these local gods were real historical figures who were later elevated to godhood in the belief of future generations. An example of this was Alfred Lyall's demonstration that the names of certain Rajasthan deities could be linked to historical Rajput clan leaders who lived only a century or two before their 'apotheosis' into mythology.
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