Indo-European Spirituality

 

Indo-European Spirituality is and was about tribal belonging and paternal lineage in the context of a solar-pantheon which formed a relationship between Man and Nature through divine Powers (Gods) and heroic stories.


The German scholar Max Müller once wrote:

If asked what I consider the most important discovery made during the 19th century, with respect to the ancient history of mankind, I should answer by the following short line:


Sanskrit; Dyaus Pitr = Greek; Zeus Pater = Latin; Jupiter = Old Norse; Tyr. 

Think what this equation pimples! It implies not only that our own [Germanic] ancestors and the ancestors of Homer and Cicero (the Greeks and Romans) spoke the same language as the people of India -- this is a discovery, which however incredible it sounded at first, has long ceased to cause any surprise -- but it implies and proves that they all had once the same faith, and worshiped for a time the same supreme Deity under exactly the same name -- a name which meant Heavenly Father. 

Source: Max Muller. The Nineteenth Century: A Monthly Review. London. Volume 18, Issue 104. October 1885. Pages 626-650.

Based on my research Tyr was not likely considered a sky-god (heavenly father), but the idea being conveyed by Muller is still basically accurate: that all these peoples mentioned share a common ethnolinguistic and religious common ancestor. I discussed the linguistic evidence for this in my blog post on the Proto-Indo-Europeans. There is also evidence of this common ancestry through the study of comparative mythology. As covered in the article Who Were the Indo-Europeans and Why Does It Matter? by Daniel McCoy:

Speaking of the divine hierarchy, Proto-Indo-European society was divided into three distinct classes or “functions”: the first function, that of the priests and rulers; the second function, that of the warriors; and the third function, that of the farmers, herders, craftsmen, etc – the “common people.”[3] While this threefold division of society may, in and of itself, be found in societies outside of the Indo-European world, “it is the treatment of this structure as a special class of concepts requiring and receiving almost endless elaboration in all spheres of cultural ideology and behaviour that makes it truly unique to the Indo-Europeans.”[4]

So a basic outline in broad terms of this tripart function describing the structure of a functional Indo-European society, looked something like this as an example using Norse mythology:

Kingly/Ruler Function:
Odin (wisdom) -- Tyr (Law)

Warrior Function:
Thor (warriors)

Wealth & Love Function:
Frey (wealth/productivity) -- Freya (Love/growth)

Daniel McCy, in his article, explains how this this basic structure is carried out today in most Western countries in various ways and modifications.

I found this below online by a Ambika Vijay at quora.com on How similar were ancient European pagan religions to early Hinduism, given that they both had a linguistic and cultural heritage going back to the original Proto-Indo-European speakers? I decided to paste it here below because many websites go offline and content is lost:

European Pagan religions and early Vedic Hinduism were offshoots of Proto-Indo-European mythology.

So they are all very similar.

Rigveda the oldest Vedic scripture is dedicated to singing hymns for the Indo-European gods.

I am listing some here :

Divine Father :

Vedic: Dyaus Pitr, Greek: Zeus pater , Illyrian : Dei-pátrous, Roman : Jupiter (Djous patēr), Scythian :Papaios for Zeus, Palaic: Tiyas papaz

 

Photo courtesy: Google images

Divine Twins : They also worshipped divine twins symbolized by horses

Vedic : Divó nápātā (the Asvins)

Lithuanian: Dievo sūneliai (the Asveiniai)

Latvian : the Dieva dēli,

Greek : the Diós-kouroi (Castor and Pollux)

Celtic : the Dioskouroi

The Vedic Asvins and Lithuanian Asveiniai, even share the names.

Asva in both Sanskrit and Lithuanian mean horse.

Thunder god : Thunder god is the most significant god in these cultures, Rigveda dedicates 1/3rd of the hymns to him.

Indra/Parjanya (Vedic), Indra (Avestan), Thor (Germanic ) Tarḫunna( Hittite), Taranis( Celtic), Perun( Slavic), Perkunas ( Baltic )

The Thunder god vs Serpent myth can be found in all these cultures.

Photo courtesy: Google

 ... Sun god :

Vedic - Surya , Roman - Sol , Norse - Sol, Lithuanian- Saule are derived from the Proto Indo European Seh2ul- / *Sh2-en-

Goddess of Dawn : The name of Vedic Goddess of dawn Usas is a cognate with Eos and Eostre

Eostre later became Easter - the Easter festival was originally a pagan festival.

Uṣas (Vedic), Eos (Greek), Aurora (Roman), Aushrine (Baltic), Auseklis (Latvian)

Photo Credit : Google

God of Sky :
Varuṇa (Vedic),Ouranous/ Uranus (Greek), Odinn/Wodan (Germanic).

 

God of meeting, marriages, journeys, roads, and the feeding of cattle :
Pūṣan (Vedic), Pan (Greek), Faun(Roman ) Vanir (Germanic).

 

Goddess of River :
Danu (Vedic), Danu (Irish).
River Danube is named after her.
In Vedic mythology she is the mother of the serpent Vritra (who was slayed by Indra)

...

... Rituals and Preisthood :

Celtic Druid - are often equated with Vedic Brahmins.

The Druids are a class of high ranking priests in ancient Celtic culture. They practiced and trained for nearly twenty years and since most of their teachings are Oral, they didn’t survive.

... The Celtic high ceremony officiated by Druids closely resembles the Vedic yagnas officiated by Brahmins. ... Almost all Indo European ceremonies and rituals involve a “fire altar”

In response to the above, a Devala Rees responds: 

In my opinion as a Hindu, ancient European pagan religions were very similar. Almost everything about them is quite familiar to me. Their most visible defining feature to outsiders being offerings and sacrifices made to many Gods and Goddesses? Check; that’s just like Vedic religion. The Gods and other great spirits of ancient Europe sound very much like the Gods and other great spirits of ancient (and modern) India; different names and individual characteristics, but the same sorts of beings, right down to the initiatory, communal, intensely devotional systematic mystery cults centered around specific Gods who could provide a mystical awakening, worshiping them with incense and offerings to anthropomorphic statues and clockwise circumambulation around the temple. Some of the best preserved philosophical schools of ancient European paganism (Stoicism, Platonism, etc.) even include the view that a single Transcendent Deity manifests as all of these Gods and Goddesses. ...

... In summary, my impression as a Hindu is that the vast majority of what I read on ancient European pagan religions sounds very familiar to me from my own religious practices and worldview.

Indo-European Christianity?

Doing this research, I couldn't help but notice that all three Indo-European functions above are missing in Pauline "New Testament Christianity." In the earliest Pauline assemblies, Paul sought to remove leadership with a "pentecostal-like" speaking in tongues and prophesying dynamic where everyone was believed to be equally literally possessed by the leader-Christ (see 1 Corinthians 11:3–16: Spirit Possession and Authority in a Non-Pauline Interpolation by Christopher Mount). There was obvious no warrior class, as the ideal was pacifism and obviously no Frey or Freya function, as the Pauline ideal was celibacy and martyrdom given the imminent end-times expectation. Pauline "New Testament Christianity" would have thus died out like the Shakers of the 1700-1800s who modeled themselves after the New Testament and have nearly died out today. So what happened was Christianity was remodeled in the image of the Indo-European functional spiritual model. For a scholarly book on how this happened, see:
The Germanization of Early Medieval Christianity: A Sociohistorical Approach to Religious Transformation by James C. Russell.


Also see these articles available free online:

• Indo-European Christianity by Alice B. Kehoe

• The Trinity and the Indo-European Tripartite Worldview by Andrew P. Porter

What this means is that most versions of Christianity today have been Germanized and made into the image of the Indo-Europeans. Therefore, those who argue that "New Testament Christianity" itself changed Western civilization are not correct when one looks at the whole historical picture. For Christianity went through stages of development, and the final product ends up looking more Indo-European than first century Pauline. So that while some ideas in the New Testament can be said to have strongly moved modern culture in a certain direction, the overall version of Christianity today is a more Indo-European version of Christianity. This is why I support the spread of Modern Christianity because it is basically, today, an Indo-European/Pauline hybrid religion and most Christians ignore the original Pauline aspects: like the ideal of celibacy, pacifism, and voluntary martyrdom; when originally Pauline members of a congregation were speaking in tongues and prophesying while claiming to be possessed by the spirit of a messiah, etc. Today's Christianities are highly systematized functional and rational formations that mostly align with modern political models and modern science and the Indo-European spiritual model.

Nietzsche's Northwind "Solar Spirituality" & Free Spirited Creatorhood Mentality

This blog is an extension of my other google site Nietzscheanish-Americanism. The main project of Nietzsche I think was to replace the Pauline sainthood values with the heroic virtues of the Norse and Greeks so that one does not throw away the hero in one's soul. A recurrent metaphor he uses to convey this greater overall aim is that he and his teachings are a North wind. He expresses this in Thus Spoke Zarathustra, in the section on the Happy Isles. He emphasizes this section again in Preface to Ecce Homo, Section 4, by writing:

Among my writings my Zarathustra stands to my mind by itself. With that I have given mankind the greatest present that has ever been made to it so far. This book, with a voice bridging centuries, is not only the highest book there is, the book that is truly characterized by the air of the heights—the whole fact of man lies beneath it at a tremendous distance—it is also the deepest, born out of the innermost wealth of truth, an inexhaustible well to which no pail descends without coming up again filled with gold and goodness. Here no "prophet" is speaking, none of those gruesome hybrids of sickness and will to power whom people call founders of religions. Above all, one must hear aright the tone that comes from this mouth, the halcyon tone, lest one should do wretched injustice to the meaning of its wisdom.

"It is the stillest words that bring on the storm. Thoughts that come on doves' feet guide the world." [Thus Spoke Zarathustra, II, 44.]

 

The figs are falling from the trees; they are good and sweet; and, as they fall, their red skin bursts. I am a north wind to ripe figs. Thus, like figs, these teachings fall to you, my friends: now consume their juice and their sweet meat. It is fall around us, and pure sky and afternoon. [Thus Spoke Zarathustra, II, 24.]

It is no fanatic that speaks here; this is not "preaching"; no faith is demanded here: from an infinite abundance of light and depth of happiness falls drop upon drop, word upon word: the tempo of these speeches is a tender adagio. Such things reach only the most select. It is a privilege without equal to be a listener here.


Is not Zarathustra in view of all this a seducer?— But what does he himself say, as he returns again for the first time to his solitude? Precisely the opposite of everything that any "sage," "saint," "world-redeemer," or any other decadent would say in such a case.— Not only does he speak differently, he also is different.—
Now I go alone, my disciples. You, too, go now, alone.
Thus I want it.
Go away from me and resist Zarathustra! And even better: be ashamed of him! Perhaps he deceived you.
The man of knowledge must not only love his enemies, he must also be able to hate his friends.
One repays a teacher badly if one always remains nothing but a pupil. And why do you not want to pluck at my wreath?
You revere me; but what if your reverence tumbles one day? Beware lest a statue slay you.
You say that you believe in Zarathustra? But what matters Zarathustra? You are my believers—but what matter all believers?
You had not yet sought yourselves; and you found me. Thus do all believers; therefore all faith amounts to so little.
Now I bid you lose me and find yourselves; and only when you have all denied me will I return to you.
[Thus Spoke Zarathustra, I, 22.]

Friedrich Nietzsche

On this perfect day, when everything is ripening and not only the grape turns brown, the eye of the sun just fell upon my life: I looked back, I looked forward, and never saw so many and such good things at once. It was not for nothing that I buried my forty-fourth year today; I had the right to bury it; whatever was life in it has been saved, is immortal. The first book of the Revaluation of All Values, the Songs of Zarathustra, the Twilight of the Idols, my attempt to philosophize with a hammer—all presents of this year, indeed of its last quarter! How could I fail to be grateful to my whole life?—and so I tell my life to myself.

I interpret this as Nietzsche is a North wind that brings on a storm cloud of change, like lightning that ignites the soul to grow toward a more heroic ideal. Nietzsche goes on to express his feeling elated that he has replaced the Pauline sainthood virtues and values and Paul's more south wind. He basically explains that the wind of Paul is an emasculating psychical energy within a cult of personality, by seeking to turn men into celibate male-brides of a male messiah by repressing their masculine instincts. Nietzsche's Zarathustra character is not a guru or a cult leader, but an inspiration. Zarathustra does not demand cultish devotion, he only teaches and exemplifies in literary form a Yes to life attitude and instead of despising the body, he proclaims the goodness of biological life in the body on earth.

Another way to think of this concept of the Northwind, is that Nietzsche is in part revitalizing the cultural ancestral energy of the Proto-Indo-Europeans, who came from the North with their domestication of the horse as horseback warriors and God personified as the Sun with a pantheon of gods representing the biological instincts; which then mythologically morphed into multiple pantheons from the Norse Gods to the Hindu Gods (representing one common ancestral genos of spiritual wind and vitality). Note that the original Hebrew pantheon had the same or similar pro-instinctual energy and vitality, which is why Nietzsche praised the Hebrew Bible (Old Testament).

 

Standing on the Pier of an Open Sea of Creative Possibilities with a Worldview Attitude of casting a Canopy of Joy and Laughter over the Luminous Sky 

(Image Source)

In Friedrich Nietzsche's philosophical work, Thus Spoke Zarathustra, his central character Zarathustra says, "over cloud and day and night, did I spread out laughter like a colored canopy." I really like this quote as it signifies Nietzsche's ideal of a joyful and expansive attitude rather than a sky cast canopy of morose sainthood. Such imagery represents for me a powerful, uninhibited, expression of life

As Nietzsche puts it in several  places of his work, once the dust has settled from the deconstruction of the theocratic-God belief, there emerges a new realm of possibility. The shore is open before is, like standing at a pier before an Open Sea. For me, going beyond sainthood is opening up to new ideas and ways of living, forming genuine friendships that aren't ready to fall apart the minute you express doubts in a creed or articles of faith. It's about forming real friendships that stand the test of time. Where there is joy and laughter rather than fake piety. A new life, unshackled, unburdened, and free from the stifling and fake path of sainthood as basically puritanical perfectionism; it is about going beyond man-made rules and false restraints and instead forming one's own ethical code; and affirming biological life and being your real self, your actual true personality, by taking off the Mormon mask and stepping out of the confining cage of dogma and becoming a "free spirit."

I often reference Nietzsche because despite my disagreeing with and rejecting much of his ideas, I resonate with his main aim of balancing skepticism and mystical artistry. Ayn Rand called him a mystic as if to condemn him. But this is the part of Nietzsche's philosophy that most appeals to me. I believe that the key to appreciating Nietzsche and taking from him what is useful and discarding what is problematic, is understanding that the core of his philosophy is an attempt to overcome depressive passive-nihilism and embrace reality as it is in a spirit of optimistic joy and laughter and personal meaning-making creativity. For more details, I highly recommend the book Joy and Laughter in Nietzsche’s Philosophy: Alternative Liberatory Politics, Edited by Paul E. Kirkland.

 This emphasis on saying yes to this world of the flesh and chaos, and within such yin-yang dynamics of becoming, experiencing more joy and laughter, is at the heart of his life philosophy. For example, here is an excerpt from Quotes & Commentary #28: Nietzsche by Roy Lotz: 

 I would believe only in a god who could dance. — Friedrich Nietzsche, Thus Spake Zarathustra.

 

This is one of Nietzsche’s most famous quotes. Like a catchy tune, it sticks effortlessly in the memory after one hearing. Perhaps this is only because it conjures up such a silly image. I imagine the God of Michelangelo’s Sistine Chapel, bearded and robed, skipping and dancing from cloud to cloud, filling heaven with capricious laughter.

But why is this image so silly? Why was Michelangelo, along with so many others, inclined to picture God as solemn, grave, and frowning? Why is a dancing deity such a paradox?

A true god would have no need to be serious and severe; those values are for stern parents, Sunday-school preachers, and ruler-snapping teachers. I know this from my own teaching experience: Putting on a strict, frowning, joyless countenance is a desperate measure. Teachers do it in order to reduce their yapping, fidgeting, giggling, scatterbrained kids into hushed, intimidated, obedient students. But would a god need to resort to such scare-tactics?

 

This observation is part of Nietzsche’s aim, to resuscitate the Dionysian in European life. By Dionysian, Nietzsche meant the joys of passion, disorder, chaos, and of creative destruction. The Dionysian man identifies with the stormy waves smashing the shore, with the lion tearing into its prey. He is intoxicated by earthly life; every sensation is a joy, every step is a frolic.

This is quite obviously in stark contrast with the Platonic ideal of a philosopher: always calm and composed, scorning the pleasures of the body, worshiping logical order and truth. A true Platonist would never dance. Christianity largely adopted this Platonic idea, which found ultimate expression in the monastic life—a life of routine, celibacy, constant prayer, scant diet, and self-mortification—a life that rejects earthly joys.

Nietzsche’s "joyful science" can thus act as a counteractive remedy for soul crushing Pauline-Augustinian piety and perfectionism; a kind of cure for those to whom seeking Pauline sainthood is all too often a life denying, self hating, self-flagellating exercise in self-shaming, crazy making self-delusion. So that one can grow into their true self beyond dogma and instead embrace reality as it is and one's natural manhood or womanhood with joyful exuberance! 

Consider the philosophical energy of these quotes from Nietzsche on joy, dance and laughter, from his "holy book," Thus Spoke Zarathustra:

This crown to crown the laughing man, this rose-wreath crown: I myself have set this crown upon my head, I myself have pronounced my laughter holy.

....

I would only believe in a god who could dance. And when I saw my devil I found him serious, thorough, profound, and solemn: it was the spirit of gravity—through him all things fall. Not by wrath does one kill but by laughter. Come, let us kill the spirit of gravity!

.....

And let that day be lost to us on which we did not dance once! And let that wisdom be false to us that brought no laughter with it!

(Source) 

If only Bible scripture and theology expressed such post-priestly, life-affirming energy and vitality!

I am also moved when I read or listen to Nietzsche's Prologue in Thus Spoke Zarathustra, where the sage philosopher character Zarathustra talks of the Sun in this way:

 ... —and rising one morning with the rosy dawn, he went before the sun, and spake thus unto it: Thou great star! What would be thy happiness if thou had not those for whom thou shinest!

For ten years hast thou climbed hither unto my cave: thou would have wearied of thy light and of the journey, had it not been for me, mine eagle, and my serpent.

But we awaited thee every morning, took from thee thine overflow, and blessed thee for it.

Nietzsche then ended his Zarathustra book with Zarathustra leaving "his cave, glowing and strong, like a morning sun coming out of gloomy mountains."

After such poetic empowerment and reverence for Nature, through solar imagery, I can't help but recall these words when I am outdoors: so that many times I will immediately sense the presence of the Sun in the sky and pause to feel the Sun on my skin and it's light rays and it's warmth, thus absorbing it's abundant overflow; feeling a kind of "spiritual" illumination and naturalistic fulness in those moments. Reminding me to also overflow with shining abundance onto others as a source of empowering brightness rather than depleting gloominess. This daily communing with the rays of the Sun also makes me feel more grounded and connected to the earth, to life, and our Universe. 

A daily awareness of our Sun's light, combined with Nietzsche's use of the North wind metaphor, forms an empowering "solar spirituality." When this is combined with Nietzsche referring to the metaphorical "kingdom of God" as a subjective state within, then this provides a naturalistic "spirituality" that seeks to illuminate and affirm this world. 

I am also led to ponder how this universal experience of the Sun was likely the original God of most people. I know it was likely the personification of God by my Proto-Indo-European ancestors. For there was likely an original Indo-European Sky God. So too, a study of biblical scholarship will reveal that the Old Testament was also influenced by the natural Sun. Moses for example experiences his god in terms which signifies he is experiencing his deity as a personification of the Sun, so that his face glows. The New Testament is obviously influenced by the natural Sun with his repeated metaphors of light and darkness, etc. So this leads me to conclude that all world religions as mythologies are personifications of natural phenomena we all experience everyday in the natural world. Even one of the key practices of the Buddhists, mindfulness meditation is ultimately a focus on one's in and out breath and a focus on the present moment by focusing on feeling the full sensation of each breath while only monitoring one's stream of thoughts and then returning to one's breath; which is a natural exercise that one can practice naturally without becoming a Buddhist. Flow states also produce similar calming and centering physiological responses. 

When one walks in nature or goes for a hike like Nietzche often did, these naturalistic "spiritual" practices can be combined into one: through an awareness of the Sun's light and warmth and a present moment awareness of one's in and out breath; while fully emersing one's senses in the sights, sounds, and smells of the nature around them. Thus "spiritually" communing with the natural flowing energies and cycles of nature, of which we are one with as a living human organism. 

When I now experience the Sun on my skin and the Sun's daily light rays, it makes me feel a constant connection to life. I feel a kinship with my ancestors who personified the Sun as either God or the Sun for them was a creation by a God. Thus, solar awareness connects me to my ancestors as well, as they too experienced the same Sun and revered its overflow in their religious mythology. This grounds me psychologically in a universal "spirituality" based in our universally shared common reality.

 When I think of the Gods of the Norse and Hindus, I see a common ancestry of grandfathers and grandmothers who were kings and queens and heroic individuals, whose cultural memory were then in my opinion mythologized into solar gods in pantheons; as their heroic feats and noble royalty were exaggerated as gods later on. For example, I think Baldr might be an example of this. The following image is from the magazine The Vikings: Lords of Sea and Sword by National Geographic (Special Issue 2024):

Click on image to enlarge

 So when I read the mythological stories of the Norse Gods I sense that I am connecting with the cultural memory of my Scandinavian ancestors. To clarify, this does not mean I think Baldr or Thor, as they are depicted in the Norse mythos, were in every detail based on a real Scandinavian ancestor of mine. I think instead that multiple men with Baldr-like or Thor-like attributes and heroic feats produced a cultural memory which was then mythologized into the god character Thor and Baldr, etc. 

When we see say Thursday in English by the way, that means Thor-day. Tuesday is Tyr-day. Wednesday is basically Odin-day and Friday is Frigg-day. These are all Norse Gods. This is just one example, of how much Norse culture is found in America. Thus, many days of the week are a reminder of my Norse ancestors.  Meanwhile, Sunday was literally named after the Sun, a weekly reminder of a "solar spirituality."

This means that I no longer feel the need to abandon my ethnic roots and ignore the memory of my ancestors by following only someone else's religion based on its own ethnolinguistic cultural lineage (which influenced the mythological formation of its gods and heroes). So that I'd rather appreciate my own ancestor's Norse mythology, as well as other mythologies, rather than only treating one mythos (the Bible) as the only source of inspiration or as the only true "scripture." Thus, it makes no sense to me now to only look to the Bible's mythology as a text worthy of study or as a source of inspiration. I now instead see all mythologies as potentially inspiring now, not just the particular genealogy of the Israelites and their ethnolinguistical-mythos, but also the Norse, Greeks and Hindus, etc. 

So as I began to unravel all of this information on my ancestors, I began to realize that I had my own rich genetic and cultural lineage going back to the Proto-Indo-Europeans. I could thus know God through the same path as my ancestors, through the Sun and wind, and the real cycles and energies of nature personified as gods mythologically. Joseph Campbell explained this to Bill Moyer's when he said:

JOSEPH CAMPBELL:  ... Yeah, I don’t have to have faith, I have experience. ... I [have the] experience of the wonder, of the life, I have [the] experience of love, I have experience of hatred, malice — I’d like to punch the guy’s jaw, and I admit this. But those are different divinities, I mean, from the point of view of a symbolic imaging. Those are different images operating in me.

For instance, when I was a little boy and was being brought up a Roman Catholic, I was told I had a guardian angel on my right side and a tempting devil on my left, and when it came to making a decision of what I would do, the decision would depend on which one had most influence on me. And I must say that in my boyhood, and I think also in the people who were teaching me, they actually concretized those thoughts.

... It was an angel [literally]. That angel is a fact and the devil is a fact, do you see; otherwise, one thinks of them as metaphors for the energies that are afflicting and guiding you. ... [those energies come] from your own life. The energy of your own body, the different organs in your body, including your head, are the conflict systems. ... From the ultimate energy that’s the life of the universe. And then you say, well, somebody has to generate that. Why do you have to say that? Why can’t it be impersonal? That would be Brahman, that would be the transcendent mystery, that you can also personify.

BILL MOYERS: Can men and women live with an impersonality?

JOSEPH CAMPBELL: Yes, they do all over the place. Just go east of Suez. In the East, the gods are much more elemental.

BILL MOYERS: Elemental?

JOSEPH CAMPBELL: Elemental, less human and more like the powers of nature. I see a deity as representing an energy system, and part of the energy system is the human energy systems of love and malice, hate, benevolence, compassion. And in Oriental thinking, the god is the vehicle of the energy, not its source.

Rather than literal angels and devils, I see such ideas as instead personifications of our emotions and instincts and patterns of behavior. So that there are gods of anger and selfishness or God's of self-control and kindness, which are energies within the body: that are only personified as angels and devils not as literal entities. The mythologies of the world are thus about the inner conflicts and drives within your body and the drives and inner conflicts in other's bodies in a dynamic tangle of forces and the survival and replication of the species. 

What I like about this natural spirituality is you have the constant reminder of the Sun above your head, emanating rays of light and warmth upon your skin as an ever touch-felt presence: that is a real and universal "truth" that all of us experience as one, regarless of Creed, nationality, or ethnicity.

Solar awareness becomes for me a constant reminder of your own inner energy and abundance and capacity to be a shining light of positivity and joy or a dark cloud of gloom. When I walk in nature and I am surrounded by trees and vines, acorns and butterflies, this grounds me in the cycles of nature of which I too am a part of. Allowing me to just experience nature without a need to form mental models of reality that conflicts with reality. So that instead I can meld my psyche within the changing fabric of reality and just feel my bodily sensations within my natural surroundings; so that I am experiencing reality rather than only thinking about it mentally. In other words, I don't need to always mentally project onto the flowing impermanence of changing cycles of nature any solid abstractions and man-made platonic forms in scriptural language. Instead, as Bruce Lee put it, I can become like water, and merge with and flow with nature. I can bask in the natural light of the Sun and feel all the organic growth of life all around me as a reminder of the living truth of the one evolutionary living body of nature as a real scripture and holy temple unto me. 

For me personally, I find great value in Nietzsche's philosophy because his words lead me to these realizations and insights. Instead of only a rational or organizing logos forming mental models, Nietzsche's logos or North wind is more like the logos according to Hereclitis: the logos of becoming like unto a dice throw, tossing actions into a world of chance as experimentations and then adapting creatively. 

Rather than a final Platonist Form in a closed theology or canonized scripture or creed, the "Nietzschean" way or logos is a wild wisdom, or as he puts it: "Like the sail trembling with the violence of the spirit, my wisdom crosses the sea – my wild wisdom!" (Source). This wild North wind logos is an energy of joyful and playful becoming: a rolling wheel of dice tossess, adaptations and creation. Rather than a final product into an ideal Platonist Form or piously perfectionist behaviorial expectations, the dionysian logos is that of evolutionary becoming: like turning yourself into ashes in the process of re-creating yourself after awakening. Nietzsche uses the metaphor of a golden ball, he tosses to his reader to carry on his goal of carrying on this revitalizing this North wind and "solar spirituality" toward one's own life-affirming heroic self-creation. 

From Post-Sainthood to Pro-Creatorhood: Creating my own Character and Persona beyond Sainthood

Part of growing beyond Pauline sainthood is becoming pro-creatorhood: a term I came up with to describe creating your own worldview, ethical code, and lifestyle while giving style to your character and becoming your real authentic self; by first taking off the biblical dogma-googles and religious personae and performative pious masks; and instead beginning to see the world through your own eyes for the first time as your true authentic self.

A key component of creatorhood is bringing forth your truest most authentic self and identity by moving away from trying to mold yourself into the mirror image of the Pauline Augustinian personality or persona; and instead becoming an existentialist artist in the realm of self-creation and becoming your true self.

I'm influenced heavily by Nietzsche in this regard and his emphasis on giving style to your character and becoming who you are (not who they want to mold you into in their pious dogmatic image). You cannot become who you truly are if you're constantly molding yourself into someone else's created persona, an often pretend pious persona, made in the image of Paul, Augustine, or Luther, etc. You're true authentic personality is not going to fully come through if you are conforming to someone else's personality and molding yourself into a fake persona based on an indoctrinated, conformist, fake pious performance.

So the opposite of post-sainthood is for me pro-creatorhood: the creation of your real authentic self, becoming the creative artist of your own life and story. Choosing to live a life of joy and creativity rather than a life of pious conformity, stuck in a trap of religious fear and blind obedience to maintain a pretend identity. In my own case, I can psychoanalyze myself today and see a clear and distinguishable difference between my pre-19 year old self and my post-19 year old self. In other words, before turning 18 -- and becoming more active in the Brighamite/LDS Church (when contemplating going on an LDS mission) -- my authentic personality was able to come forth more, prior to age 19. For I had developed, between the age of 12 and 18, secular friendships and a secular identity apart from the LDS Church by living in more secular California (where most people are not LDS). So despite going to Church regularly as a child and being heavily indoctrinated, after about age 12 I broke away from the indoctrination and stopped attending the LDS Church sacrament meetings on Sundays.

When I turned 14, and until I was 17, I avoided the shame culture of LDS Church meetings on Sundays and only went to LDS dances, while also going to secular venues and clubs occasionally, etc. In Mormon language I was pretty much "inactive / less active" during this time (ages 14-17). This was a time of exploration and developing my true nature and self, which was not priestly nor pious at all which I can see now in hindsight. But everything changed for me after I entered the MTC and began experiencing serious cultish indoctrination on my two year LDS mission in the 1990s.

After age 19, after becoming a missionary and ordained minister, I was more fully indoctrinated and immersed into a cult mentality and doctrinaire Mormonism as a missionary and ordained minister for the LDS Church. During this time, I pretty much lost the sense of my true self and real identity; and ever since my mission I became a pious performer to one degree or another; and had difficulty taking off this mask of piety because of those two long years of daily preaching and scripture study as an ordained minister (I actually read the entire Bible on my mission) and basically engaging in self-indoctrinating myself daily by bearing an LDS testimony and essentially selling Brighamite brand Mormonism. It took me a long time to reconnect with my pre-19 year old self after that, getting back to when I was more "myself," and less fixated on heavy religious subjects and was more free and fun and jovial and spontaneous and creative.

Pro-creatorhood means for me seeing yourself as not just an absorber of scripture and one who obeys a religious creed or clergymen, but being a self-rolling wheel: a self-creating exuberant star so to speak. It is the recognition that you are an individual and a unique self, with your own personality and genetics and capacity for greatness in your own sphere of potentiality.

Creatorhood means starting random conversations with spontaneous creativity without some unconscious religious agenda, and instead always flowing to the rhythm of reality rather conforming to Pauline-Augustinian dogma. Living with genuine aliveness and curiosity rather than acting like a pre-programmed robot following a scriptural script and fitting your demeanor and communication into a performative mold of a priestly saint. It means making a choice to free yourself from the self-enslaving mold of sainthood by choosing the freedom of creatorhood.

Nietzsche told a friend that he wrote his own version of a "holy book" with his book Thus Spoke Zarathustra, which declares laughter holy. As the article Nietzsche’s holy jest by Nicholas E Low puts it, "laughter itself represents the heart of Nietzsche’s new revelation of ‘holiness,’ one that challenges regnant [dominant] expressions of religion and piety while resisting serious, doctrinal formulation." Reading Nietzsche’s Zarathustra, and laughing during several sections of an audiobook version, it occurred to me just how much actual humor and laughter is missing from the "holy" Bible and all Mormon, Protestant and Catholic scripture as well. For while Thus Spoke Zarathustra made me laugh out loud several times, reading the New Testament never made me laugh once.


It's as if to put the word holy before the Bible is signifying that being holy, or saintly, is to lack a sense of humor. Just think about it, why are most highly religious comedians so terrible and unpopular for the most part? Sure someone's going to mention an exception to this rule, but the reason is obvious. 

A "solar spirituality" of authentic selfhood is thus also the path away from the dark clouds of doom and gloom dogmatism; and is instead the path of shining like the sun with joyful energy through holy laughter acting like golden rays of light upon a glimmerimg lake. 

Recommended Viewing:

• Nietzsche’s Theory 'Finding Yourself': It's Not About Self-Discovery by thinkDeep

• Intro to Nietzsche: Self-Creation (Part 1) by Why Alexander

• Intro to Nietzsche: Self-Creation (Part 2) by Why Alexander

The Pro-Nature vs. Anti-Nature Worldviews

 

NATURE = The Drive to Thrive,  Evolution, Replication (Breeding of Forms); Accident, Change, Variability; Organic Wars (i.e. Life feeding on Life); Predator, Prey or Mutualism; Circle of Life; Hierarchy.

Common terms and ideas to show the anti-Nature worldview versus the pro-Nature worldview: 

• "Shoulding" (REBT) or Yes-saying (Nietzche)

• Fragility or Antifragile

• Fixed Mindset or Growth Mindset

• Nomos vs Nature 

• Leveling vs. Rank Order (Nietzche)

The former points of view above, like shoulding, leveling, etc., is in some way a version of Utopianism (the perfectly ideal state of all things as ultimately unnatural, i.e. denatured). This utopianism as the ideal worldview leads to frustration and disappointment in life; and is thus ultimately disempowering, leading to higher degrees of unhappiness. For example, the thought process of, "This or that should not have happened," "he or she should not act that way or should not have done this or that." "It is terrible, an objective moral outrage because they could have and should have behaved differently with pure contra-causal free will." All this ignores NATURE and any degree of "fate" whether by the mythical fate weaving norns, or by a naturalized fatedness through biology, sociological effects, and physics, etc. Thus the Natured-attitude is instead something like, "It is what it is," or as REBT/CBT might frame it: "I prefer events were otherwise, but it's just an event. I can handle it. Not that big a deal." 

Or even, "I would have it no other way, for Nature is the sweet and sour, the rainbow and tornado, the butterfly and mosquito. Nature is what I too am in very form and deed. Nature is what I swim in, and thus Nature it is. I accept what is."

 This does not mean one might prefer Nomos (idealized cultural rules) over pure Nature, the natural order of things; but there is a difference between preferring versus expecting (or demanding) Nature (Reality) be what it is not. Even Nietzche had his ethical preferences but in his drive to fully accept Nature, he basically said that at best he would look away from Nature when it was terrible and horrendous; but he strived to embrace Nature (Reality) as it is; he believed that by doing so one can potentialilly better avoid becoming depressed, pessimistic, disappointed and nihilistic. 

The Platonist Ideal, the Demand for Perfection (or Perfectionism) does not match Nature's #1 Law of Change (Organic & Cultural Evolution). So that just as believing that biological forms are magically breathed into molded clay bodies by a skybound man, instead of organic forms evolving through natural selection; it is also a form of magical thinking to expect or demand idealistic perfectionist outcomes, because just as organic life forms evolve, so too, social outcomes also evolve (change via chance and accidental occurrence) as part of Changing-Nature as well.

The more realistic and empowering Life-stance or attitude toward Life, that is affirming of NATURE, is that of seeing that on some level it is all a form of WAR: as in competition, overcoming, i.e. Agon; so that just as Darwin says that there's a war of the species leading to new beautiful forms, with basically life feeding on life as necessary, so too, there is also necessary forms of war in nearly all things: from the wars of competition in a capitalist economy, to the soft wars of sports competition, to the social wars for class status, to the wars within one's own body. 

 The war within the body: the striving of drives to overcome one another and compete with one another, so that self-overcoming is a war within one self, where for example one's optimism and positive thinking must go to war with one's inner critic and the outward naysayers. Meanwhile, there is a war within oneself that is moving one either toward greater strength or weakness, of growing fat cells or muscles via hypertrophy, of sedentariness or activity; of, in the language of Mind OS, getting one's needs met and "fighting" for one's happiness and self-esteem or losing to boundary violations and a loss of self-esteem; of winning friends and allies or alienating people and isolating oneself from the power of team spirit; of lowering in status or growing higher in status, building wealth or declining toward poverty, etc. 

When one sees themselves as Nature (and not separate from Nature), being of Nature, part of Nature, swimming in Nature; then being a natural being means you have the same power as Nature. I like the analogy of one of the Transformers movie, where the Transformers are able to shape shift because of a substance called transferium. Well, Nature is akin to transferium: wherein you are by analogy a body of transferium and everything around you is ultimately a kind of transferium; so that you are ultimately capable of transforming along with this transferium-based natural reality in which you swim.

Rather than denying or opposing Nature, or wishing it were not NATURE, not omnipresent quasi-transferium and fragile or antifragile forms; what if one instead stepped into it, aligned with it, merged with Nature? 

If you say "Yes" to Nature, both the Yin and Yang, you merge with Accident, Change, and Will to Power. In other words, you are better able to work with randomness and accidents which become "happy accidents" like a painter working with a perceived mistake from a slip of his brush; by instead evolving the painting around the mistake, growing it into an unplanned and unexpected beautiful form upon the canvas. One thus becomes more spontaneous, creative, and artistic toward life by expecting randomness and imperfection as pathways new creations by creators. 

One begins to see oneself not as apart from nature or being always attacked by nature, but as part of nature; a natural being growing and becoming within nature, being lived by nature, growing and expanding with Nature. Thus one realizes one is as eternal and as powerful as nature by being one with Nature.

Solar-Pantheonism

After learning about my Proto-Indo-European and Norse ancestors (which I discuss here), combined with being influenced by the philosophy of Nietzsche and Dr. Paul Dobrnasky M.D. -- on the use of Greek Gods as archetypes of our biological instincts, which I disuss in my introductory post on my core thesis -- I realized that what all of this insight can be summed up as was an originating worldview template which I coined solar-pantheonism. 

I realized that nearly all the world's religions and mythologies can be traced back to this same or similar template of some kind of early form of Sun worship or  reverence for the Sun, with solar motifs; or the Sun and the sky representing the core imagery of many ancient religions, such as the illuminating Sky Father (for example see, Dyeus: The Indo-European Sky Father by ReligionforBreakfast). This early Sun motif is also in the Hebew Bible. Take the simple example of Moses encountering God and then his face shines as if he encountered the Sun, and the Sun's radiance transferred to his face. 

This solar motif was then often combined with some kind of Pantheon of Gods. This was true not only of my Proto-Indo-European ancestors, but also with the Egyptians, etc. Even Christianity, whose theologians often deny it too was based on this solar motif, is no doubt itself clearly based on a solar theology (also see here and here to see the obvious sunlight metaphors in the New Testament).

So solar spirituality is actually an anciently rooted originating mythology that ties together not only the Proto-Indo-Europeans but also Persian Zoroastrianism and the Old Testament Israelite religion, up to Christianity itself being based largely on a solar motif: with Christ being represented as akin to the shining Sun who causes others to shine.

Even thoough most Christian theologians claim to be purely monotheistic and they do not have a Pantheon; the late Protestant theologian Michael Heiser clearly showed in his biblical scholarship that original New Testament Christianity did have some kind of a Pantheon or a Divine Council of Gods. 

Even those Christians who reject a Pantheon/Council of Gods (with one unique Head God as Heiser explains), if one digs deeper they find that the early Christian theologians simply replaced a Pantheon of Gods (like Zeus and Thor or Odin), or the Divine Council of Gods, with instead praying to saints and turning the Gods in the biblical Divine Council into lesser angels (also see here). 

The Eastern Orthodox Church for example, has taken what Dr. Paul calls the gender instincts (which he teaches about through the archetypes of the Greek gods) and instead developed a way to represent the biological instincts through various Saints; for example, through military saints, in order to represent masculine courage in battle or dying martyrs with courage. A young male YouTuber at Church of the Eternal Logos, who is a member of Eastern Orthodoxy, also has videos on the Orthodox Saints as representations of a more muscular Christianity (that is reminiscent of the Greek Gods). Also see the Main Cathedral of the Russian Armed Forces (Cathedral of the Resurrection of Christ), which contains military imagery on the cathedral itself and is made from Green tanks (see short video here). 

Mormonism also has solar motifs in for example D&C 88: 6-13, and a very clear Pantheon or Council of Gods in Abraham chapter 4. The Book of Mormon is full of solar imagery as well with a tree of white lighted fruit representing Christ as a solar power (see images here and here); and a post-resurrection Christ visiting the American continant in 3 Nephi, to smile and shine upon people so that they too basically glow with a solar radiance. 

 

I believe a picture is worth a thousand words and so as a more visual thinker, I put together this image to illustrate solar-pantheonism in a nutshell: 

Image sources here & here

The male figure in the center represents the archetypal male hero. The lines from his body to the personages in the outer circle are meant to point to how the masculine instincts were represented by the various ancient pantheons of Gods. The multiple personages in the circle above are the Greek Gods (as seen here) which are meant as an example of this universal pantheon.

On the male figure's chest in the center I wrote thumos. According to Oxford Classical Dictionary:

Thymos (or thumos), cognate with Indo-European words meaning “smoke,” is one of a number of terms in Greek which associate psychological activity with air and breath. In the Homeric poems, thymos is one of a family of terms associated with internal psychological process of thought, emotion, volition, and motivation.

According to The Embodied Soul in Plato's Later Thought: Chapter 1 - Thymos (Published online by Cambridge University Press):

Thumos, often translated “spirit” or “spirited part”, acts as an intermediary between reason and appetite, imposing the dictates of reason on our irrational desires and pleasures. Yet the precise nature and function of the thumos is poorly understood ... Beginning from an analysis of the Homeric thumos...those who see the essence of thumos as lying in honour or self-esteem are mistaken, and that thumos represents a primitive drive for excellence or pre-eminence, with the desire for honour and recognition being merely derivative. …

The word and concept thumos matches Dr. Paul Dobransky's concept of passion as manifest through the archetypes of the gender instincts. So what the ancient pantheons do is provide mythical expression of thumos through the masculine and feminine instincts as explained by Dr. Paul Dobransky M.D. 

The wikipedia article here on thumos, discusses Plato's three-part soul, which matches the popular metaphor of the Elephant and the Rider (or an Ant riding the Elaphant). Also see Got Thumos? by ArtofManliness.com.

On the upper right of the circle in my illustration above, I refer to the Heraclitean Logos. According to the Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy on Heraclitus, we read:

A Greek philosopher of the late 6th century BCE, Heraclitus criticizes his predecessors and contemporaries for their failure to see the unity in experience. He claims to announce an everlasting Word (Logos) according to which all things are one, in some sense. Opposites are necessary for life, but they are unified in a system of balanced exchanges. The world itself consists of a law-like interchange of elements, symbolized by fire. Thus the world is not to be identified with any particular substance, but rather with an ongoing process governed by a law of change.

I also refer to the Stoic pneuma. You pronounce pneuma as "nooma." By Referencing the Heraclitean Logos and Stoic pneuma ("nooma"), I meant to convey early metaphysical ideas of a universal divine fluid energy (as a material substance), acting as a metaphor for the one energy in nature propelling a yin-yang dance (an interpolary dynamic process) or the evolutionary becoming of all things through material energy transforming form to form; which we understand today through all the sciences, from biology to physics. As Charles Darwin eloquenly puts it in, The Origin of Species:

Thus, from the war of nature, from famine and death, the most exalted object which we are capable of conceiving, namely, the production of the higher animals, directly follows. There is grandeur in this view of life, with its several powers, having been originally breathed into a few forms or into one; and that, whilst this planet has gone cycling on according to the fixed law of gravity, from so simple a beginning endless forms most beautiful and most wonderful have been, and are being, evolved.”

The Heraclitean-Stoic pneumatic Logos, also metaphorically captures the underlying Source Power of all things; that which "originally breathed into a few forms or into one" the evolutionary process; i.e. the Ground of Becoming. That which answers the question: why is there something (forms) rather than nothing (in the cosmos)?

This mysterious cosmic Ultimate Phenomena, which originated the Big Bang and is expanding our universe, is clearly a force of pro-transformation and Becoming. So I think this Ground of Becoming is that which is cosmically animating all humans towards heroic adventure and action; as well as moving us toward psychological integration and flourishing as a species through for example the Aristotelian golden mean (or middle way), or simply practicing "moderation in all things." Or the ideal of principles-centeredness in Covey's 7 Habits book.

The way I see it this "solar pill" (if you will) precedes the new idea of taking the "Christ pill," because the "solar pill" is for me about appreciating the solar radiance of the real Sun that we all experience regardless of race or creed. We all experience the Sun daily, universally, as a literally Life-giving source of energy through photosynthesis (which is real, and a good way to form a natural spirituality or reverence for nature). 

 We who are Proto-Indo-Europeans, had ancestors who formed an ancient solar mythology that intertwined a mother earth and the Sun, with the Sun representing the early cocept "God." For example, see wikepedia on deyus, where the English word "God" can be traced back to the Proto-Indo-Europeans' concept of the daylight-sky god / father (also see wikipedia on the word God and Sky's the Limit by Dr. Luke Gorton, as well as Socrates and the Shining Father by Donovan). One finds this same solar motif among the Egyptians (see here and here).

This ancient solar theology was then combined with many of the various divine pantheons as the pantheons affirmed the bodily instincts -- which bodily drives evolved via the matter of earth and photosynthesis -- so that I see one intertwining universal solar-pantheon that is found to some degree in nearly all the world's religions and mythologies. 

This universal set of solar and instinctual metaphors connect us to our body, to the earth and the cosmic cycles, from the light of day to our biological instincts: which are likely rooted  in the cultural memories of one's heroic ancestors, personified as gods and heroes. 

Even the perceived rising and falling of the Sun in the sky, acts as a metaphor of one's own falling (failing) and rising again to become more antifragile. So too, one's ancestral lineage is the genetic memory of those falling in death to give rise to genetic traits passed on to you in a great chain of becoming. 

This cohesive all-mythology affirms the instincts of the body and our connection to the Sun and all of life on earth: as the Sun is the source of energy that provides photosynthesis and the growth of life. In other words, without the Sun there is no life. So that the "solar pill" is a return to one's ecological and ancestral roots and the affirmation of the Universe, the Earth, and Body, all at once. 

When one connects to something larger than themselves, in this case something scientifically real in feeling a connection with the radiant Sun, the earth, the body, and a respect for one's ancestors, they can't lose their "faith' or become a "disbeliever." For solar-pantheonism is a spirituality of the real: real sunlight, real bodily instincts personified as gods. Thus it is based on real life. 

Solar-Pantheonism is also the ultimate life affirmation and elevation of self-esteem by being enlarged through one's connection to their genealogical line of heroic succesess and ancestral tribal power, like powerful aspen trees sharing the same genetic roots while being nourished by the bright yellow Sun. Thus, its an interconnecting orientation in the world. Its also a good way of overcoming selfishness by seeing oneself rooted in one's family with the daylight sky father representing symbolically the way of showing respect and honor toward earthly fathers; and seeing the Sun as a metaphorical example of everlasting warmth and glowing generosity and abundance. As well as the Sun representing descending or going down as a metaphor for embracing a life of inevitable failures and mistakes but seeing that as an opportunity for change and antifragile growth, as in being willing to "fall down and get back up again," which is metaphorically represented by the setting and rising Sun. 

The patheons of gods are also empowering as metaphors or archetypes, as they point to one's own heroic masculine potential or heroic divine motherly potential. Furthermore, one's ancestry giving rise to the ehnic myths of the various tribal gods in each pantheon (from the Israelite god Yahweh to the Norse god Thor), points toward the gods being personification of each tribes' cultural memory of those in the tribe who acted out superior masculine and feminine instincts toward the survival and growth of the tribe. So that these heroic men and motherly women became personified as gods. 

Solar-Patheonism also fits with the Nietzschean option of envisioning  future Superhumans (future generations who embody the cultural memories of those today who are the most life-affirming and heroic among us, giving rise to future Beyond-humans). In other words, the Nietzschean vision being future generations that don't turn their backs on the radiant Sun and earth beneath their feet -- who don't seek to escape their bodies and reject this world for an anti-body afterworld -- but who instead fully affirm earth and sky, the cycles of Nature, and their own real life and natural biology, as all of it here and now deemed good and holy. 

So when I talk about solar-pantheonism, I'm not singling out only my Proto-Indo-European ancestors, but I am pointing to an ancient universal life-orienting mytho-psychology: based around the Sun, the cycles, seasons, and the bodily instincts, which is again nearly universal as the one originating source of nearly all the world's religions.

So what I am presenting here is not an ethnocentric perspective; yet I see nothing wrong with somebody connecting with their own ethnic religion, such as a Jewish person identifying more with Judaism as the ancestral religion of their ethnicity. For I find that solar-pantheonism can be found in nearly all religions. For example, an ethnic Egyptian will find the Egyptian gods representing the same solar energy within a similar pantheon of gods (representing the biological instincts). Same thing with the Greek and Norse religions with the same solar energy and similar pantheons. 

This is true I think of nearly all ancient religions, from the Greeks to the Egyptians to Germans and Scandinavians, with each ethnic culture developing a unique set of gods in their pantheon, that are depicted with specific cultural traits based on the cultural memory of each tribe. So for example, in my ancestor's Norse religion, the God Thor had a hammer (based on their specific ancient Scandinavian culture), while the Hindu God Indra has the vajra. This does not make one's ethnic tribes' pantheon of gods superior to any other, as I see them all as mythological representations of the masculine and feminine biological instincts (as I explained in my introduction).

So to be clear, I'm not advocating any type of racist ideology or ethnocentrism, but each individual connecting either through their own ethnic religion (like a Jew for Judaism), or also through another's ethnic religion, like a Scandinavian becoming a Christian or Hindu, or Egyptian, or whatever, it doesn't really matter to me. For, as I see it, there is one original solar energy within each mythos and the same universal biological instincts personified in various pantheons of gods. 

So you basically have one universal life-affirming mythos (i.e. this world and biology affirming mythos), within solar-pantheonism: with a real Sun above our head being a constant reminder of an abundance of energy; energy, which according to science, can neither be created nor destroyed; and the Sun as a radiating ball of warmth and light acting as a spiritual metaphor we can emulate in our own lives by being an overflowing body of positive energy and brightness. This universal, natural theology, I think can unite us all around the shared values of life itself, combined with our evolved competitive instincts, which drive evolution and affirms our biological bodies toward a future of new forms, "most beautiful and most wonderful," that are being evolved; as a good and holy process of growth and becoming.

What this means for me as someone of Germanic and Scandinavian decent, is that I now more fully realize, after doing this research, that I am in a real way larger than my mere self (my conscious identity), but I am the combined cultural memory of all my ancestors that is encoded in my DNA! As Whitman wrote, "I am large, I contain multitudes." Or to use a Carl Sagan term, I am combined "metamind." I am being lived out by my genetic aspen-like roots and my cultural heritage; for example, my very body and traits, my more pale skin and blonde hair and blue eyes, to my strength and larger height and stature, is all a product of my Germanic Norse ancestry; and part of that biological makeup is a cultural makeup, which is rooted in an ancient Proto-Indo-European spirituality which branched out into various solar pantheons, from the Norse to the Celtic, all the way to the Vedic pantheon of the Hindus. 

So as I see it, just as I am being lived by evolutionary adaptations within my biological system, I am also being lived by my ancestral cultural heritage. So I am indeed large, as part of a grand genetic and cultural heritage-in-narrative: a lived metabody of heroic and adventurous seafaring peoples and family-oriented tribally unified peoples, projecting their instincts onto the gods, and passing on their genes literally into me genetically. I am thus a large body of genetic and cultural memories, being lived out on an unconscious level beneath the surface of my conscious awareness; from the very language I speak (English, which is a Proto-Indo-European language), to the meaning of many English words which are rooted in my Norse ancestry and their mythology. Thus I am part of a great connecting chain of genetic and cultural power and vitality as a solar powered body of heroic potentiality.