SUN AND FIRE WORSHIP. All investigation tends to show that nature-worship was the basis of all polytheistic religions, and that the chief deities of the several mytholo gies were originally personifications of the sun, or of particutar influences of the sun. The original solar nature of Jupiter, Zeus,'Odin, Baal, Amen Ra (see EGYPT), Indra, etc., can hardly be mistaken. See those heads; also ScalloixaviaN MYTHOLOGY, PHENICLk; and for a full devolpment of the subject, Max Mifiler's essay on Compara tive illythology (Oxford Essays; 18561. The actual sun, however, still continued an object of worship, more especially as in the abstract and more strictly personal gods, moral and intellectual attributes came to predominate over and obscure the physical (see HEmos); and with the worship of the sun was more or less closely associated that of fire—his representative ou earth. SCC PARSEES, NEEDFIRE, BELTEIN.
The most complete system of sun-worship that we have any account of is that exist ing in Peru when discovered by the Spaniards (1526). " Our northern natures can hardly comprehend how the sun, and the moon, and the stars were imaged in the heart of a Peruvian, and dwelt there; how the changes in these luminaries were combined with all his feelings and his fortunes; how the dawn was hope to him; how the fierce mid-day brightness was power to him; how the declining sun was death to him; and how the new, morning was a resurrection to him; nay, more, how the sun, and the moon, and the stars were his personal friends, as well as his deities; how he held com munion with them, and thought that they regarded every act and word; how, in his solitude, he fondly imagined that they sympathized with him, and how, with out stretched arms he appealed to them against their own unkindness, or against the injus tice of his fellow-men."—Helps's Spanish Conquest of America. The Incas, as the Peru
vian monarchs were called, claimed to be children of the sun, and his representatives on earth. Their government was a despotic theocracy, of which the Inca was both high-priest and king. In Cuzco, the capital, stood a splendid temple to the sun, all the implements of which were of gold. On the w. end of the interior was a representation of the sun's disk and rays in solid gold, so placed that the rising sun, shining in at the open e. end, fell full upon the image, and was reflected with dazzling splendor. In the place or square of the temple, a great annual festival was held at the summer sol stice. The multitude, assembled from all parts of the empire, and presided over by the Inca, awaited in breathless solemnity the first rays of their deity to strike the golden image in the temple, when the whole prostrated themselves in adoration. Sacrifices, similar to those of the Jews, were offered on the occasion, and bread and wine were partaken of in a manner strikingly resembling the Christian communion.
" It must not be supposed that the sun alone absorbed the devotion of the Peruvians. There was little in nature that they did not contrive to make a deity of. The moon, as the spouse of tile sun. the planet Venus as his page, the Pleiades, and the remarkable constellation of the southern cross, were minor deities. The rainbow and lightning were also worshiped as servants of the sun; and fire, air, earth, and water were not without adoration."