Irish Druids and Old Irish Religions

Sttn- Worship. j 9
sun sees everything, and knows everything, he is
asked to
forgive and forget what he alone has seen and knows."
He may be Indra, Varuna, Savritri, or Dyaus, the shining
one. What to us is poetry was in India prose.
Even in Homer, Hyperion, the sun-god, was the father
of all gods. According to Plato, Zeu-pater, or Jupiter, was
the Father of Life. Minerv^a, or Pallas, the early dawn,
sprang from the head of Jove every morning, fully armed,
to fight the clouds of darkness. Baldur, the zvJiite god, or
sun, was killed, said our Norseman and Saxon forefathers,
by an arrow from the blind Hoder, or night. Africa has
in all time been a centre of sun-worship. The Spaniards
found the cult both in Mexico and Peru.
There are survivals of the worship in the customs and
languages of Europe. Up to this century, a singular
ceremony took place in the church of the Carmine, Naples,
attended by civic officials in procession. The day after
Christmas Day, wdien the new sun of the year began then
first
to move in position, there was a solemn cutting of the
hair of an image, symbol of the sun's rays, as in the old
heathen times.
A Scotch dance, the Reel, still keeps up the memory of
the old Celtic circular dance. There is, also, the Deisol, or
practice of turning sun-ways, to bless the sun. This was
from right to left, as w^ith Dancing Dervishes now, or the
old Bacchic dance from east to west. Plautus wrote,
" When you worship the gods, do it turning to the right
hand."
Poseidonius the Stoic, referring to the Celts, said,
" At their feasts, the servant carries round the wine from
right to left.
Thus they worship their gods, turning to the
right." The Highland mother, with a choking child, cries
out, " Deas-iull the w^ay of the South." A Disul Sunday
is still kept up in Brittany.