The sky often has important religious significance. Many religions, both polytheistic and monotheistic, have deities associated with the sky. The daylit sky deities are typically distinct from the night-time sky (or “heaven of the stars”) deities. Stith Thompson’s Motif-Index of Folk-Literature reflects this by separating the category of “Sky-god” from that of “Star-god”.
Daytime-gods and Nighttime-gods may also be deities of an “upper world” (or “celestial world”), opposed to a “netherworld” (or “chthonic realm”) ruled by other gods (for example, Sky-gods Zeus and Hera rule the celestial realm in ancient Greece, while the chthonic realm is ruled by Hades and Persephone), or of an upper world and netherworld respectively.
Any masculine sky god is often also king of the gods, taking the position of patriarch within a pantheon. Such king gods are collectively categorised as “Sky father” deities, with a polarity between sky and earth often being expressed by pairing a “Sky father” god with an “Earth mother” goddess (pairings of a Sky mother with an Earth father are less frequent). A main sky goddess is often the “queen” (“of heaven”, for example).
Gods may rule the sky as a pair (for example, ancient Semitic [supreme] god El and the sky goddess Asherah whom he was most likely paired with). In comparative mythology, sky father is a term for a recurring concept of a sky god who is addressed as a “father”, often the father of a pantheon. The concept of “sky father” may also be taken to include Sun gods with similar characteristics. The concept is complementary to an “earth mother”.
“Sky Father” is a direct translation of the Vedic Dyaus Pita, etymologically descended from the same Proto-Indo-European deity name as the Greek Zeus Pater and Roman Jupiter, all of which are reflexes of the same Proto-Indo-European deity’s name, *Dyēus Ph₂tḗr. While there are numerous parallels adduced from outside of Indo-European mythology, there are exceptions (e.g. In Egyptian mythology, Nut is the sky mother and Geb is the earth father).
Caelus or Coelus was a primal god of the sky in Roman myth and theology, iconography, and literature (compare caelum, the Latin word for “sky” or “the heavens”, hence English “celestial”). The deity’s name usually appears in masculine grammatical form when he is conceived of as a male generative force, but the neuter form Caelum is also found as a divine personification.
The name of Caelus indicates that he was the Roman counterpart of the Greek god Uranus, who was of major importance in the theogonies of the Greeks. Caelus substituted for Uranus in Latin versions of the myth of Saturn (Cronus) castrating his heavenly father, from whose severed genitals, cast upon the sea, the goddess Venus (Aphrodite) was born.
As a sky god, he became identified with Jupiter, as indicated by an inscription that reads Optimus Maximus Caelus Aeternus Iuppiter. However, according to Cicero and Hyginus, Caelus was also the father of one of the three forms of Jupiter, the other two fathers being Aether and Saturn.
According to Cicero and Hyginus he was the son of Aether and Dies (“Day” or “Daylight”). Caelus and Dies were in this tradition the parents of Mercury. With Trivia, Caelus was the father of the distinctively Roman god Janus, as well as of Saturn and Ops. In one tradition, Caelus was the father with Tellus of the Muses, though was this probably a mere translation of Ouranos from a Greek source.
Uranus (“sky” or “heaven”) was the primal Greek god personifying the sky and one of the Greek primordial deities. Uranus is associated with the Roman god Caelus. In Ancient Greek literature, Uranus or Father Sky was the son and husband of Gaia, Mother Earth.
According to Hesiod’s Theogony, Uranus was conceived by Gaia alone, but other sources cite Aether as his father. According to the Orphic Hymns, Uranus was the son of Nyx, the personification of night. Uranus was the brother of Pontus, the God of the sea. In the Olympian creation myth, as Hesiod tells it in the Theogony, Uranus came every night to cover the earth and mate with Gaia. After his castration, the Sky came no more to cover the Earth at night, but held to its place, and “the original begetting came to an end”.
Uranus is connected with the night sky, and Váruṇa is the god of the sky and the celestial ocean, which is connected with the Milky Way. Uranus was scarcely regarded as anthropomorphic, aside from the genitalia in the castration myth. He was simply the sky, which was conceived by the ancients as an overarching dome or roof of bronze, held in place (or turned on an axis) by the Titan Atlas.
In formulaic expressions in the Homeric poems ouranos is sometimes an alternative to Olympus as the collective home of the gods; an obvious occurrence would be the moment in Iliad 1.495, when Thetis rises from the sea to plead with Zeus: “and early in the morning she rose up to greet Ouranos-and-Olympus and she found the son of Kronos …”
William Sale remarks that “… ‘Olympus’ is almost always used of [the home of the Olympian gods], but ouranos often refers to the natural sky above us without any suggestion that the gods, collectively live there”.
Sale concluded that the earlier seat of the gods was the actual Mount Olympus, from which the epic tradition by the time of Homer had transported them to the sky, ouranos. By the sixth century, when a “heavenly Aphrodite” (Aphrodite Urania) was to be distinguished from the “common Aphrodite of the people”, ouranos signifies purely the celestial sphere itself.
Uranus and Gaia were the parents of the first generation of Titans, and the ancestors of most of the Greek gods, but no cult addressed directly to Uranus survived into Classical times, and Uranus does not appear among the usual themes of Greek painted pottery. Elemental Earth, Sky, and Styx might be joined, however, in a solemn invocation in Homeric epic.
Varro couples Caelus with Terra (Earth) as pater and mater (father and mother), and says that they are “great deities” (dei magni) in the theology of the mysteries at Samothrace. Although Caelus is not known to have had a cult at Rome, not all scholars consider him a Greek import given a Latin name; he has been associated with Summanus, the god of nocturnal thunder, as counterposed to Jupiter, the god of diurnal (daylight) thunder, and thus “purely Roman.”
Every June 20, the day before the summer solstice, round cakes called summanalia, made of flour, milk and honey and shaped as wheels, were offered to him as a token of propitiation: the wheel might be a solar symbol. Summanus also received a sacrifice of two black oxen or wethers. Dark animals were typically offered to chthonic deities.
Georges Dumézil has argued that Summanus would represent the uncanny, violent and awe-inspiring element of the gods of the first function, connected to heavenly sovereignty. The double aspect of heavenly sovereign power would be reflected in the dichotomy Varuna-Mitra in Vedic religion and in Rome in the dichotomy Summanus-Dius Fidius. The first gods of these pairs would incarnate the violent, nocturnal, mysterious aspect of sovereignty while the second ones would reflect its reassuring, daylight and legalistic aspect.
The name Summanus is thought to be from Summus Manium “the greatest of the Manes”, or sub-, “under” + manus, “hand”. According to Martianus Capella, Summanus is another name for Pluto as the “highest” (summus) of the Manes. Manes may be derived from “an archaic adjective manus —good— which was the opposite of immanis (monstrous)”.
Pluto (Underworld) and Neptune (Earth) are described as the brothers of Jove (Heaven) in noting their three-way division of sovereignty over the earth and with Proserpina as Pluto’s spouse. As a lord of abundance or riches, Pluto expresses the aspect of the underworld god that was positive, symbolized in art by the “horn of plenty” (cornucopia), by means of which Plouton is distinguished from the gloomier Hades.
The Roman poet Ennius (ca. 239–169 BC), the leading figure in the Hellenization of Latin literature, considered Pluto a Greek god to be explained in terms of the Roman equivalents Dis Pater and Orcus. It is unclear whether Pluto had a literary presence in Rome before Ennius. Some scholars think that rituals and beliefs pertaining to Pluto entered Roman culture with the establishment of the Saecular Games in 249 BC, and that Dis pater was only a translation of Plouton.
In the mid-1st century BC, Cicero identifies Pluto with Dis, explaining that “The earth in all its power and plenty is sacred to Father Dis, a name which is the same as Dives, ‘The Wealthy One,’ as is the Greek Plouton. This is because everything is born of the earth and returns to it again.
The name Ploutōn came into widespread usage with the Eleusinian Mysteries, in which Pluto was venerated as a stern ruler but the loving husband of Persephone. The couple received souls in the afterlife, and are invoked together in religious inscriptions. Hades, by contrast, had few temples and religious practices associated with him, and he is portrayed as the dark and violent abductor of Persephone.
Demeter and Kore were usually referred to as “the goddesses” or “the mistresses” (Arcadia) in the mysteries. In the Mycenean Greek tablets dated 1400–1200 BC, the “two queens and the king” are mentioned. It is believed that these were the precursor divinities of Demeter, Persephone and Poseidon, one of the Twelve Olympians in ancient Greek religion and myth.
In the cave of Amnisos at Crete, Eileithyia is related with the annual birth of the divine child and she is connected with Enesidaon (The earth shaker), who is the chthonic aspect of the god Poseidon. Persephone was conflated with Despoina, “the mistress”, a chthonic divinity in West-Arcadia.
The megaron of Eleusis is quite similar with the “megaron” of Despoina at Lycosura. Demeter is united with the god Poseidon, and she bears a daughter, the unnameable Despoina. Poseidon appears as a horse, as it usually happens in Northern European folklore. The goddess of nature and her companion survived in the Eleusinian cult, where the following words were uttered “Mighty Potnia bore a great sun”.
Poseidon was god of the Sea and other waters; of earthquakes; and of horses. His Roman equivalent is Neptune. He carries frequently the title wa-na-ka (wanax) in Linear B inscriptions, as king of the underworld. Anax (from earlier wánax) is an ancient Greek word for “tribal chief, lord, (military) leader”.
Anax is one of the two Greek titles traditionally translated as “king”, the other being basileus, and is inherited from Mycenaean Greece, and is notably used in Homeric Greek, e.g. of Agamemnon. The feminine form is anassa, “queen” (from wánassa, itself from *wánakt-ja). The archaic plural Ánakes (“Kings”) was a common reference to the Dioskouroi, whose temple was usually called the Anakeion and their yearly religious festival the Anákeia.
Gemini (“twins”) is the third astrological sign in the zodiac, originating from the constellation of Gemini. Under the tropical zodiac, the sun transits this sign between May 21 and June 21. Gemini is represented by the twins Castor and Pollux. The symbol of the twins is based on the Dioscuri, granted shared half-immortality after the death of their mortal brother Castor.
In ancient Roman religion, the Manes or Di Manes are chthonic deities sometimes thought to represent souls of deceased loved ones. They were associated with the Lares, Lemures, Genii, and Di Penates as deities (di) that pertained to domestic, local, and personal cult. They belonged broadly to the category of di inferi, “those who dwell below,” the undifferentiated collective of divine dead. The Manes were honored during the Parentalia and Feralia in February.
In his work On the Nature of the Gods, Cicero presents a Stoic allegory of the myth in which the castration signifies “that the highest heavenly aether, that seed-fire which generates all things, did not require the equivalent of human genitals to proceed in its generative work.”
For Macrobius, the severing marks off Chaos from fixed and measured Time (Saturn) as determined by the revolving Heavens (Caelum). The semina rerum (“seeds” of things that exist physically) come from Caelum and are the elements which create the world.
The divine spatial abstraction Caelum is a synonym for Olympus as a metaphorical heavenly abode of the divine, both identified with and distinguished from the mountain in ancient Greece named as the home of the gods. Varro says that the Greeks call Caelum (or Caelus) “Olympus.”
As a representation of space, Caelum is one of the components of the mundus, the “world” or cosmos, along with terra (earth), mare (sea), and aer (air). In his work on the cosmological systems of antiquity, the Dutch Renaissance humanist Gerardus Vossius deals extensively with Caelus and his duality as both a god and a place that the other gods inhabit.
The ante-Nicene Christian writer Lactantius routinely uses the Latin theonyms Caelus, Saturn, and Jupiter to refer to the three divine hypostases of the Neoplatonic school of Plotinus: the First God (Caelus), Intellect (Saturn), and Soul, son of the Intelligible (Jupiter).
It is generally though not universally agreed that Caelus is depicted on the cuirass of the Augustus of Prima Porta, at the very top above the four horses of the Sun god’s quadriga. He is a mature, bearded man who holds a cloak over his head so that it billows in the form of an arch, a conventional sign of deity (velificatio) that “recalls the vault of the firmament.”
He is balanced and paired with the personification of Earth at the bottom of the cuirass. (These two figures have also been identified as Saturn and the Magna Mater, to represent the new Saturnian “Golden Age” of Augustan ideology.) On an altar of the Lares now held by the Vatican, Caelus in his chariot appears along with Apollo-Sol above the figure of Augustus.
The name Caelus occurs in dedicatory inscriptions in connection to the cult of Mithras. The Mithraic deity Caelus is sometimes depicted allegorically as an eagle bending over the sphere of heaven marked with symbols of the planets or the zodiac. In a Mithraic context he is associated with Cautes and can appear as Caelus Aeternus (“Eternal Sky”).
M. J. Vermasaren shows Mithras, the unconquerable sun, and his two torch-bearers, Cautes, sunrise, and Cautopates, sunset, equally sized in a 3-branch pine tree, visible at Dieburg, Germany. Vermasaren suggests they form a Mithraic “Trinity”.
Cautes and Cautopates are torch-bearers depicted attending the god Mithras in the icons of the ancient Roman cult of Mithraism, known as Tauroctony. Cautes holds his torch raised up, and Cautopates holds his torch pointed downward. Both are depicted as smaller than Mithras to emphasize his significance.
In Mithraic images, Mithras either represents the sun, or is a close friend of the sun god Helios or Sol Invictus (Latin: the invincible sun) with whom Mithras dines. The two torch-bearers are often interpreted as symbols of light, one for the rising, the other for the setting sun.
Cautes and Cautopates are supposed to represent the stations of sunrise and sunset respectively, or perhaps the spring and autumn equinoxes, or equivalently the ascending (spring) and descending (autumnal) nodes of the Sun’s apparent path on the celestial sphere.
An alternate interpretation advanced by David Ulansey is that Cautes represents the spring equinox and Cautopates the autumn equinox. Thus, represented on the left and right of the Tauroctony, they become a realistic cadre of the celestial equator and the constellations included between the two equinoxes during the Age of Taurus.
If eclipses of the sun and moon formed part of Mithraic symbolism, they could also represent the ascending and descending nodes where the Moon crosses the ecliptic. Cautopates could also represent death, while Cautes might represent new life.
As Caelus Nocturnus, he was the god of the night-time, starry sky. In a passage from Plautus, Nocturnus is regarded as the opposite of Sol, the Sun god. Nocturnus appears in several inscriptions found in Dalmatia and Italy, in the company of other deities who are found also in the cosmological schema of Martianus Capella, based on the Etruscan tradition.
In the Etruscan discipline of divination, Caelus Nocturnus was placed in the sunless north opposite Sol to represent the polar extremities of the axis. This alignment was fundamental to the drawing of a templum (sacred space) for the practice of augury.
A form of Ahura-Mazda is invoked in Latin as Caelus Aeternus Iupiter. The walls of some mithrea feature allegorical depictions of the cosmos with Oceanus and Caelus. The mithraeum of Dieburg represents the tripartite world with Caelus, Oceanus, and Tellus below Phaeton-Heliodromus.
Some Roman writers used Caelus or Caelum as a way to express the monotheistic God of Judaism. Juvenal identifies the God of the Jews with Caelus as the highest heaven (summum caelum), saying that Jews worship the numen of Caelus; Petronius uses similar language.
Florus has a rather odd passage describing the Holy of Holies in the Temple of Jerusalem as housing a “sky” (caelum) under a golden vine, which has been taken as an uncomprehending attempt to grasp the presence of the God of the Jews. A golden vine, perhaps the one mentioned, was sent by the Hasmonean king Aristobulus to Pompeius Magnus after his defeat of Jerusalem, and was later displayed in the Temple of Jupiter Capitolinus.
A lunar node is either of the two orbital nodes of the Moon, that is, the two points at which the orbit of the Moon intersects the ecliptic. The ascending (or north) node is where the Moon moves into the northern ecliptic hemisphere, while the descending (or south) node is where the Moon enters the southern ecliptic hemisphere.
In ancient European texts, the ascending node is referred to as the dragon’s head (Caput Draconis, or Anabibazon). Its symbol is the astronomical and astrological symbol for the dragon’s head. By the same analogy, the descending node is also known as the dragon’s tail (Cauda Draconis, or Catabibazon), and its symbol is the inversion of that of the ascending node.
In Hindu astronomy, the ascending lunar node is called Rahu (i.e ‘north’) and the descending lunar node (i.e ‘south’) is called Ketu. In Tibetan Astrology (partially based on the Kalachakra Tantra) the descending node is named Kalagni.
Ancient astronomers felt that the mighty Rahu and Ketu have the strength to obscure the sun, thus causing a solar eclipse. According to some accounts in Hindu mythology, Ketu belongs to Jaimini Gotra, whereas Rahu is from Paiteenasa gotra and hence both are totally different entities with distinct characteristics but are two parts of a common body.
Rāhu is one of the nine major astronomical bodies (navagraha) in Indian texts. Unlike the other eight, Rāhu is not a real astronomical body but a shadow entity, one that causes eclipses and is the king of meteors. Rahu represents the ascend of the moon in its precessional orbit around the earth.
The planets according to Indian astronomers are the Sun, Moon, Mars, Mercury, Venus, Jupiter, Saturn, Rahu and Ketu. Even though Rahu and Ketu are not physical bodies, they are sensitive points called lunar nodes on the intersection of the ecliptic (the apparent path of motion of the Sun) by the Moon’s orbit.
Ketu is generally referred to as a “shadow” planet. It is believed to have a tremendous impact on human lives and also the whole creation. In some special circumstances it helps someone achieve the zenith of fame. Ketu is often depicted with a gem or star on his head signifying a mystery light.
As per Vedic astrology Rahu and Ketu have an orbital cycle of 18 years and are always 180 degrees from each other orbitally (as well as in the birth charts). This coincides with the precessional orbit of moon or the ~18 year rotational cycle of the lunar ascending and descending nodes on the earth’s ecliptic plane.
This also corresponds to a saros, a period of approximately 223 synodic months (approximately 6585.3211 days, or 18 years, 11 days, 8 hours), that can be used to predict eclipses of the Sun and Moon.
Astronomically, Rahu and Ketu denote the points of intersection of the paths of the Sun and the Moon as they move on the celestial sphere. Therefore, Rahu and Ketu are respectively called the north and the south lunar nodes. The fact that eclipses occur when the Sun and the Moon are at one of these points gives rise to the understanding of swallowing of the Sun and the Moon by the snake.
Often Ketu is misunderstood as Uranus during Sanskrit to English translation, however, Uranus isn’t visible to the naked eye and its discovery is attributed to the use of high resolution telescopes in modern astronomy.
Often Ketu is misunderstood as Neptune during Sanskrit to English translation, however, Neptune isn’t visible to the naked eye and its discovery is attributed to the use of high resolution telescopes in modern astronomy.
The antisolar point is the abstract point on the celestial sphere directly opposite of the Sun from an observer’s perspective. This means that the antisolar point lies above the horizon when the Sun is below it, and vice versa.
On a sunny day, the antisolar point can be easily found; it is located within the shadow of the observer’s head. Like the zenith and nadir, the antisolar point is not fixed in three-dimensional space, but is defined relative to the observer. Each observer has their own antisolar point, which moves along with them as they change position.
The antisolar point forms the geometric center of several optical phenomena, including subhorizon haloes, rainbows, glories, and heiligenschein. Occasionally, around sunset or sunrise, anticrepuscular rays appear to converge toward the antisolar point near the horizon. However, this is an optical illusion caused by perspective; in reality, the “rays” (i.e. bands of shadow) run near-parallel to each other.
Also around the antisolar point, the gegenschein is often visible in a moonless night sky away from city lights, arising from the backscatter of sunlight by interplanetary dust. In astronomy, the full Moon or a planet in opposition lies around the antisolar point. During a total lunar eclipse, the full Moon enters the umbra of Earth’s shadow, which the planet has been casting onto its atmosphere, into space, and toward the antisolar point.
The anthelic point is often used as a synonym for the antisolar point, but the two should be differentiated. While the antisolar point is directly opposite the sun, always below the horizon when the sun is up, the anthelic point is opposite but at the same elevation as the sun, and is therefore located on the parhelic circle.
Halo or aureola is an optical phenomenon in which a bright spot appears around the shadow of the viewer’s head. In photogrammetry and remote sensing, it is more commonly known as the hotspot. There are several halo phenomena that are centered on or converge on the anthelic point, such as the anthelion, Wegener arcs, Tricker arcs and the parhelic circle itself.
An anthelion (plural anthelia; “opposite the sun”) is a rare optical phenomenon of the halo family. It appears on the parhelic circle opposite to the sun as a faint white spot, not unlike a sundog, and may be crossed by an X-shaped pair of diffuse arcs.
How anthelia are formed is disputed. Walter Tape, among others, has argued they are not separate haloes, but simply where various haloes caused by horizontally oriented column-shaped ice crystals coincide on the parhelic circle to create a bright spot. If this theory is correct, anthelia should only appear together with these other haloes.
However, anthelia occur unaccompanied by other plate crystal haloes, thus scientists have produced alternative explanations. The Dutch professor S.W. Visser proposed they form by two exterior light reflections in quadrangular prisms, while Robert Greenler has suggested two interior reflections in column-shaped crystals produces the phenomenon.
While the anthelion area is usually sparse on haloes, in a complex display it features various rare optic phenomena: Flanking the anthelion on the parhelic circle are two 120° parhelia (and two Liljequist parhelia) caused by plate crystals. The Tricker and diffuse arcs are produced in singly oriented column crystals and form an Ankh-like shape passing through the anthelion. Wegener arcs occasionally cross the sky to converge in the anthelion.
Crepuscular rays (more commonly known as sunbeams, sun rays, splintered light, or god rays), in atmospheric optics, are rays of sunlight that appear to radiate from the point in the sky where the sun is located. These rays, which stream through openings in clouds (particularly stratocumulus) or between other objects, are columns of sunlit air particles separated by darker cloud-shadowed volumes.
Despite seeming to converge toward the light source, the rays are in fact near-parallel shafts of sunlight. Their apparent convergence is a perspective effect. This phenomena mimics the way parallel railway lines or long hallways seem to seek convergence at a distant vanishing point. The sun rays do converge toward the sun, but the sun is much farther away than the rays might suggest.
The name comes from their frequent occurrences during twilight hours (those around dawn and dusk), when the contrasts between light and dark are the most obvious. Crepuscular comes from the Latin word “crepusculum”, meaning twilight.
The rays in some cases may extend across the sky and appear to converge at the antisolar point, the point on the sky sphere directly opposite the sun. In this case they are called anticrepuscular or antisolar rays.
These are not as easily spotted as crepuscular rays. This apparent dual convergence (to both the solar and antisolar points) is a perspective effect analogous to railway tracks appearing to converge to opposite points in opposite directions.
Anticrepuscular rays, or antisolar rays, are atmospheric optical phenomena similar to crepuscular rays, but appear opposite of the Sun in the sky. Anticrepuscular rays are nearly parallel, but appear to converge toward the antisolar point due to linear perspective. Anticrepuscular rays are most frequently visible around sunrise or sunset.
Appearing to radiate from the Sun, crepuscular rays usually look much brighter than anticrepuscular rays. This is because the atmospheric light scattering making the crepuscular rays visible occurs at low angles to the horizon.
Although anticrepuscular rays appear to converge toward the antisolar point, the convergence is actually an optical illusion. The rays are in fact almost parallel, and their apparent convergence is toward a vanishing point, which is an infinite distance away from the viewer.