longing for light


The darker the days, the more intensely I feed on light and its many derivative reflections & refractions. Walking to and from work, through dark streets, I intently fix my gaze on dancing rows of streetlamps vanishing into the distance, with squinted eyes I bravely stare into the glaring headlights of an oncoming truck, I bide my time at crossings to revel in the red harmonies of traffic lights and taillights. 

And best of all is the shimmering shadowy world of a rainy street at night – the dark gleam of wet asphalt (B’s black sun indeed!), the trailing lights, the dark hurried shades, the pale phantom faces of people waiting at a bus stop (staring at their phones). 

When I’m not out there in the world, dazzled by its shiny lights, I cherish the quiet luminosity of the printed pages of the book I'm reading. 
I read about longings for light and transcendence, startlingly similar across regions, cultures and ages.  From Baal in Zenobia’s Palmyra to Sol Invictus [unvanquished sun] in Aurelius’ Rome to Christmas Day.



Notes
[Aurelian] established, as the central and focal point of Roman religion, a massive and strongly subsidised cult of Sol Invictus.
The birthday of the god was to be on 25 December, and this, transformed into Christmas Day, was one of the heritages which Christianity owed to the solar cult.
[…] Aurelian was deeply influenced by the Syrian veneration of the Sun which the relatives of Septimius, coming from that land, had done so much to extend.
Zenobia’s capital Palmyra […] was a center of solar theology, as its temple of the Sun-god Malachbel (Baal)[…] shows.

Origen (d254) linked Christ to the rising of the sun – and in the same period  a mosaic beneath St Peter showed a composite Christ-Helios.

(from Michael Grant  - The Climax of Rome)

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