the Moon was worshipped as the spouse of the Sun, Venus as his page. The
pleiades and other constellations, and single stars were also deified;
the rainbow and the lightning were sun servants, the elements, the sun's
offspring. Many animals and trees were reverenced as representatives of
sun attributes. Above all, fire was worshipped as the truest symbol of
the sun upon earth, and all offerings and sacrifices in honour of the
sun were presented through fire; thus sun and fire worship became
identified.

In Britain sun-worship appears to have been purer in prehistoric than it
afterwards was in historic times, purer also than the sun-cult of
historic Egypt, Greece, or Rome; that is, there appears to have been in
British sun-worship less of polytheism than prevailed in Egypt, Greece,
or Rome. But during the historic period, the numerous invasions and the
colonizations of different portions of this country by the Romans and
other nations, who brought with them their special religious beliefs and
formulae of worship, caused the increase of polytheism by the commingling
of the foreign and native elements of belief, and later on, these were
mixed with Christianity, and in these mixings all the elements became
modified, so that now it is very difficult to separate with certainty
the aboriginal, invasional, and Christian elements.

From many indications it seems more than probable that the sun-cult in
prehistoric Britain was very similar, even in many minor points, to the
solar worship of the ancient Peruvians. At the same time, there is not
the slightest probability that these two widely separated sun-cults ever
had a common point of historical connection, nor, in order to explain
their similarities, is such an historical explanation necessary. Quite
sufficient is the explanation that both possessed in common a human
nature, emotional and intellectual, moving on the same plane of
childlike intelligence, and that both from this common standpoint had
regard to the same striking and regularly recurring scenes of natural
phenomena. Prescott thus describes the worship of these ancient
Peruvians:--"The Sun was their primary God; to it was built a vast
temple in the capital, more radiant with gold than that of Solomon's;
and every city had a temple dedicated to the sun, and blasphemy against
the sun was punished with death. The principal festivals of the year
were at the equinoxes and solstices. That at midsummer was the grandest.
It