FIRST LIGHT
We have told many stories to explain the rising of the sun. The ancient Greeks believed a god carried it across the sky by driving a golden chariot from east to west. Norse legend had it that their sun goddess was chased through the heavens by a monstrous wolf every day. A Maori folktale explains that a demigod lassoed and captured the sun, bargaining with it to slow its path and make the days longer. There are tales of dragons and demons that have threatened to devour it; tricky spiders who have stolen it; and wrathful deities whose taste for blood had to be sated with human sacrifice before they would once again allow the sun to crest the horizon in the morning.
The Aztecs, the civilisation that spun that last story, considered it an honour to have their hearts cut out and offered to the sun. Whether or not Singapore this September. In doing so, they have also indelibly forged their own legends—of goddesses, metaverses and new dawns.
