al knowledge and to the tendency to organize religion in its
aspect of dependence on the supernatural Powers.[1483]

+851+. Winds have played a less prominent part in theistic history than
the heavenly bodies, but have given rise to not a few myths in
religions of different grades of culture and in different parts of the
world.[1484] In the Scandinavian myths the storm wind as a
representative of the prevailing climatic condition has assumed special
prominence. In the Iliad when a messenger is dispatched to the abode of
the winds to secure their aid, these are found feasting like a human
family.[1485] Later, winds are, of course, subordinated to the great
gods.

+852+. From time to time theories have arisen explaining many deities
and heroes as representatives of the heavenly bodies, and many stories
of gods and heroes as reflecting the phenomena of the sky or the air.
Such theories have been carried so far sometimes as to explain
everything in mythology as a solar or lunar or astral myth. These
constructions leave much to the fancy, and it is not difficult to find
in mythical narratives references to the movements of the sun or the
moon or the stars or the winds. It is possible that such reference
really exists in certain stories. It is probable also that simple myths
representing such phenomena have been in later times elaborated and
brought into connection with a more detailed astronomical knowledge. The
same principles of interpretation should guide us here as are referred
to above.

+853+. There are doubtless cases in which a hero or a god represents the
sun or the moon, the correspondence between the adventures of the hero
and the movements of the heavenly bodies being plain. The twelve labors
of Heracles may represent the passage of the sun through the twelve
signs of the zodiac; but if this be the case, it is certain that such
construction was relatively late, and that the separate adventures must
be referred to some more simple facts. If Heracles slays the Hydra, it
is more natural to regard this as having represented originally some
mundane phenomenon of nature or some simple conflict of the savage life.
The same thing is probably true of the adventures of the Babylonian
hero Gilgamesh, who is sometimes considered to be the original of
Heracles. Nothing is easier than to expound the story of Samson in the
Old Testament as a series of solar and other phenomena,[1486] but the
probability is that he embodies t