[Above, a set of miniature Egyptian canopic jars depicting, according to the retailer, "Anubis, Horus, Monkey God, Prince."* Click image for original.]
From whiskey river (which this week celebrated eight years of bringing to the Web wisdom about things we generally know, but generally do not speak of):
Shinto
When sorrow lays us low
for a second we are saved
by humble windfalls
of the mindfulness or memory:
the taste of a fruit, the taste of water,
that face given back to us by a dream,
the first jasmine of November,
the endless yearning of the compass,
a book we thought was lost,
the throb of a hexameter,
the slight key that opens a house to us,
the smell of a library, or of sandalwood,
the former name of a street,
the colors of a map,
an unforeseen etymology,
the smoothness of a filed fingernail,
the date we were looking for,
the twelve dark bell-strokes, tolling as we count,
a sudden physical pain.Eight million Shinto deities **
travel secretly throughout the earth.
Those modest gods touch us –
touch us and move on.
(Jorge Luis Borges)
Not from whiskey river:
Where do gods come from? Where do they go?
Some attempt to answer this was made by the religious philosopher Koomi of Smale in his book Ego-Video Liber Deorum, which translates into the vernacular roughly as Gods: A Spotter’s Guide.
People said there had to be a Supreme Being because otherwise how could the universe exist, eh?
And of course there clearly had to be, said Koomi, a Supreme Being. But since the universe was a bit of a mess, it was obvious that the Supreme Being hadn’t in fact made it. If he had made it he would, being Supreme, have made a much better job of it, with far better thought given, taking an example at random, to things like the design of the common nostril. Or, to put it another way, the existence of a badly put-together watch proved the existence of a blind watchmaker. You only had to look around to see that there was room for improvement practically everywhere.
This suggested that the Universe had probably been put together in a bit of a rush by an underling while the Supreme Being wasn’t looking, in the same way that Boy Scouts’ Association minutes are done on office copiers all over the country.
So, reasoned Koomi, it was not a good idea to address any prayers to a Supreme Being. It would only attract his attention and might cause trouble.
And yet there seemed to be a lot of lesser gods around the place. Koomi’s theory was that gods come into being and grow and flourish because they are believed in. Belief itself is the food of the gods. Initially, when mankind lived in small primitive tribes, there were probably millions of gods. Now there tended to be only a few very important ones — local gods of thunder and love, for example, tended to run together like pools of mercury as small primitive tribes joined up and became huge, powerful primitive tribes with more sophisticated weapons. But any god could join. Any god could start small. Any god could grow in stature as its believers increased. And dwindle as they decreased. It was like a great big game of ladders and snakes.
Gods liked games, provided they were winning.
(Terry Pratchett, writing, in Small Gods, of theology as practiced on the Discworld)
…and:
The characters of the Iliad do not sit down and think out what to do. They have no conscious minds such as we say we have, and certainly no introspections… The beginnings of action are not in conscious plans, reasons, and motives; they are in the actions and speeches of gods…
Who then were these gods that pushed men about like robots and sang epics through their lips? They were voices whose speech and directions could be as distinctly heard by the Iliadic heroes as voices are heard today by certain epileptic and schizophrenic patients, or just as Joan of Arc heard her voices.
(Julian Jaynes, The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind)
This has been an absolute lunatic week for me (the main reason why I’ve been more or less invisible on most of your blogs for the last few days). Nothing bad, really. Just complicated as hell. (I always tell The Missus: I love complexity, but hate complication.) In fact, it has sort of made me stop and wonder if I might have blasphemed or committed some other sin for which the gods might be punishing me (while laughing up their sleeves).
And that, in turn, made me think if I haven’t crossed any of those invisible lines, then maybe — yes! — The Gods Must Be Crazy after all… Below is the first fifteen minutes of the film. If you’ve seen it already and want to skip right to the key moment when the plot actually kicks in, it happens a little past eight minutes into the clip. If you haven’t seen it already, at least watch it up to and including that event.
Stylistically, the film begins like a fairly conventional documentary. Eventually it turns into comedy, and finally ends up as… something almost incapable of being categorized.
Having seen that, if you want to have the whole thing spoiled for you, Wikipedia’s entry will do the trick. (Sorry, no link — I’ll make you work for your impatience. Ha.)
____________________________
* Canopic jars were small vessels in which the viscera of the ancient Egyptian dead were placed to accompany them in the afterlife. Wikipedia disagrees with the retailer’s names for the gods depicted in the jars’ forms; per this modest god of Internet research:
- Duamutef, the jackal-headed god representing the east, whose jar contained the stomach and was protected by the goddess Neith.
- Qebehsenuef, the falcon-headed god representing the west, whose jar contained the intestines and was protected by the goddess Selket.
- Hapi, the baboon-headed god representing the north, whose jar contained the lungs and was protected by the goddess Nephthys.
- Imseti, the human-headed god representing the south, whose jar contained the liver and was protected by the goddess Isis.
** Puzzled by the “eight million deities”? Read about them here, courtesy of the BBC.
Interesting. Things have gone so poorly for me over the last … what? seven years? … I don’t even think about what might’ve caused them. In my own case, however, my worldview has no allotment for “gods” or such. Being a monotheist, and one who does not believe God to be vengeful, spiteful and as random as The Joker in His dealings with men, I seldom place blame on Him.
Anymore.
There was a time, though, when I did so with impunity. It’s only recently I’ve stopped shaking my clay fist at heaven and started realizing I made disastrous choices along the way and made the bed I’m sleeping in now. (Except I seldom sleep.)
Interesting thoughts, JES. I’ll say a prayer for you and hope things get better soon.
“complicated.” being a grown-up sucks. i don’t like it anymore; i wanna go back.
Well, now you know I’d want to weigh in…I’m with Darc on this. I don’t believe a God who could create such sublime chaos as this earth is vengeful. I believe things happen just as they do, with no orchestrations from the Almighty. Given free will makes it hard to blame anyone but myself and I wish I could sometimes. Hope things begin to look up for you and I’ll keep you in my prayers (as always).
Oh. My. Stars. You did NOT just quote from The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind. I just did a “woot!” and a holler when I saw that. You see, my father loves that book. And I’ve never actually read it, though he’s loaned it to me. We just sorta always teased him (lovingly) about the very abstruse-sounding title. And I use that phrase when I want to sound smart. You know, not seriously. But for fun. I once used it in an improv acting excercise, jotted it down on a piece of paper for someone else to use as subtext for an acting piece, and they just stood there and stuttered and were very confused.
See, we were destined to be friends. I’m sorry, but I’ve never heard anyone else speak of it.
“Shinto”=beautiful.
Hope your weekend is relaxing.
All: Interesting that most of the comments so far have focused on one paragraph that I wrote!
Darc: Things really aren’t so bad as to warrant a prayer for me — especially given all the people truly in distress (and not merely feeling grumpy). OTOH I’d never turn down a freebie. So: thanks! Maybe I can put it in the bank for when I really need it. :)
Moonie: I find myself thinking “being a grown-up sucks” even for things from the good old days of… last year. It’s sort of a constantly expanding block of time, the good old days. I was more footloose yesterday than I am right now; the world didn’t insist quite so much on making us all crazy, even an hour ago.
But for you, I mean… I don’t know how old you are, but my sense is that “going back,” for you, might retrogress you to sometime like, oh, say, February. Heh.
cynth: Well, as I said to Darc, I wasn’t feeling seriously woeful — just put-upon by time (and its absence) and activity. Personally, I tend not to to the agnostic side, exactly, but to something even less definable than an infinitely indefinable Supreme Being. It’s hard to explain. Obviously. :)
And also as I said to Darc, I’m not one to turn down a free prayer on my behalf. Wish I could stockpile them, like a cord of wood.
Jules: How funny is that? I just love a good coincidence.
I read a review of the book when it came out, in the ’70s. Think it might have been in the NYT book review but, wherever it was, it made it sound interesting enough that I sprang for the hardcover. In the vernacular of that time (and the cliché of this one), it blew my mind.
The title is a hoot, although it describes exactly what the book is about. After I read the book, I loaned it to a brother-in-law who occasionally, at family functions, used to go off to a corner to read. Someone took a picture of him once, seated in a folding chair at a picnic table. His head is lolling to one side, resting on the palm of an upraised hand as he naps; open on the table before him, face down, is — yes — THAT BOOK. The convergence of image and words was impossible to regard with a straight face. :)
If I’d been the one you handed that to in the improv class, I think I would have been all, like, Breakdown, is it? And then I would have gone bicameral on your @ss, as Marcellus Wallace in Pulp Fiction might have said.
(recaptcha says: footsore grandchildren. Awwwww…)
Boo-hoo! I left a comment earlier that got gobbled so I’m back just to say that the poem Shinto is the essence of mindful focus on the moment that gets one through despair and reminds me of the poem Wait by Galway Kinnell.
Squirrel: That’s a fabulous connection to have made. For the benefit of others who might (still) be reading this thread, here’s the Kinnell poem:
You might also want to see/hear a video of Kinnell reading this poem, at the WGBH site. According to a note on that page, this is “a poem he wrote for a student who was thinking about suicide after a love affair gone wrong.”
That was beautiful. I never read/heard it before.
So much to read, think about, and comment on. But I don’t have time. This comment is being written while my kiddo gets ready for his bath. He will beckon soon!
But I like being a grown up. NEVER want to go back…except for my legs maybe. Wish they looked like they did when I was 20. But…
Must go. Just want to let you know I am here, just tired.
I don’t really pray, so I will say–lots of luck and good wishes (and that’s not too different from praying really).
cynth: Yeah, wasn’t it nice? Glad you liked it, but the credit goes to the Querulous one.
marta: Thanks for reassuring me. :) I know you’re deep into the maelstrom of NaNoWriMo; that alone, piled atop everything else normally on your plate. [Ed.: "deep into maelstrom"; "piled on your plate" -- mix metaphors much?]
I know some people in their 30s and above who do NOT pine for some physical attribute they had in their 20s. Some, but damn few! In ten years, you may be telling people you wish had feature X which you have right now.
…as long as you don’t completely burn yourself out in the meantime. Ahem.
There is a maelstrom on each of my plates and my plates are piled deep.
marta: Thanks. I figured there had to be a way out of the corner I’d painted myself into (oh no! another [dead] metaphor!) but have been too distracted by other stuff to work it out. Generous of you to do it for me!
I think you need to look into getting a dishwasher, though.