by Zvi Baranoff
The Deathless Gods roam the earth and mix with the human race and one needs to be extra aware and considerate of their impulses and desires. To alienate any of the Gods is always a dangerous matter. it is way too easy to get on the wrong side of Deities and then it will surely not bode well.
All the forces that move all the universes are the actions of the Ancient Ones. Sometimes the Immortal Ones take human form. Special care is needed when meeting any stranger. A vagabond could be a Deity in disguise. Strangers historically were granted special honors. We washed their feet. We offered them the best cuts of meat. We gave them a safe and comfortable place to rest. What was once true is always true. One never truly knows who a stranger might be.
The Sons of the Gods found the Daughters of Man to be blissfully satisfying, if but fleeting company and would find opportunities for chance encounters in meadows or by streams. Sometimes a God would appear as a man, sometimes as half man and half wild beast. The offsprings of these sorts of liaisons are mortal, yet inherit some Devine attributes. Once there were many such children. They were warmly enveloped into the arms of their mothers’ families, clans and tribes. The children often grew to become heroes and leaders. Their descendants dwell amongst us.
Gods live forever and cannot pass the time purely with erotic adventures. They find other distractions to fill the infinite time. Our ways give the Gods many opportunities for stimulating interactions. They can choose up sides and influence the outcome of wars and commerce and games of chance and crops and hunting and fishing and all we take on by choice or necessity or habit. They bring about the rise and fall of great civilizations. Some shall win and some shall lose. Some shall live and some will surely die. The Gods are arbitrary and capricious. Their ways are not our ways. They are not bound by our codes of behaviour.
It is best to placate the Gods. The Gods however are finicky and not easily placated. They have their own rules and customs. The Gods hand out rewards and punishments liberally and without regard to merit. They demand loyalty and exactitude. They change their demands and expectations with the shifting of the weather and the time of day. They expect our worship. They demand sacrifices from us. We, conversely, are not particularly obedient creatures. We steal fire. We open boxes best left sealed. We eat from the tree that to us is forbidden. We find ourselves cast out, wandering, uncertain and afraid. An armed guard has been placed at the gates of the garden. We call out in the wilderness and only hear the echoes of our own voices.
How long is our exile? How very long? We are blown with the wind from place to place. We long for a past we do not remember. We think in languages that are no longer spoken. We dream of lands that even our ancestors had long ago forgotten. We carry the keys to houses we never lived in. We want to go home to homes we have never known. We are driven by the winds and the tides. We are carried off by armies. We are chased by wild beasts. We are caught up in storms. There are no useful landmarks and the road signs make no sense at all. The constellations are unfamiliar, the coastlines are unknown.
Our collective memories are unsettling. We are nostalgic for the forgotten and the unknown. Sometimes, for no logical reason, we are even hopeful.
We strived to please and we so rarely did so. That was not to be. Our fate was to be left by a loving mother in a basket, led by a trusted father into the darkest woods. We carefully left a trail of breadcrumbs so we could find our way back. We were imprisoned and enslaved but we still dreamed of home. We were sold by our own families into slavery. We traded our birthrights for meals and shelter. We told truths when we should have lied and lies when the truth would have served us better. We turned east when we should have turned west and south when we should have headed north. We were cast into pits of snakes and tossed to wild beasts and yet, somehow we live.
We watch for divine signs. We try to determine meaning from the flight of a bird, the leaves of tea, from entrails, from dreams, from the writing on the walls. We seek meaning in the words, the meaning behind the words and the meaning between them as well. We place a numerical value on each and every letter but the mathematics fail us. We seek wisdom from mystics and visionaries. We hear the words uttered by the unhinged and see the distorted visions of the intoxicated.
We were told to flee and not look back. Into the wilderness we ran, hoping to save our skins, but not all of us could resist the pull of what was left behind. Some of us get away but some are turned into pillars of salt or ashes or dust. Some sail free. Some answer the sirens’ song, drown and are shattered on rocks. We wander through deserts without end. We climb over one mountain and find yet another even higher to be climbed.
We speak foreign languages, broken tongues, pidgin conglomerations. Our speech is the blurring of all the sounds of all the lands that all of our ancestors passed through on their way. Our syntax is truncated. Our grammar is shaky. Our sense of time is uncertain and irregular. Our watches are all broken. Our calendars don't synchronize and the seasons are out of order.
We are the survivors. There is no inherent nobility to surviving. The pure have been martyred or languish in dungeons. They have been swallowed by sea monsters. They have been killed by dragons. By no right earned we exist and we survive only by the whims of the Gods. It is good to be blessed by the Gods, but it might be best to be ignored.
Humankind is born in labour and we labour throughout our lives. The Gods play. We build sand castles and the Gods bring waves. Horns blow and great walls fall. The towers built to confront the Gods collapse and the architects babel in confusion.The great monuments built by the priesthoods from the Pyramids to Stonehenge to the Kaaba, to Graceland stand forever.
We stand at crossroads, uncertain, confused. Some go this way and some go that. What would Jesus do? What would Odin do? What the hell should I do? It’s complicated and has always been so. We choose a path because we have no option but to do so. Our fate remains in the hands of the Gods.
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