As to the gods...

"As to the gods, I have no means of knowing either that they exist or do not exist. For many are the obstacles that impede knowledge, both the obscurity of the question and the shortness of human life." - Diogenes Laertius

Rationally speaking, the only belief that makes sense is agnosticism. That is, admitting that we really cannot know, definitively, if there are such things as gods, or if the world around us was created by some deliberate hand. There's no real proof of it. It seems as likely as anything that it's our awareness of our mortality that drives us to seek some deeper meaning to our brief lives, some broader purpose. If god did not exist, the saying goes, man would have to create him.

On the other hand, we don't have any proof that the gods do not exist. Science tells us the universe began with a great explosion; but where the matter came from, or what set it to motion, remains an elusive theory.  I believe in science, and the scientific method - hypothesis, observation/experiment, conclusion. I also believe that there is knowledge we can scarcely fathom, much less measure. In that realm lie the gods, magic, and mystery. For that reason, I choose to believe in the gods.

Growing up, I was taught there was only one god, Yahweh, god of the Jews. (Even so, many sects have him split into three aspects.)  This belief is presented as an axiom, accepted by (or forced upon) most cultures in the Western world as simple truth for hundreds of years.

Yet from very early childhood, I was called by the gods of ancient Egypt and Greece. I became fascinated with their stories, the forces they represent, the activities on Earth that they set into motion, and their integration with the Earth itself - river nymphs, tree nymphs, the gods and goddesses of the ocean, of the forest, of the underworld. The gods are everywhere, manifest in everything we see. 

Pantheism? Perhaps. Yet I also believe that the gods are distinct entities, beings we can approach. Beings that hear us when we call to them, and reply at their whim, as unpredictable as nature itself.

The role of the gods is not to serve as our parents, indulging our every request. They watch over us, but their purposes are their own, and they take the long view. Some paths suggest that the gods are not to be bothered often, particularly not regarding trivial things, and that every approach to them should bear a gift - an offering or a sacrifice in exchange for what is requested.

They do not give without expecting us to work, in return.

The philosophy is succinctly summed up in one of Aesop's fables, that of "Hercules and the Waggoner." It goes like this:

A Waggoner was once driving a heavy load along a very muddy way. At last he came to a part of the road where the wheels sank half-way into the mire, and the more the horses pulled, the deeper sank the wheels. So the Waggoner threw down his whip, and knelt down and prayed to Hercules the Strong. “O Hercules, help me in this my hour of distress,” quoth he. But Hercules appeared to him, and said:

“Tut, man, don’t sprawl there. Get up and put your shoulder to the wheel.”

The gods help them that help themselves.

Pre-Dawn and the Wheel of the Year

I'm an early bird, so much so that I intersect with the night owls occasionally when I get up at 4:30 a.m. Even on the weekends, I'm up with the dawn, no matter when I went to bed.

The best thing about the very early morning - the wee hours - is the predawn sky and the stillness of nature. Every morning, before I get into my car and fill up my head with thoughts of my workday and what I need to do, I like to take a few minutes to look up at the night sky and listen to the wind walking through the empty branches. It's the kind of quiet that only occurs for a few hours each day, when most of the humans and animals have gone to ground and only a few creatures are stirring.

(Then I get in my car and head out, and am always surprised at how many people are out and about, going to or returning from work. Humanity is never truly at rest, it seems.)

The moon today is a waning third quarter, still boldly lighting the sky even only half-illuminated. Venus, Mars, and Jupiter shine in a jeweled arc from the east to southwest. The big dipper hangs upright over the eastern horizon. I missed Orion today - he may have set already, or was perhaps just further over the western horizon than my vantage point afforded.

In any case, it's a strangely magical, wondrous, marvelous thing to simply look up at the night sky. And yet, there's far more to it than simply appreciating the beauty of the moon and the stars. People have been observing these moving bodies since the beginning of our existence as a source of not only wonder and awe, but a means of discovering our own place in the universe, of calculating time, of establishing and connecting to its rhythms.

In ancient Egypt, the rise of the dog star, Sirius, coincided with the annual Nile flood that brought fresh, fertile soils in which they planted their crops. As the event that ruled the very rhythm of their lives, this was the date upon which they based their calendar. The flood was believed to have been the tears of Isis, weeping for her dead husband, Osiris.

  Annual flood, 1937. Click here for spectacular full-size image.


With the construction of the Aswan High Dam in 1970, the annual flood no longer occurs in Egypt. While the release of water is now regulated, and the previous fear of an excessive or insufficient flood is relieved, the lack of fresh silt means the land must now be artificially fertilized. For every advance, a price, I suppose.

It is a fascinating paradox of humanity that we are part of nature - not only that we are born of this Earth, but that all we have achieved has been based upon learning from nature, understanding how it functions, how its parts fit together, how one piece affects another - and at the same time, we have developed our entire civilization on the principle that we can manipulate our environment to suit our needs. We cut down trees to put up shelters, and grow fibers to weave into clothes, and plow up land to plant the seeds we want to grow. We're part of the Earth, and yet our history of adapting its materials to suit our needs have given us a sense of separateness from it. Some philosophies suggest we are above it, keepers of it...masters over it.

Nature laughs at such notions, and reminds us regularly how we exist here by her whim. At this moment, floodwaters in Missouri have closed roads and threaten hundreds of homes. Last week, at least 11 people were killed by tornadoes in Texas. Here in my home of Colorado, several people will lose their lives over the course of the winter in avalanches, and more will perish next summer when they get lost hiking in the woods, or are struck by lightning on a mountaintop.

It's no wonder to me that for millenia, humans have both revered and feared nature, developing stories to explain her activities and practices to placate her more destructive flights of fancy. The gods of nature are typically gods of Chaos, and a common mythological pattern is the overthrow of these Chaos gods by the gods of Order - the gods who give life and guidance to humans. Typically these were the gods around which the society centered its worship.

But it's worth noting that the gods of Order were born of the gods of Chaos themselves.