Gods upon gods upon gods. Big gods. Little gods. Perverse gods. Strange gods. Gods of mystery, mysterious gods. This cosmos is so full of the things called gods that one cannot walk for treading on one. Is there anything that is not god?
The little god of the toothbrush, no, that is the toothbrush. The little god that is the bathroom door, that is the stair case, that is the kettle, that is the shirt on your back, that is the oxygen molecules you absorb into every cell of your body, drawing over the surfaces of your lungs, into your blood, your heart, to the very limits of your capillaries, into every single cell, that life-giving divinity called Oxygen feeding the divinity called Your Body. Fall down in reverence.
The bad mood, the stained conscience, the mean thought. All divine beings. The good mood, the selfless deed, the languid afternoon in the long sun’s demise, all deities sublime. The familiar, the alien, the comforting, the disturbing. Gods.
They are stacked up together in fractal arrangements, endless recurring icons of magic and power. As above, so below; the structure of the tiniest is the structure of the ALL. Divine, gods all. One and many, both at the same time. Is this illogical? Illogic is the name of god. Is this contradictory? Contradiction is the name of god. (Logic and consistency are also the names of God, coincidentally).
Tragedy is a god, and serendipity is a god. Change is a god, one who facilitates all the others most eagerly. Change is, you might say, the crossroads of the gods, or perhaps the traffic cop of the gods as they comport themselves to and fro along the byways of Mystery, she who may well be the greatest of all the divinities (but who can claim to know such a thing?).
Change, the crossroad of the gods, itself a god. Standing by the crossroad called Change are two wooden pillars. They are joined by two crossed beams, forming an X between the tops of the pillars. A rope is tied to the X. A tattered, black-wrapped figure creaks and groans in the wind. It is the rope’s divine purpose to be the saddle of the figure, who is the rider of the horse called gallows. Gods stacked on gods stacked on gods.
This riding god is a crossroads god, for the crossbars of the gallows are a recursion of the crossroads of change upon which the whole sordid glory of life sings its marvelous and whimsical opera. This riding god, this dead god, hanged by the neck. And is that the broken end of a spear that thrusts from his side, like a phallus cutting through the ribs? I believe it is.
This riding, hanging, rib-fucked god is my god, god of the crossroads of change upon which vast epics and homely familiarities alike unfold. They gamble, these infinite stories, these tangled up threads. Gamble at the feet of the hanged god, at the crossroads of change. The horizon of mystery (which we call The Present) looms but never arrives. All of existence, every last bit of it, playing out in ever-more complex Mandelbrot sets below the swaying dead feet of the swaying dead god who rides the gallows.
My god, this rib-fucked god, dressed in his tatters. At his feet all of existence unfolds, stretching forth from the rim of the goddess Mystery to the rim of the goddess Mystery (id est Runa). Thus is he sometimes called All Father.
Not as though he is some patriarch, some dominator, some well-spring. No. He is weathered, weakened, withered. He is desiccated, drained, death incarnate. There is no romance in what this god is. It is a gallows-riding, wind-whipped, spear-fucked god. It is my god, or least the god that occupies my attention the most of the many gods that occupy my attention.
It is my beloved god, this god at who’s feet all the other gods unfold their hour upon the crossroads called Change as they dance from Mystery Past to Mystery Promised. I love him without varnish, without the dressings of human fear, power, or control. I do not need to make him into a pompous patriarch, would not thus deign to slander he who swings from the gallows, the blood drained from his veins. Mandrake takes root at his feet, where blood mixes with semen and seeps into earth. My beloved god, who gives life even in death.
He watches, accepts all that he sees as it is, sans alteration, sans erasure. Yet always remains unscarred, for he is not ruled by the waters that run across the river bed of his undead senses. Without judgment. Death affirms life.
See how the endless multitude of gods which comprise God pulse and throb and ebb and flow back and forth on the crossroads called Change in their voyage from Mystery to Mystery (id est Runa). See how the hanging, rib-ergi god watches. Is that the ghost of a smile that haunts his lips, curved as they are? Perhaps just the faintest hint of his love for all that he surveys? Who knows what molten life lies below that cold corpse shell? “Only death is real.”
