Way back in the old days, I don't know whether they were bad or good, we invented gods as the need arose.
Every little town had its own god.
When the town was conquered, it got a new god.
Inventing new gods was good work, if you could get it. The market for prophets was small, but did produce some blockbuster hits. Moses and Yahweh, for example, had legs. Jesus was big. Supplanted Zeus himself, as well as Athena and the whole pantheon.
We lost something when that happened. Today we worry about species being stamped out. I prefer to worry about lost gods. These are cultural artifacts that someone took the trouble to create, and here we go, willy-nilly, just stamping them out.
The ancient gods were extraordinarily useful. If you wanted to insure having a baby, or a crop, or success in war, you prayed to the god in charge of fertility or the war god. If you were a fisherman, you prayed to the god of that.
Have you ever invented a god?
I have.
It's fun.
See, I never wanted to bother Super-god with my lousy golf shots. So I call on Ralph.
He's my god of golf.
As gods go, Ralph is a loser.
He's never there when you need him, helpless on the fairways, and terrible on putts.
His short game stinks.
"Damn you, Ralph!" I pray.
I got the idea when playing with some Italians. Not just Italian-Americans, but a native of Rome, as in Italy.
"Dio cane!" Mario would yell after missing a putt.
"What does that mean?" I asked my partner whose name ends with a vowel.
"God is a dawg," he replied.
"God is a dog? Where does that come from?" I asked.
"It goes way back," he explained.
I should say.
The Italians haven't believed in God since Augustus.
They know about gods.
They've had experience with gods.
They know how to speak to God, to let Him know how they really feel.
I never stood too close to Mario after that.
Lightning on golf courses is very dangerous and now I know where it comes from.
So I invented Ralph, the powerless god. Not too smart, either.
Would you rather have your prayers ignored by a smart god or a dumb one?
Exactly.
That's how I feel, too.
I think it would be a good idea to market a bobble-headed, make-it-yourself, god kit, you know, for the kids.
Need a date for the prom?
Build a god of prom dates.
Trying to get lucky?
Build a get-lucky god from a kit. Stick pins you know where.
They have bobble-head dolls for Supreme Court justices.
Really.
Closest thing to a pantheon we have.
You can collect them and put 'em on a shelf.
Light candles if you want.
Or burn them.
If you can burn flags you can burn justices.
That'll teach them.
I prefer to make my own.
Super-God, the Big Guy in the Sky, is good for overall things like War and Peace. Well, those are too small actually.
We can have war gods for that.
Mars, we'll call him, although that may have been done.
We can bring him back.
Resurrect a god, so to speak.
That may have been done, too.
Precedent, we call this.
Super-God is in charge of my salvation.
I need a really forgiving god for this, because the fact is I doubt this one exists.
I hope he believes more in my than I in him.
So far I haven't invented any female deities.
Why is that, I wonder.
I'll work on it.
I've got no place to go when I go, not that I'm planning on going any time soon.
There's no where there.
This is a problem.
I'd better get busy on my bobble-head-god God before he gets ticked.
I'll put him on my shelf.
We could have an American god, or God.
99% of Americans believe in God, I read recently, although this sounds high.
Far fewer Europeans admit to believing in God.
One of us is nuts, of course.
Americas God must look a bit like Uncle Sam, with lightning bolts. Or Michelangelo's Old-man God, wrapped in a flag. No, I don't know how many stars on the flag. It's gone from 13 to 50. Maybe we should put an image of the whole globe where the stars are, or the major military districts, to reflect our ambitions if there really is an American God. Or we could build an Ark.
Could be fun putting this one together.
Put him on a shelf, too, to look over the household.
Make sure we don't get into any bad wars.
Save us from bad presidents.
Make the voters do the right thing.
Protect us from attack.
Say where were You on 9-11? I wonder.
Over in the sand?
Whose fault was that?
Not ours.
His.
Dio cane!
***
UPDATE August 8, 2006
Well, you can buy a seated white marble Zeus for $85 in San Francisco as you walk in the store, $65 on the way out without buying. The place is called Jeets on Polk near Pine and my guess is that the woman who runs the place is a native of the Indian subcontinent, assisted by her young son for translating.
Under the glass counter are all sorts of idols and gods, mainly Egyptian deities such as sphynxes, busts of Tutankhamen, scarabs. Egypt, it seems, is the place to look for god dolls.
I saw no bobble-head god figures, although there were a few Hulks and other action figures. Since boys don't play with dolls, 'action-figure' is the term for G.I. Joe and various transformers.
In the rear of the store are all the bongs. As far as I'm aware, the only thing to do with a bong is to get wasted on Mj.
Sign on the counter reads "Any reference to illegal use will result in denial of service."
Let me guess: The place got busted and their lawyer told them here's what they have to post to stay out of trouble with the local cops. Counters and counters just filled with glass bongs.
Maybe the gods up front are to ward off the police. Think it'll take way more than a few clay-footed idols to keep out San Francisco's Finest, however.
You would think that if it is correct that 99% of Americans say they believe in God that there'd be a big market for pictures and statues of God, even if they were made in Egypt. Or China. Or India. Or Indonesia or the Philippines, wherever the labor is cheap.
I guess you can go into church-related stores and buy wall plaques with religious statuary. Menorahs and mezuzahs can be found in the outer Richmond where there was an influx of refugees from the former Soviet Union. Since the collapse many Russians have settled here, and you can find Russian delis whose signs you can't read, unless Cyrillic is your bag. In San Fran you can also find Greek and Hebrew signs, not to mention something called a Mexicatessen on 24th Street, where you can buy 'puro,' the hot, red, powdered chili peppers you spoon into some browned chop meat along with chopped onion to make a pot of chili con carne that'll melt your fillings.
I think I'm going out of the god business. It's old. Some years ago my wife and I visited Greece and then boarded a ship that took us through the Aegean Islands and over to Turkey, the former Ionia. We visited Kusadasi and the ancient no-longer-thriving ghost towns of Miletus and Ephesus. Ephesus was where St. Paul was thrown out for denouncing the sale of figurines of the various gods. That was the main business of the town, selling figurines of the gods. Paul was bad for business. He needed to go. He left, but wasn't happy about it. Some day I'll read his letter to the Ephesians, right after I get around to reading his letter to the Corinthians, another bunch of brigands, no longer around.
We're much too sophisticated nowadays to rely on figurines, stained glass, statues, etc., depicting top deities, although plaster saints still seem popular. The theory is, I've read, that people don't pray to the statuary, but use the images to focus belief to ease entry into a prayerful mood.
Good, I don't want to see any golden calf worshiping around here, do I.
The fear that people might worship images has resulted in great controversy over the centuries. The iconoclasts enter the churches and demolish the paintings, statues, and stained glass images, or icons. This is why they call people who tear down the powers that be "iconoclasts." They tear down the icons. Barry Bonds is an icon of baseball. He's being torn apart, maybe, by a steroid scandal. How was he supposed to know the clear liquid or cream was good for him in a steroid sort of way? The baseball he hit out of the park recently for a new home run record sold for some $225,000 to a car dealer. I'm in the wrong business when the used car dealers are springing that kinda dough for a used baseball.
You used to be able to buy a house for that kind of money, but not around here, not any longer. Try about three times that.
Good lord!
The store was empty of customers, I might add. No one buying gods or bongs this morning, I'm afraid.
May not be such a hot market for idols after all.
Oh, well.