Nobody's Right If Everybody's Wrong

Welcome to "The Gods Are Bored!" Oh, readers! A dreadful sin has occurred! Two days ago, when I took my daughter The Spare out shopping, I spilled half a bottle of Robitussin on the back seat of my car! Stained upholstery! Where is my scourge?

Actually the car smells really good right now. And that just goes to show you how sin can creep into your life. Smells great one day, goes rank the next. You'd best bet I got out there with the scrub brush and Mr. Clean and went to work on that foul blot! Nor did I rest until the deed was done! Hallelujia!

If you're just joining us, we've begun a "Gods Are Bored" series that is taking a look at a book called Deliver Us from Evil, by Cindy Jacobs. Cindy's a self-styled Christian prophet. You can read up on her by following the links in the previous post.

Cindy covers a lot of ground in the second chapter of her book. She heaps scorn on such renowned bored goddesses as Diana, Hecate, and "Ereschigal." The latter, says Cindy, was called upon by people "when they cast love spells for homosexual partners."

Okay, yes, I went looking for "Ereschigal," figuring she might like to be interviewed sometime. Turns out her name is spelled Ereshkigal, and she's part of the Babylonian pantheon. Goddess of the Underworld, to be specific.

If you are reading this and you're queer, please be advised that we at "The Gods Are Bored" have not been able to fact-check Cindy's assertion about Ereshkigal. But why wait around for confirmation? You need a partner, and Ereshkigal is most certainly bored, so there's a nice tip!

Enough sidetracking. Gotta get to the jist of this chapter. Mrs. Cindy Jacobs defines "magic" as follows:

"a form of communication involving the supernatural world. An attempt is made to affect the course of present and/or future events by means of ritual actions (especially ones that involve the symbolic imitation of what the practitioner wants to happen), and/or by means of formulaic recitations which describe the desired outcome and/or invoke gods, demons, or the spirits believed to be resident in natural substances."

Sounds like a prayer chain to me. Throw in a rosary and a couple of "Hail Marys," and you're bound to cure that cancerous tumor.

You see, this is "Them vs. Us" thinking at its most pathetic. All through the Bible, people pray to God to smite their enemies, many times meeting with gory success. And that's okay, because that's God. But if some nice, tax-paying Pagan lady leaves a couple of ceramic elves by a stream and prays to Mother Nature to protect that stream from a developer who wants to make it a sewage sluice, well ... that's sin.

I wonder where Mrs. Cindy Jacobs stands on upholstery stains. Guess I'll have to keep reading. Her book beats Weight Watchers as an appetite suppressant.