Of Goddesses and Birthday Angels

 Did you ever have something happen to you that absolutely defied all odds and just seemed basically incredible? I have experienced this a few times, and it's always startling. Makes the most logical person scratch their head, because it is just magic.

Two weeks ago, after a long day at work, I popped into the thrift store. They always have a shelf of trinkets right inside the door -- they have Christmas stuff on it all year around, as well as other little do-dads and statuettes and such.

The moment I looked at the shelf I saw her:

EXHIBIT A: THE ODDS ARE PHENOMENAL

This is a Lefton birthday angel ca. 1966. I have never seen anything ceramic of this vintage in the thrift store before. And of course, March is my birthday month.

It gets better.

You see, I actually had a birthday angel like this, had her for decades in fact.

I gave her away as part of a fundraiser to save Terrapin Run.

Only my oldest of old-timers will remember how a rural community in Western Maryland had to pay a land-use lawyer to fight a developer who wanted to build housing for 11,000 people alongside a little Tier I stream called Terrapin Run. While the lawyer supported our cause, he needed to eat. So the little consortium to save the stream had all kinds of auctions and such to pay the lawyer bills. I sent them jewelry, and I sent them my little March angel I had owned since I was a kid. Had tears in my eyes when I turned her over.

In addition to giving what I could to the fundraising, I worked magic along the bank of Terrapin Run. For years. The Goddess I petitioned was Venus Cloacina, the Roman Goddess of the sewers. I figured if any deity would object to a crystal clear stream being turned into a wastewater dumping ground, it would be Cloacina.

Developers almost always win these battles. But this developer didn't. He lost like an egg-sucking dog and limped his saggy, broke-ass butt back to Washington, DC.

Ever since then I have thanked Cloacina whenever I visit that area, because I truly believe She answered my prayers.

Back to the present: What are the vast odds of finding a 50-year-old ceramic angel, exactly like the one I donated, just sitting on the shelf at the thrift store I visit twice a month? (By the way, she cost me $3.50.)

It gets better.

I had been waiting six weeks to hear from the attorney in Bedford who was handling my purchase of a property in the land of my ancestors. Not two days after bringing home the March angel, the documents and paperwork arrived in my email.

I am as scientific as the next guy, but that angel was nothing but an omen. Sent by Cloacina.

Don't pish tosh me now, reader. Terrapin Run is less than 10 miles from the property.

Which is now my property. It has closed.

I have land. And a Goddess. Bless them both.

On Being a Content Creator

 Have you ever asked a teenager what they want to do with their life? I'll put this another way: When you were a teenager, what did you want to do with your life?

I had a solid career goal myself. I wanted to be on "The Partridge Family." 

This year a new career goal has surfaced among the students at my school. More than one student, both genders, report wanting to be a "content creator" or an "influencer."

The ready availability of uncensored social media platforms has made many teens long to be influential through posting something on TikTok or YouTube. They are now listing "content creator" as career goals.

I really think it's a shame that people think of Tide pod-eating when the words "content creator" get flung out there. In its basic concept, "content creating" is making something that didn't exist before. The idea of content creation casts a wide net, and that's why I am proud to say I am a content creator for "The Gods Are Bored!"

The difference between me and my students is that they want millions of followers, while I'm completely and blissfully satisfied with 225. Well, ahem, I would love for the Smithsonian Institution to accept my petition for immortality, but hey. You can't win them all.

Sometimes I'm frivolous. On rare occasions I'm serious. But funny or not, I'm fine with the appellation of  "content creator." For 20 happy years I created content for reference books (and wrote a few books myself), but I think "content creator" actually fits me better than "author." Certainly fits me better than "thinker" or "sage" or some such.

Now, let's move on to this whole "influencer" thing. I definitely want to be an Internet influencer, and my cat is not pulling his weight in this regard.

I put up salacious content like this all the time, and he just doesn't get any traction! Three hundred likes here, 65 likes there, it doesn't amount to the millions and millions I need to get that lucrative contract from Fancy Feast and Royal Canin.

This is in every way akin to how bored deities feel. All you want is a few disciples, a few faithful to light up a shrine or something on your behalf. But the field is crowded. So many content creators, so many influencers! No wonder perfectly sound Goddesses wind up selling funnel cakes at the flea market. It's a cold, hard world out there.

Boost my cat, will you? And poor Sedna ... will you boost Her too? So grateful!

Magic Wands and Why You Need One

Hello and welcome to "The Gods Are Bored!" I'm your hostess, Anne. I have a magic wand. Two, actually: one for ritual, one for everyday. In a post below I explained how to make a magic wand for everyday use. You don't need some polished, expensive craftsman-made item! In fact, that item probably has its maker's mark on it too deeply. A self-made wand. That's what you want.

But why do you need a wand? Why are you reading this? Did you Google "use a magic wand" and find me? If so, howdy!

If you're a regular tourist on this site, you too might want to consider making a working wand. I've been writing "The Gods Are Bored" since 2005, and I've been alive a lot longer than that, and I have never known a time when I was more in need of a magic wand.

Maybe you've noticed, things are scary out there.

Maybe you've noticed that people are carrying guns.

Maybe you hear people talk harshly about other people who look like you, or feel like you do.

Maybe you have to keep deep secrets about yourself ... things you wish you could talk about with your friends and family.

Maybe you wonder why God is male, and why He tortures people for eternity if they don't follow His narrow path.

Maybe you feel a profound disconnect between what you see and hear from the president (or about him) and the respect he gets from your parents, your church, your community.

Maybe someone you love is sick or dying. Maybe someone you love has just died.

Maybe you have a child, or children, and you want something different for them. Something better.

Maybe you are struggling with drugs. Alcohol. Body image. Identity. Gender. You are struggling all alone, so far as you know.


Well, a wand is a helper, not a cure-all. But would you rather have help, or nothing? Halfway there is better than never getting started.

Your magic wand has two purposes: protection and comfort. You cannot damage another person with your wand. (Better said: just don't do it ... Do you want to be worse than the worst person you know?) But you can preserve and protect yourself.

Remember that wands help turn your intentions (sort of like deep wishes) into actions.

Magic wands give protective power to people who feel powerless. They stem from a time when the forces in power -- the king, his lords, the Church, the law -- could prey upon ordinary folks with no consequences. But a wand. A wand. In the right hands, whether known or secret, a wand could stem the damage. It is the work of the Old Ones to heal and protect. The Old Ones, lingering in the shadows but never overshadowed, have seen all of this before. They give you the idea to create a wand. They give your wand the magic, so you can ride through these storms.

Grasp your wand lightly by the Earth end and say, "This wand brings me peace. This wand brings me power. This wand stands between me and the mayhem."

Start there. It works.

Thalia Paints Goddesses

Welcome to "The Gods Are Bored," still and always dedicated to deities who have too much time on Their hands! What happens to a Goddess when Her praise and worship team falls apart? Can you imagine the stress? Eternal life is so unfair!

There's always an upside, though. A Goddess who has plenty of time on Her hands can sit for an awesome portrait. That's where Thalia Took comes in.

Thalia has been painting portraits of Goddesses since before I started blogging. Her work is phenomenal.

Where do I start? I think my personal favorite Thalia Took portrait is Sedna.

But look at this one of Artemis!

Stirring, no? Let's jump pantheons again!

and again!

Freyja is here for you, Yellowdog Granny!

Thalia has an absolutely amazing web site, where you can see all the bored Goddesses you ever heard of, and many more that get absolutely no press at all anymore. In these particularly trying times for American women, it's nice to be reminded that there are Goddesses just lining up to help us all out of this mess.

Thalia has a patronage link called Patreon. I had never heard of it, but you can basically pledge her a little sum of money that helps her buy nectar and henna and incense and other things that Goddesses crave. If you sign on to Thalia's Patreon account, you can pretty much pat yourself on the back that you're championing the cause of bored deities. (She does male deities too, at least some of the decent ones.)

So, in honor of getting 202 followers myself, I'm asking you to biff on over to see Thalia and all the fabulous work she's doing! Let me know what you think.

How Do I Stop a God Fight?

Help! Help! It's a deity smack-down in my living room! And one of them is a true expert at ruining furniture!

The bored God Huracan arrived here in New Jersey today, and Cloacina, my dear Goddess, greeted him with the cold fury of a Roman statue!

There's a lot to be said for resting bitch face.

Cloacina was recently charged with keeping our nation's waterways clean, having been given my spare bedroom as Her personal sanctum. She taught herself how to turn on the t.v. with the remote (something I have never been capable of doing). Cloacina, therefore, has watched both Harvey and Irma, nonstop, clicking from Fox News to MSNBC, to CNN and the nightly networks. OMBG, is she pissed!

And here comes Huracan, winded and worn out after a double booking.

Hey, you two, can you take it outside? Cloacina, remember that you shouldn't shoot a gun at a hurricane!

For the love of fruit flies. How can I mediate this thing?

Okay. Okay. Both of you. Take a deep breath and handle this like deities, not roller derby contestants. Thank you.

Huracan, you really outdid yourself. I mean, really really outdid yourself. However (please listen, Goddess Cloacina), You are not responsible for Your ascendant power. Yes, You've gotten larger, and greedier, and more destructive -- which is Your duty and prerogative as a hurricane God. But that level of destruction You're so proud of? How much of it is the product of humankind? Look: they built on barrier islands, low-lying keys, floodplains and in swamps. Places Your original praise and worship team never populated in numbers, out of respect for You. You can't take credit for all this devastation. It's hubris.

Cloacina, I'll bet you know enough Greek to recognize the word hubris.

Now, Cloacina, I know Huracan doesn't want to hear this (especially in His severely weakened state ... just a little mist over Jersey). But those same humans who had their shoreline properties, their boats and their businesses reduced to splinters, will go right back and fix everything up again! Yes, no matter how foolish it is to live in a part of the world that can be leveled by a bored god, people are going to do it. Which means that yes, they will have to boil their water for awhile. (I know, I know how angry that makes you, Goddess!) But they'll fix it. Until the next time. They will. And it won't take long, either. Our government will pay for everything, even though the people asking for the money generally don't want to pay taxes or regulate polluters.

What we have here is a failure to communicate between two fundamentally opposed deities. Huracan was once worshiped as a destroyer, His praise-and-worship team truly fearful of Him, and justifiably so. Cloacina, at the other end of the spectrum, drew all of Her respect from Her willingness to help clean up the human world. Add to that the fact that these two deities are from completely different pantheons from different continents, and you've got a whole lot of area for dissent.

Huracan, you cannot take complete credit for this. Humans are stupid.

Cloacina, calm down. Humans will fix this so they can go on being stupid.

Which means, Huracan, that You'll get many more shots at the same target.

But Cloacina, let Huracan do the shooting! Don't You shoot Him.

Can we just settle down and get along? Tell You what: I'll go get some Chinese carryout and confuse both of You utterly. While I'm gone, don't You dare stain my upholstery!

Do the Gods Hate Donald Trump?

For at least 20 years, climate scientists have been predicting that, with a warming planet, hurricanes would become larger and more frequent. This is not information that was passed to them via a burning bush that didn't get consumed. These are predictions based upon the behavior of wind and water, air currents and storm surges.

Please don't tell the bored deities who visit me for tea and Tastykakes, but I've always been quietly skeptical about Higher Powers. There has never seemed to me to be anything predictable about the behavior of Gods and Goddesses, including the busy God.

Still, you have to wonder.

Never, in my impressive lifetime, has there been two massive hurricanes in a space of two weeks. If you count Jose, that's three, and if you count Katia, that's four. In two weeks.

Keep in mind, this is September. Hurricane season lasts until November.

EXHIBIT A: DO THE GODS HATE DONALD TRUMP?

Is there possibly some agency in this? Chills me to the bone to think so, because a deity who would want to make a point about climate change at this particular juncture would be putting a lot of innocent plant life, creatures, and people in danger. And I'm not just talking about the USA. I'm talking about all over the world. South Asia is being inundated as well. Let's not even address the wildfires out West, or the uninhabitable Caribbean islands.

But if you want to make a point ... if you want to make a point to leadership that denies climate change science and is actively seeking to squelch it ... what could you do that would attract more attention than to fling hurricanes and monsoons around with reckless abandon?

It has been a mere three months and a week since Donald Trump announced that he was pulling America out of the Paris Climate Accord. Is it possible, possible, that a bored deity or two (or 200,000) could be so infuriated as to visit the good ol' Wrath of God(s) on this nation?

Okay, it's most likely a coincidence. A predicted eventuality that just happened to follow close in the wake of a boneheaded and despicable pro-polluter decision.

What a coincidence, huh? Wow.

Another Goodbye

Welcome to The Gods Are Bored, where we find our mission accomplished! Many bored deities of many pantheons are no longer bored. They have growing praise and worship teams who are seeking to communicate with them genuinely, humbly, and with curiosity. That's all a deity really wants. I should know, I've interviewed dozens of Them.

I've come to an end of the road. I find I have trouble infusing my life -- and this blog -- with the humor that once animated it. But before you bag The Gods Are Bored, pick a year. Any year. I wrote a lot of funny stuff, and it's all still here online. You could literally read me three times a week for five or six years. Some of the political screeds are stale, but the rest of it, the interviews, social commentary, and Pagan child-rearing, hasn't changed. And maybe I'll re-discover my funny bone. There are many reasons that it has disappeared. I'm hopeful it will return in the fullness of time.

Yesterday I got up at 4:00 a.m. to go to the beach for one of my favorite pastimes, collecting sea glass. When I got to the beaches on Absecon Inlet, they were covered with bulldozers and chain link fences. Somehow, economically depressed Atlantic City has found money to construct a sea wall straight down the inlet, so that the five sea glass beaches will disappear. Two of them were already off limits.

I watched the sun rise over one of the smaller beaches that has yet to be bulldozed. It was so peaceful and beautiful. The tide was going out, and the waves lapped gently on the shore.

 This realm of King Triton and Queen Oshun will be altered because storms like Hurricane Sandy impinge upon the high-end real estate in the area. The sea wall is being constructed by the Army Corps of Engineers, those humans who seek to impose their will on the Goddess, to little avail.

I had bonded with this stretch of beach, pleased that it soothed my aching longing for Appalachia. Now I'm aching for Appalachia and Absecon Inlet. Change, change. Daughters grown, farm sold, beaches bulldozed, aching joints, vultures no longer wintering in the area, dissolution of spiritual bonds. Can't shrug things off like I used to with a la-di-dah.

Yesterday was my swan song at the sea glass beach. The God and Goddess took pity on me and gave me a parting gift that will forever be special in my heart. Where do I go now?

There's one more post I'll put up. Yet another agent has showered my novel, Gray Magic, with indifference. Therefore, my next post will be the PDF of Gray Magic. It's yours, free, to shower with your own indifference. It's not perfect. It needs the editorial hand it never got,because it didn't ever get that far into the process. Still I think it's a good story, with a real ending.

Here's my gift from King Triton and Queen Oshun. It's my fourth and final beach marble. All glory, laud, and honor to the Deities of the Deep!

Blessed be,
Anne Johnson
THE MERLIN OF BERKELEY SPRINGS

A Lesson in Resilience

Every winter, the town of Phoenixville, Pennsylvania holds a festival based on -- big "duh" here -- the Phoenix. The Heir and I make a pilgrimage to Phoenixville to participate in this event because it has a sacred application to life.

The festival occurred yesterday, in a deluge of rain. I told Heir we would go anyway, so long as the precipitation was water and not something frozen. Phoenixville is a pretty long way from where I live.

What happens in Phoenixville is this: After drumming and dancing by people clad in Firebird costumes, a giant bird sculpture made of wood gets set on fire. How does this happen in a pelting rain storm? Well, the thing is chock a block with accelerant.

Artists and builders work on the phoenix sculpture for months before the event. This year's bird was over 30 feet tall.

Until someone courting a maximum smite of Bored God karma burned it down at 3:00 a.m., the morning before the festival.

Phoenixville held the festival anyway. In a day's work, in pelting rain, its residents built a smaller but still inspiring substitute bird. With the dark ashes of the prematurely immolated bird still on the field, the new bird smoked, caught, and sent bright flames into the night sky.

How inspiring! What a lesson in resilience ... one I needed after a soul-sucking week at my workplace.

One of the traditions of the Firebird festival is that you can pay a small fee to have an Intention for the new year put into a box and sent Heavenward as the sculpture burns. This ritual had to be scrapped when the vandals struck.

But Heir and I are ourselves resilient. Heir made two origami birds while we ate dinner (the iconic Speck's Chicken in Collegeville, PA). We wrote our intentions on our paper birds and committed them, with prayers, to one of the smaller bonfires on the festival site. I brought a stick from that fire home to burn at Yuletide.

There we stood, Heir and I, dripping but unbent while the flames crested a sea of umbrellas. We knew the original bird had burned down before we left for Phoenixville. Like the other people there, we stubbornly proved that all which falls will rise again.

Blessed be the mighty Phoenix, the Sacred Firebird! All hail!

Ten Things That Raise the Hackles of the Bored Gods

I know, I know ... you're saying to yourself, "How does Anne get an inside track to the bored gods?" Have you no faith? I compiled an exhaustive survey of over 300 downsized deities, and here are the things that they're hating on just now:

1. Fracking. Hades says that if one more drill bit comes through the roof of His bedroom, He is going to send us an 8-point earthquake. You heard it here first.

2. Drones. Even the War Gods categorically detest drones and even guided missiles. Please forgive them for that, reader. It shows how old-fashioned they are, with antiquated notions about being able to visibly identify your enemy before you start randomly killing.

3. Global climate change. Only the gods are supposed to change the climate, and They are really pissed that the human race has figured out how to do this. They say They will issue a few more gentle warnings, and then ... forget it. We reap the oven.

4. Lil Bub. This one came out of nowhere. Just jealousy, I suppose. Or overkill.

5. Genetically Modified Organisms. The bored gods say They gave us some latitude to breed plants and animals in an old-fashioned way, leading to dachshunds and sweet corn. But splicing genes? Evil! Only the bored gods can alter genetics. Again comes a warning from various pantheons with no specific threat attached.

6. The busy god. Other deities claim They have never seen such hatred as this busy god engenders, especially since so much of it is aimed at other followers of the same god. The Aztec pantheon attributes this hatred to overpopulation of the planet, while the Norse deities blame it on global warming.

7. Machines. The vast majority of bored deities see machines of all kinds (except simple ones like the wheel and the pulley) as a threat to the future of the human race. More than one Goddess said that going back to grinding with a mortar and pestle would be preferable to hours spent on Facebook.

8. Greed. Have you ever heard of a deity who liked greedy people? This one is no surprise.

9. Bottled water. A hatred of this is pervasive among the bored gods, with more than one saying it should only be handed out for free, and only where the existing water supply is dirty or depleted.

10. Inconclusive response. Many of the questionnaires came back listing "Amazon" as something the bored gods hate. Our researchers cannot determine whether the deities meant the company, the warriors, or the river. Further study is needed.

Keeper of a Shrine

Welcome to "The Gods Are Bored," beginning of summer vacation edition! Is that my pulse I feel, tapping gently in my wrist? Oh! I'm alive! Not yet defeated by my work!

A few weeks ago I took stock of my backyard shrine (The Shrine of the Mists, dedicated to all deities who have been forgotten by humankind). It needed some attention. The pebble base was dirty and hard-packed, a consequence of being buried under snow for five weeks. So I pulled out all the treasures: the crystals, sea glass, marbles, jacks, bits of pottery, minerals, geo-cache trinkets, Marcellus shale from home. All of this I put into a bag.

Yesterday, Mr. J and I went to the Jersey Shore. I got about six pounds of pebbles from the sea glass beach. It was my idea to add the shore pebbles to the base before cleaning the treasures and returning them to the shrine.

This morning when I opened the bag of shore pebbles, I noticed something right away. The color skewed to dark gray. There were tons of dark gray pebbles.

Life is a mixture of light and darkness. We don't want either to prevail. So I sifted the pebbles and removed a number of the slate-gray ones ... but not all of them. Just enough to make the mixture more polyglot. Then I washed the treasures and placed them overtop the pebbles.

Here's the final result. Must admit I don't have a good camera.

This shrine contains rocks from Appalachia, crystals from Arkansas, sea glass from the Chesapeake Bay and the Atlantic Ocean, a broken ceramic horse head from my uncle Earl's midden pile, a trident-shaped miniature fork from a beach in Absecon, and marbles from the thrift store. There's a dragon made by The Heir long ago -- that's it on the left upper corner. And a little faerie ball ornament that I bought at a local landscape place. But this is not an inert monument. Mosquitoes lurk in its recesses, and pears fall on it from the tree above.

I've been toying with the idea of solar-powered lights, but just now I light a candle at dusk and place it in the center of the shrine. Depending upon the mosquitoes (who have as much right to the place as me), I say prayers for whoever needs them, petitioning the ancient bored deities and praising Them.

This little shrine is easy to maintain, and if I move I can take it along. It's built on a brick base, and the rocks are not secured. I don't plan to make it any larger. The only expense is the candles, and I get those at the thrift store mostly.

Okay, digressed from the sermon a bit. When I had restored the Shrine of the Mists to its better-than-ever glory, I found myself staring at a smallish pile of very negative-looking slate-gray pebbles. What to do with all that negative energy? I mulled and mulled. Then I flung the pebbles randomly into the overgrown ivy at the edge of the yard. In this way I dissipated the extra darkness in a non-threatening way.

Keeping a shrine is a marvelous thing. There's a place of peace in my yard. It glows at night. The deities it serves are happy with its Neolithic simplicity. May there be peace in all the Quarters. May there be peace at my shrine.

Nary a Spade Has Been Turned

Have you ever seen a cat that knows it has a mouse cornered under the refrigerator? That cat will sit there for days, totally attentive, waiting for the mouse to emerge. Cats are tenacious that way.

Housing developers are tenacious, too. Once they've bought a parcel of land, it doesn't matter how much common sense, local opposition, and state regulations stand in their way. They just keep sitting there, waiting for the pay day, waiting for that moment when a commissioner can be bribed, or the administration changes in the state capital, or the opponents run out of money for a land-use lawyer.

One such determined individual, Michael Carnock, has now been trying for years and years to get something built on a choice morsel of land that is hell-and-gone into the mountains of Western Maryland. The aforementioned morsel is called Terrapin Run, named after a delightful seasonal stream that tumbles through it.

Mr. Carnock's plans for a 4,000-unit, 11,000-person town in an area where there is currently nothing but a two-lane road and lots of woods has hit upon a few snags. As in, there aren't even any churches in the neighborhood, let alone schools, sewage treatment plants, or CVS pharmacies. Finally seeing the light, the bone-headed Mr. Carnock has scaled his plans back to 900 units. Even this has met with a polite but firm "no way" from Maryland's natural resources people. So of course Mr. Carnock is suing everyone in sight, like a cat whose coveted mouse slipped through a hole in the siding and escaped.

Sometimes, when developers buy mountain land and can't build cities on it, they timber it to smithereens. I've driven past Terrapin Run at least once a year for the past decade, and I don't think the land has been disturbed at all. (It had been timbered by previous ownership. That helps.)

Oh, but you should just see that pretty little stream, Terrapin Run! I know you've seen one like it. The water is so pure that you can count the stones on the bottom. And it makes that charming swishy, trickly noise that those cunning little dry run creeks make.

Awhile back, I placed an intention on that land and petitioned the Goddess Cloacina to guard it for me. She has been doing a fabulous job as the litigation drags on. In July I'll be going up that way again, so if you want to add your protective spells to the place and its sacred little stream, just communicate with me or Cloacina.

If all else fails, if Maryland is suddenly beset with a Koch brother as governor, or a clamor arises for housing units 35 miles from the nearest doctor, we still have an ace in our hands, my friends.

 The Terrapin Run watershed is home to Harperella, a bona fide endangered plant that relies on seasonal fluctuations in freshwater streams. Granted, our federal endangered species laws are being trampled, but this plant literally only grows on two waterways. I'm pinning my faith on a little white flower.

We who love the land should love not to build on it where it otherwise has been undisturbed. That should be a tenet of sensible world stewardship. Rebuild before starting something new.

I'd be willing to bet that you're seeing such foolishness in your own community -- big, ugly developments springing up like pimples on a cheek, while nearby sit older neighborhoods just ripe for rehab.

If it's your lifetime dream to live in the mountains, take some advice from this expat Appalachian: Move to an established town. If you thought this past winter was bad, just re-live it in your mind, but add complete solitude and steep, windy roads to the mix. Mr. Carnock not only neglected to provide for churches and pharmacies when he proposed his fetching hamlet. He forgot all about the weather. He could have asked any Johnson. We'd have been glad to tell him how much and how often the flakes fly in that neck of the woods.

May no spade be turned on Terrapin Run. May no spade ever be turned on Terrapin Run. In this little slice of the world, may the peace of the land prevail.

Sermon's over! Time to watch a baseball game!

Dinner Plans

Welcome to "The Gods Are Bored," a favorite haunt for all the Spirits of Trickery and Mayhem since 2005! Sly Anansi and cheeky Loki do really funny things when they're bored (which is less and less often these days). I've had me some grand times with them over the years.

Which is why they've both popped in for an interview today! Other people ask Heloise for hints, but me? I go straight to the Jokers. Please give a warm, wonderful, Gods Are Bored welcome to Loki and Anansi, Gods of Trickery!

Anne: Sacred Fellows, I have a problem.

Anansi: Oh, I love problems! I tend to think of them as challenges.

Loki: Brain teasers, if you will.

Anne: Here's the scoop. My daughter The Spare has celebrated turning 20 by getting herself a boyfriend.

Loki: You've got the wrong deities here, Anne. Love is not our specialty.

Anansi: Anne knows that, for the love of fat flies!

Anne: Yeah, I do know that. Here's the scoop. This new boyfriend has strictly religious parents ... and I don't mean Pagan ... there's a deep well of conservatism there. He hates Maryland. But worst of all, he's allergic to cats!

Loki and Anasi burst into sustained laughter.

Anansi: It worked, Loki! We chose the perfect boyfriend for The Spare!

Loki: Don't take credit where it isn't due, Anansi ... although I know you love to do that. Even we would not have thought to throw in the cat allergy. Classic!

Anne: Spare is bringing this fellow around for a spot of supper next Saturday. She wants him to think she has a normal family.

Loki and Anansi burst into sustained laughter.

Loki: Of course you aren't going to comply with this directive.

Anne: I don't see how I can! Spare has specifically requested that I abstain from throwing road kill carcasses into the back yard. What if I see some bloated possum that would be a fit offering to the Sacred Thunderbird?

Anansi (to Loki): We've got to find a dead possum. This is South Jersey. Piece of cake.

Anne: What should I wear?

Loki: How about that t-shirt that says, "God is a comedian, playing to an audience that is afraid to laugh?"

Anansi: You have four Vulture Fest t-shirts ... I like the bright red one. But for the best effect, most definitely ...

Anansi and Loki together: MUMMER'S SUIT!

Anne: You don't think that's over the top?

Loki: Anne, with you there is no top.

Anne: This is the problem. Spare wants her family to look normal. I'm not even sure what normal looks like anymore. I haven't been a Methodist since 2005, and that was where I got all my clues on normal.

Anansi:  Christians. So damn serious. Not one funny story in a book 1,000 pages long!

Loki: Well, some of them are funny without meaning to be. The one about the woman being created out of the man's rib ... cracks me up every time.

Anne: How in the world do I prepare this house for someone who is allergic to cats? Right now I've got three inside and another one outside.

Anansi: Yeah, and the couch you just trash-picked for fifty bucks comes from a house that had two cats. Didn't you see how Gamma was sniffing it up when Mr. J and Heir hauled it in here?

Loki: That one was my dodge.

Anansi: Do say! Good job!

Loki and Anansi high-five.

Loki: What did you do with the little sign that said, "$50?"

Anne: I threw it away, of course!

Loki: Dig it out. Put it back on the couch.

Anansi: At the very least, brag about it. Not everybody gets a nice couch like this off the street for fifty bucks.

Loki: Out of deference to you, Anne, I chose one that didn't have any stains.

Anne: Well, thank you for that, Loki, but ... asking again ... where do I draw the loony line?

Anansi: I dunno ... Kansas?

Loki: I'm going to steal your pencils so you can't even draw a line!

Anne: This young fellow is coming to dinner. I'll miss "The Rachel Maddow Show!"

Anansi: No! Turn it on! Blast it! You might miss some important breaking news about Chris Christie!

Loki: I'll take care of hiding Mr. J's shaving cream.

Anansi: I'll open the New York Times to Maureen Dowd.

Loki: I'll round up all the neighborhood cats. The air won't be breathable inside or out.

Anansi: I'll arrange the Spoutwood Fairie Festival photos in loving order on the mantelpiece.

Loki: Don't include the ones with Spare in her corset.

Anansi: I was thinking rather of this little number.

Anansi: And this one.

Loki: Bumper stickers! Anansi! We need more bumper stickers for the remaining Johnson vehicle! "I Heart Mountains" is not sufficient!

Anansi: Yeah, Anne, what happened to the one that says, "I Do Whatever My Rice Crispies Tell Me To Do?"

Anne: I ditched it.

Loki: And you call yourself Our disciple! Get another one!

Anansi: And this pin: "A Woman's Place is In Her Union." It's not prominent enough on the kitchen corkboard. Wear it!

Loki: ... on the "God is a comedian" t-shirt.

Anne: Good suggestions all, but I really don't want to embarrass The Spare. She's a great kid.

Anansi: Anne, face facts. The only way you are going to appear "normal" is to re-decorate your house, throw out your whole wardrobe, ditch your entire library, and dismantle the Shrine of the Mists.

Loki: And even then, with us at your back, you're going to commit every faux pas imaginable.

Anansi: Yep! Every last one!

Anansi and Loki high-five on their way to search for road kill and bumper stickers.


Image of Loki, Thalia Took. Image of Anansi, Janice Skivington.

 

The Holy No

Welcome to "The Gods Are Bored," dispensing free advice and then paying you to take it since 2005! We're closing in on another anniversary. Oh my goodness, so much has happened since then!

Saturday afternoon, Heir and Extra Chair and I went to the local PETCO to pick up a foster kitten. I had asked the lady who runs the cat cages at PETCO to choose a kitten for me to foster based on personality and not on looks. Let's face it ... except for those naked monstrosities bred for cat shows, there's no such thing as an ugly kitten.

As the cat lady was boxing up my new charge, she and I got to talking about kitten fostering. If you go back into the archives of this blog, you'll see no end of cute kittens that I bottle-fed. I'll bet I raised more than 75 kittens (and lost about 20). But I dropped kitten care when I went to work full time. This kitten I'm raising now is a special exception. It's just too much work.

Too much work. When you work all week and come home dead exhausted, it's a rude and thoughtless deity who expects you to volunteer your weekend hours to some religious cause.

For 15 years while my daughters were young, I martyred myself to the United Methodist Church. I helped with the children's choir, and the Sunday School. I donated baked goods to sales and deposited money in the collection plate. I listened to hundreds of sermons, and I don't remember a single word of any of them.

The kitten foster years were just as hectic. The kittens were always hungry, or messy, or sick, or hidden under the furniture. Their coop had to be washed. Their box had to be disinfected. If it was a big litter, all of this needed to be done twice a day. Looking back, I don't know how I did church or kittens. Sometimes I was doing both simultaneously.

Then I decided I was in the wrong praise and worship team. I joined a Druid Grove, and we all hit it off like age-old pals. We got together eight times a year. Wouldn't you know, even that turned out to be too much, not only for me but also for the other members? Last year we re-united for a Lughnasadh ritual ... and we haven't seen each other since.

Briefly I joined an ADF Grove that is convenient to my home. But if I couldn't muster the pulse to be a Methodist, I sure didn't have the chops to keep up with this Grove. Their rituals lasted whole weekends and were outdoors, camping. And the financial output was similar to the UMC, in other words, a reach.

I have learned that it is holy to say no.

The young girl who handed me the foster kitten had the tired eyes of an over-worked church lady. I said I had given up fostering in 2008. She said that was about the time she started. Now she co-runs the shelter. It's an enormous responsibility. Cats come, and cats go, and all kittens start to look the same.

Holy no. This woman has a husband and a job. And she's at PETCO on Saturday, in the middle of a beautiful spring day, volunteering.

We set aside time for the worship of our deities because we want Them to know how special They are. We may be exhausted, we may have too many obligations, but here we are, because our deities require of us devotions.

How about this? How about it if worked the other way around?

There are bored gods who feel the love when we lie in bed on Sunday morning talking to our spouses, then amble down to the kitchen for a cup of tea. There are bored gods who accept as worship our decision to take a walk, to take a nap, to haul in firewood or shop for groceries. These are the deities who love us not for what we can do for them, but for what we do for the people we care about. These are the gods of the holy no.

I work hard, and on the weekend I'm tired. The bored gods love a hard worker.

I love my husband and daughters, and I want to spend time with them. The bored gods love devoted mothers.

I need to be completely lazy sometimes. Thank goodness the bored gods don't see sloth as a deadly sin, but rather as a healing practice!

The moral of this sermon is simple enough. Gods and Goddesses don't make demands. Other people make demands. Be sure the voices you're hearing are your deities. Have the holy no in your tool kit and use it.  Otherwise, trust me on this, you will some day regret joining a praise and worship team that once looked so promising but is now torturing you with high expectations.

I want to thank the bored gods for giving me this time to write a blog post while talking to my parrot.

Sun, Sun, Sun, Here It Comes!

With apologies to my friends Down Under, this equinox has been highly anticipated here in the snowy north.

I don't mind the cold weather so much, and I love snow, but the dark days are hard to bear. The moment when our daily allotment of sunshine becomes greater than our allotment of darkness is always greeted with a cheery what-ho around here.

Now lively Persephone escapes the clutches of her cold but beloved Husband and returns to Her grieving Mother, Demeter. As any loving mother would, Demeter responds by bathing the land in green, by bidding every living thing to step lively again.

In the decades before this blog was born, I used to send Demeter a Mother's Day card every year because no one seemed to remember or worship Her anymore. All of that has changed! She is now a busy deity with many fervent members in her praise and worship team. When I sent her a text message Thursday at 12:57 p.m., I didn't hear back from her for three whole hours, and then it was only a brief <3 anne="" i="" u=""> I call that progress.

Light an extra candle for your deities tonight. Thank Them for seeing you through the dark spell. And whatever else you do, don't petition Them for a winning lottery ticket. I've never met a deity who wasn't pissed off when you ask for winning numbers. You're breathing. That's a win.

Happy spring!

Guest Post: John Beckett

Worship the Gods

by John Beckett

Under the Ancient Oaks

http://www.patheos.com/blogs/johnbeckett/

One of the maxims of the famous Temple of Apollo at Delphi is Θεους σεβου – worship the gods.  When asked, I usually give a rather generic definition of “worship” – acknowledging what we find of greatest worth.  That definition accommodates polytheists, monotheists, and non-theists, and it accurately reflects the practices of our mainstream culture that worships money, power, entertainment and celebrities. 

But I prefer to take this maxim in its original context and actually worship the gods and goddesses of our ancestors.

I worship the gods by learning who they are.  The Greeks have a wonderful collection of stories well-preserved from antiquity.  The Norse and Celtic stories are less certain (they weren’t written down till well into the Christian era), but they’re more than adequate for telling us who the gods are and what they value.  Other cultures and other gods have even less, but even if all we have is a name or an image, it’s some place to start.  Modern scholarship may be largely done by non-theistic academics, but their work can be helpful as well.

I worship the gods by talking to them.  Prayer is a very old spiritual practice, and the fact that some people pray like a four year old visiting Santa Claus is no reason for us to abandon it.  If there are ancient prayers to your gods, use them.  If not, write your own.  Or simply stand under the sky and speak the yearnings of your heart.  Not sure what to say?  Start with what you’re thankful for.  Gratitude alone isn’t enough, but it’s a good place to start.

I worship the gods by listening to them.  Sit in meditation and listen with more than your ears.  It helps to have a statue or a picture or a candle as a focus for your intention, but rocks and flowers and trees work well too.  Listen.  I’ve yet to hear an audible voice, but I’ve experienced thoughts coming out of nowhere, feelings of peace, and calls to righteous action.  I’ve seen signs and omens in the natural world.  None of that will convince an atheist I’ve actually heard a goddess, but it’s more than enough for me.

I worship the gods through hospitality.  I greet them daily.  I burn incense.  I offer them food and drink.  The gods are neither our servants nor our masters.  They are our most honored guests – I try to treat them appropriately.

I worship the gods by embodying their virtues.  I worship Cernunnos by caring for the natural world.  I worship Morrigan by reclaiming sovereignty for myself and for others.  I worship Danu by working to create a new and better world.  I will never have all their strength and wisdom, but through diligent effort I can become more like them.

I worship the gods by telling their stories.  Even the old goddesses and gods whose names are part of our mainstream culture (such as Apollo, Jupiter and Isis) are rarely known as anything more than caricatures, as “the god of somethingorother.”  When we tell their ancient stories, we present them as the full, complex beings they are.  When we tell their modern stories, we remind people they did not die with the coming of monotheism but are still active in this world... and still looking for people to help with their work.

There are many ways to worship the gods.  These are a few that have been helpful to me and to other modern polytheists.  Because of our worship, divine boredom is growing smaller and smaller.

And that’s a very good thing.

We Walked on It, but They Looked at It Too

Welcome to "The Gods Are Bored," equinox 2013 ... down into darkness we go!

The full moon is over my left shoulder, bright in the sky, and to my home have come an amazing pantheon of bored gods so very, very ancient that their names and faces have been completely lost to time. This is a complex community of deities, some with human characteristics, some animistic, some ghostly, some ethereal. They've been bored so long you'd think they'd be comatose ... but no. Their pulses quicken.

Over the summer, archeologists in Scotland confirmed the discovery of a lunar calendar that could be 10,000 years old. The next nearest calendar is 5,000 or so, from the Fertile Crescent.

Other bloggers can seamlessly throw in the link. I'm challenged by that, so here it is:

http://ancient-origins.net/news-history-archaeology/oldest-ever-calendar-found-scotland-rewrites-history-books-00654

According to the reports, the calendar was aligned with moon phases but also was calibrated to the winter solstice, so that the year could be calculated accurately. What remains of this calendar are pits in the ground.

So now everyone puffs up and says, "Well, this changes how we look at the Stone Age. This is pretty sophisticated. And 5,000 years older than the oldest ones we knew about already."

Well, folks, I am here to tell you that these ancient deities who are visiting me tonight, the ones squinting to see their moon through the light pollution of a North American megalopolis, are 10,000 times better than today's busy god. They are telling me that Their praise and worship team, of whom not a bone splinter remains, used that calendar to plant things in the ground for harvest later. Yes! Word! That's what They're telling me. They say that Their people sang hymns in beautiful tongues, lived in comfortable dwellings, respected the land, and ... yes, believe it or not, were smart.

Honestly, what do we think the ancient people did with their time? The Moon was up there, just like now. The Sun was up there, just like now. Their brain cases were just as big as ours, and they weren't challenged by turnpikes and Teflon poisoning. They figured it out. The Moon goes through phases, and the Sun changes position in the sky, and this is predictable and measurable, and it runs in a wheel. And oh, by the way ... there are Gods and Goddesses, and Nature Spirits, and Sacred Animals, and legends of heroes and ballads of love, and eye-popping paintings on the cliffs! And this is not Sumer, it's Scotland!

When I was a kid, sitting in world history class, I used to wonder what was happening in Scotland and England during the time when "civilization" was occurring in the Fertile Crescent. Prevailing wisdom declared that people in those colder climes were just basically hanging on for dear life, hunting and gathering willy-nilly and ever so much less efficiently than the fancy places in the Middle East. Why would we think that? If a person is smart enough to drop a few seeds on the ground and watch them grow in one part of the world, why wouldn't a similar person be just as smart elsewhere?

What kinds of conceits do we labor under? The venerable and ancient deities visiting me on this harvest moon night say that the world was a happier and better place for Their praise and worship team than for us. Everything we have in the way of art, music, and drama, they had too. And according to these deities, the same level of achievement held pretty steady all over the world. The evidence is lacking because, let's face it, 10,000 years is a lot of years. Given that much time, New York City will be a trackless desert. And the Great I-Am will be just another bored god, mourning and mooning over the passage of time.

Train Wreck Hatred

Well! A heat wave has settled over the Delaware Valley, and my eastern-facing classroom is now a balmy 85 degrees. But the school year is almost over. We've had a nice, cool spring.

Just now one of my students cut me a piece of cheesecake that he had made in Culinary Arts. Wow, it was delicious! It had some orange flavor somehow ... never had a cheesecake quite like it before.

Sermon:

We at "The Gods Are Bored" are limping into modern social media one misstep at a time. We now have a Facebook page, which is (I think) https://www.facebook.com/TheGodsAreBored. I can't double-check because I'm at school, and as you might imagine, school computers block Facebook.

Nor can I check the all-new "The Gods Are Bored" Twitter feed @TheGodsAreBored. Both of these platforms might come in handy if I actually do something interesting, which does happen every now and then.

In order to get started with Twitter, you've got to find some stuff to follow. I'm pretty boring, so I don't have a slew of t.v. shows or entertainers or politicians whose every word I hang on. I thought it might be good for some dudgeon if I "followed" the Westboro Baptist Church.

You know these morons par excellence. They need no introduction. They're probably one of the best things to happen to the modern American Pagan movement. Still, it's not worth it if a million people leave Chrisianity because of them. Which is a real possibility.

Geez, talk about haters! I've never seen such a thing. They tweet all day long, reveling in each and every disaster that befalls our nation, small and large. Pretty sophisticated Tweets, too, with links (which I don't follow) and pictures and the works. If I set myself the goal of hating, loathing, despising and abominating at the very peak of my energy, I couldn't even hate through the whole rest of my life the way these people do in a short afternoon.

Step aside, Galactus. You are no match.

If I think about it, I cannot find any fictitious villain as bad as the Westboro Baptist Church. Gotta turn to real life for that. In the context of human history, WBC doesn't even register on the radar. But ... who's with me in thinking that, if they somehow grasped the reins of power, they could rank right up there with Adolf and Josef? I totally see that possibility.

Basically, if you're out in your garden, and you step on an earthworm and crush it, that worm died because God hates fags. My dear kitty cat Alpha passed away a few months ago. Wow! I thought it was from old age. Turns out she died because God hates fags. (I guess God must love parrots, because Decibel is rocking on.)

Last night I went on Twitter, and there must have been a train derailment near Baltimore. Yes, you guessed it. That train went off the track because God hates fags. Everything, everywhere that goes wrong, even a little bit wrong ... even if it leads to the death of a single bacterium in the eyelid of a chubby, happy infant, that bacterium died because God hates fags.

So, who is the train wreck? God, or WBC?

Actually, though, if you flip-flop the logic, it's marvelous. Julian cut me a piece of cheesecake because the bored gods love fags. I saved a baby blue jay from the jaws of Beta cat because the bored gods love fags. Some sick child is just being told that she is going to get better ... because the bored gods love fags. The bored gods love fags! Yes, truthfully! This whole anti-homosexual business is a product of the Judeo/Christian mindset. Other cultures and their deities don't hate fags!

I'm not often on a computer that supports Twitter, but I think "The Gods Are Bored" could have a lovely, purifying presence on there if all I do is Tweet about happy stuff, credit the bored gods, and send it to the Westboro Baptist Church.

Ah, summer plans! Come one, come all, downsized deities ... let's have a Jellicle ball!

Holidays that Are Not Celebrated by the Bored Gods

Hello and welcome from "The Gods Are Bored!" Sitting here sober on March 15, because this day is one of several holidays that are not sanctioned by the bored gods.

You cannot find a single bored deity in any pantheon who has a good word to say about St. Patrick. From what I can tell, Patrick was as successful as Moses. He started out as a slave in Ireland, wound up bringing in the busy god and spreading Him far and wide in the Emerald Isle. The element of revenge in his Christianization of Ireland is lost on both Christians and Pagans. And let's not sugar-coat the Pagans. If the Celtic Irish had treated St. Patty better, maybe he would have taken Brighid to the monks on the mainland.

Long story short, the bored gods have asked me to pass along this list of holidays that They do not observe:

1. St. Patrick's Day. Wear green because it's becoming spring outside, not because of some saint who routed a whole pantheon of deities.

2. Sweetest Day. Okay, if you're not from the Midwest, you don't celebrate this one anyway. If you are from Cleveland, rock on with Sweetest -- just don't invite the bored gods.

3. Buzzard Day (observed this weekend in Hinckley, Ohio): vulture worship only

4. Fourth of July. Unless we can muster more respect for the Goddess Columbia, this one's a bust.

5. President's Day. Bored deities who work in retail hate this one. Extra hours and busy aisles ... not very holy.

6. Columbus Day. Soundly and widely detested by numerous Western Hemisphere deities of multiple pantheons.

7. VJ and VE Days. Oh, wait. We don't celebrate those anymore. How soon we forget!

8. Boxing Day, even if it is a very good idea.

9. Spring Break. You can't fool the bored gods. They know this one was created for the Florida tourism industry. Spring is planting season!

10. Super Bowl Sunday. Minimal appeal to a few warrior gods, otherwise a bust.

If you feel like celebrating on any of these days, feel free. Just don't expect any celestial participation.

And, as usual, I will pay you to take this free advice, because that's how the economy works. Send me an invoice.

International Goddess Day

Oh, what a beautiful morning, with just a hint of spring in the air! The sun is shining, and the birds are beginning to peep out their love songs. And I, dear readers, am another 365 days older. I feel good, though. The secret to long life is to never act your age.

I'm hearing some rumblings about International Women's Day. Why stop at mortals? Let's call it International Goddess Day!

Recognizing that human beings perceive Higher Powers to have human forms and traits, it really amazes me that so many world religions hinge on male-only deities. The Divine Male is great, don't get me wrong, but at the very least He ought to share His seat with a Divine Female who is His equal.

Having been present at some really contentious D.A.R. meetings, where shrill blue-haired ladies hotly debated the disposition of valuable China plates, I can't say for sure that matriarchal rule in the apparent world would be any better than patriarchy. We don't really have a modern model (at least that I know of), because even where great women are elected to high office, the prevailing government is male-dominated.

The bored Goddesses we know anything specific about don't give us much clue, either. Some are gentle and nurturing, some are powerful and war-like, some are cunning, and some are sexy. Oh, there go those human traits again!

Speaking only for myself, I had no religious role model growing up. Protestants don't give the time of day to the Blessed Mother. It was only after I married a lapsed Catholic and heard his mother and grandmother praying that the idea of Divine Female even occurred to me. But that's how I began my search for the bored gods -- by looking for the Divine Female. What a joy to find so many, both named and nameless, stretching into the very dawn of our species!

Set aside an offering for your Goddess today. Help Her to be less bored. I'll handle all the Unknown Goddesses on this end. All hail each and every one of them, so might it be.

Image: http://www.unicorngarden.com

Bored Gods, Armed for War

Welcome to "The Gods Are Bored!" It's just a few days until Samhain, and usually I would be blogging, blogging, blogging about that. Instead I have a news bulletin, just in from:

Oya, Oshun, Hurracan, and Triton

and, at their backs,

Sedna and Turtle Woman

The message is: Repent, mortals, of this One-God business, or We will show you what's what!

It seems this intriguing multicultural group of deities has gotten together in utter dismay at the nature of modern America. Remember last year (I think it was last year), when that ultra-righty-tighty Christian group was praying for God to save America? Well, that was a puny effort, and completely ineffective. The deities above, over the next week, are going to show all of us what they can do. They are headed straight for Washington, DC and planning to meet up there to whoop ass.

Behold, the wrath of the Gods.

I do not expect to be spared (nor does Spare expect to be spared). I've put a few makeshift rain barrels outside. It's impossible to find flashlight batteries in this county right now, but I've got lots of candles and a fireplace.

If this is the last post here at TGAB until after Samhain, you'll know it's because the juice is out at Chateau Johnson. In that case, have a blessed Samhain, it will be on October 31, storm or no storm. We here at "The Gods Are Bored" will offer praise and worship to the deities above, and to all the others who blow strength into storms because that's how they roll.