In Celtic mythology, Airmid's father was a great healer. Her & her brother became more skilled healers, which pissed daddy off because they showed him up. So he killed the brother.
Airmid grieved over him, her tears causing 365 healing herbs to grow from his corpse. She gathered them in her cloak. Her father (a real insecure prick apparently) scattered them so they're lost, hence our incomplete knowledge of healing & medicine.
But Airmid remembers.
Daily for a year (in line with the 365 herbs), I examined and reflected on a particular facet of health. This forced me to 1: think of an aspect of health and 2: look at that aspect more thoroughly.
I did this as a devotional to the Goddess Airmid. And here's the kicker, I'm an Atheist.
Why would a godless heathen such as myself do a devotional to a Goddess?
Because, deities are clusters of ideas personified. They exemplify particular concepts and ideals. They aren't necessarily discrete entities.
They're shorthand for something else. Christ being salvation and forgiveness. Shiva as destruction making way for new beginnings (extremely reductive I know, but still illustrates the point).
Religion and narrative as software. We're the hardware (that's what she said)
We understand things via narrative. So anthropomorphizing ideas allows them to go on adventures and do things. It makes concepts tangible enough to be examined. It allows for stories and fables and more importantly, metaphors and allegories.
"The dictionary definition of a myth would be stories about gods...What is a God? A God is a personification of a motivating power or a value system that functions in human life and in the universe - the powers of your own body and of nature. The myths are metaphorical of spiritual potentiality in the human being, and the same powers that animate our life animate the life of the world."
Joseph Campbell "The Power of Myth"
"Tell him that we have fucking reprogrammed reality...that language is a virus and that religion is an operating system..."
from "American Gods" by Neil Gaiman ¹
Two of my favorite artists, Nick Cave and Chuck Palahniuk, talk about the importance of narrative to the human psyche and reality creation. It is a major part of magick. As Alan Moore has pointed out, to cast a spell is simply to spell and the terms "grammar" and "grimoire" have similar etymologies.
A major premise of chaos magick is that belief is a tool. Religion/belief being an operating system is an apt metaphor. Load your Christian program and you're configured to operate differently. It's a different program you're running so it does different things with the input it's given (external reality, events, circumstances). It interprets them differently than an Atheist program. But each can be useful, in the same way that Excel is better for certain things and Word is better for others. Neither is necessarily better overall, just different.
George Carlin pointed out how language shapes reality because we use language when thinking, when formulating thought. To paraphrase, "Our thoughts are only as good as our language". So all the bits of language we connect together into thoughts, stories, gods, ideas and narratives, they all shape our thoughts which shape our realities, or at least our perception there of.
Just because something is fictional doesn't mean it isn't "real", it's just less concrete.
All of that is to say that even as an Atheist, gods and goddesses are useful. They convey information and make it easier to work with, learn and examine. They represent ideas, traits and goals, "working" with them is an invocation and an evocation to bring those elements into myself and the world.
- my recommendations for doing so (authors) and my experience
- comment that relates to this piece in general
- comment on if viewing deities from a more psychological model diminishes them. Brings into play the concept of egregores
¹ As of the date of this writing (late January 2025), Neil Gaiman has been accused of multiple sexual assaults (as of now allegations have been made, no convictions). My quoting him is in no way an endorsement of any kind. I've enjoyed his works and the ideas therein and they are still useful. The art and the artist can be regarded separately.
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