My favorite god/ess
Johannes asked me to write a review of my favorite god/ess for monochroms Polytheism blog. The Viennese based group announced 2008 as the year of polytheism: the basic idea is to overcome unnecessary borders drawn by religion and – this is just my personal interpretation – to post-teenage religion.
What do I mean by post-teenage? Once you're in your twenties, you're statistically a lot more likely to rather accept and adopt various styles, be in the field of music or fashion or whatever, than to just hold on to one “scene”. Religion in that respect mostly is far behind pop culture, even though during the last decade I sensed a very interesting shift in terms of polytheism, especially amongst economically blessed women in their 40ies who are interested in “esoteric knowledge”. Nonetheless, many followers of different gods still don't hesitate to convince others that their own super-being is far superior to the ridiculous error their adversaries refer to as supreme master. Funnily enough just a couple hours before I was asked to write this text I saw a very funny poster at mmoabc.com, which depicts a woman carrying a sign that says: “Says the bible: war is sent by god.” The picture is part of series of spoofs of the well-know motivational motives featuring a colorful image and some silly words. The text accompanying this picture says: “Religious War. Killing each other to see who has the better imaginary friend.” And this I believe is just what the year of polytheism is all about:
The “International Year of Polytheism” (powered by monochrom) wants to overcome the epoch of the monotheistic worldviews (and its derivatives such as “The West” and “The Arab World”) through the reconstruction of a polytheistic multiplicity in which countless gods and goddesses will eventually neutralize each other.
But even though it is easy for me to support the idea and to feel frighteningly in tune with the great polytheist movement, I'm having hell of a hard time answering the question about my favorite god/esse/s, since I worship countless of them. Some live in my flat, some I talk to on a regularly basis, some I had sexual intercourse with and some I have never seen nor even dared to imagine in their full glory. And what exactly does favorite mean in that respect? Is my favorite god the one who brews the coffee just like I like it or is he the engineer who engineered the robot who built my bike? Or the guy who gives me this incredibly self-satisfied feeling when I'm flying high above the clouds in my wildest dream? Or is she the one who made every piece of organic matter live in such a way that we can interpret it as living matter if we want to? Is he the one who gave us freedom or is she the one who enslaved us?
There are many favorite gods, but like in the famous Kung Fu series featuring David Carradine, when the decade of training at the Shaolin monastery is done, only one of the grad students can become the new master. And if all of them surrender their title as their code of honor requires that means they still have to fight. So if I have to give one definite answer I go with the great green frog god, the one who is constantly watching over all frog- and non-frog creatures and makes all other gods tick. Even though Buddha is quite a cuddly roughneck, too…