(Scam, scam, scammity scam. Oh, is this mic live?!)
“One Weird Trick Most Gods Don’t Want You to Know.” A bestselling strategy if there ever was one. Almost fail-proof. Get in on what THEY’VE been keeping from us, Honest Suffering Upright Citizens that we are. Who doesn’t want IN? (Another 100 cable channels! Salvation by proxy! Acne-free in seven days!) Click here. Operators are standing by. No credit? No problem! No money down! Just open a vein! (Can’t get no) satisfaction guaranteed!
(Can any truly worthwhile thing be bought?)
But YES! one god really does want you to know: introducing capital-L Loki, AKA the Trickster, the Wheeler Dealer, the Original Houdini of the Truth Trap, the Cosmic Con, Bad Penny, Black Sheep, the One in Every Family, Every Religion’s Got One Somewhere. Him! Well, who should know better than the Master, right? (Deep down, that part of us all that’s a little loki-in-training. Who whispers Alternatives, in spite of all the noises-against-the-voices we can dump into our ears. Crank up the volume. Maybe they’ll go away.) Figures that the only source for reliable info turns out to be a Trickster.
And he’ll tell you: Religion’s all a scam, an empty fantasy, a fool’s errand, a wild goose chase. This god-or-not and belief- and worship- and daily-practice thing is, like you always suspected, just an endless maze of mind-tricks brought on like a nightmare, courtesy of an overactive cerebrum, that gift of Evolution that just keeps on giving, that two-hemisphere marvel and misfit that — in spite of all its tricks and traps and delusions and the stories it tells about itself and how wonderful it is — will still leave us all just as dead in a hasty handful of decades as if we’d devoted our lives entirely to pleasure. Just like the good old boys and girls over at Epicurean Central always told us we should. Yes, go out and download the app for it.
Thanks, Loki. Now a word from our sponsors.
Not.
Except …
Godding isn’t what it used to be.
(Even with a nose-and-chin like Tom Hiddleston‘s.)
Even the gods you used to be able to count on turn out to be … puny.
One weird trick most gods don’t want you to know is that their truth or falseness has little to do with what they can teach you, how interaction with them can change your life, and so on.
Just because they don’t exist has very little to do with anything at all. Existence isn’t an absolute. It de-pends.
And like those pesky anatomical pend-ant or hanging things, the so-called “fact” of existence or non-existence can get us pretty confused about reality*, which is, after all, only another name for thing-ness. Anything that’s not a “thing” tends to get left off the List. Which is another weird trick most gods hope we’ll kinda ignore. For our own good, of course. Lists. Everyone’s got one, gods included. (Gods especially.)
What to wear, say, think, do, attend to and let slide. Everyone’s been be-godded, infected with at least one god, right down to our nail-beds and stomach linings: sex, wealth, image, status, art, pleasure, the “right views,” seniority, rationalism, salvation, comfort — even “just being left alone.” Gods everywhere. No place free of ’em. Hanging from the rafters, crawling around and inflaming our skin like some sort of divine psoriasis. No god-be-gone, available now while supplies last. Annoying little (BIG!) suckers.
Even death won’t free us when-not-if — un-gods help us all! — we’re reborn into some vastly cooler, endlessly hip world where everyone is fashionably thin (or plump), calmly atheist and perfectly dressed, coiffed, housed, spoused, aroused and soused. Tastefully conformist down to the designer toe-rings. No gods here, nasty things — had mine removed eons ago, old chap. Do yourself a huge favor, darling.
And so, illusion-free at last, eternity or oblivion (choose your mirror image) is ours!
Paradoxes to amuse children.
(Loki’s laughing all the way to Valhalla.)
And the Goddess? The Goddess is laughing at him.
/|\ /|\ /|\
Images: Loki and The Hulk from The Avengers.
*Reality, from Latin res, thing; realis; re-al or pertaining to things or their qualities, like the ability to slap you in the face, fall on your big toe, eat you for breakfast, if you don’t pay attention to them. Which gods like War still do, come to think of it. Details at 6:00 (or 18:00) tonight!
A Druid Way 
