When Gods Walked the Earth

Zeus could throw a thunderbolt your way if  you had managed to irritate him, back in the day. Perhaps he still does. When lightening strikes close to home, or, horrors, strikes an individual, perhaps we need to think about that? What did that person do to cause the god to be angry?

Come to think of it, what does a tree do to cause Zeus to strike it, which burns an entire forest down? Or, is that the anger of the god directed against humans, en masse? Or, only the humans that live near that forest, are to be punished? Or, here is the Big Question, is that Zeus god creating the global warming issue because he wants to make us all uncomfortable? To punish us for our sins? That is what the global warming folks tell us. That we humans have caused the entire Earth to change its weather pattern.

Humans are bad. Humans must be punished. The gods are just the ones to do it.

That leads to the intriguing question. Is Zeus still around? Is he still interested in us? The even bigger question, is he still sleeping around with the women of Earth? Is feminism a plot hatched by Hera, so that Zeus won’t like the women down here? Hmm, that angle interests me.

I am convinced, that Zeus was thrown over by humanity, because he was the philanderer of all philanderers. He made Don Juan look like a choir boy. Hera, in her pursuit to rid the world of all those temptresses, punished the girls quite readily. Even when the women didn’t know who they were sleeping with, well, didn’t matter. Hera wanted all of Zeus’ paramours dead.

Hera is the insecure wife writ huge. She had reason.

I hold Hera responsible for giving human males the idea, that it is the woman who knowingly, deliberately, temps the man. Even in rape. According to Hera, and her men followers, there is no such thing as rape. It is interesting, to me, how the monotheists picked up on this practice. They forced their women to cover themselves in public. The Muslims continue this practice in the 21st century. Not all. But too many.

By the time of the Renaissance, the covered woman in Europe was a thing of the past. They did hold on to the idea, that if a woman was to get pregnant, she must climax. That belief held for another two hundred years. Raped women, whose body responded to the sex, could be considered a whore, or someone that had committed adultery. Both circumstances were punishable by varying degrees. Since rape was a death sentence for the men, the man would marry his victim, if she was unmarried. Many parents forced their daughters to marry their rapist. Unless he was a complete stranger.

Too bad Zeus wasn’t around during those times. He would protect the woman by turning her into something else. But Hera would find out, and kill the poor woman anyway. Even if she had been turned into a tree.

We didn’t leave Zeus, as much as we left Hera.

Human skulduggery was the reason the gods left us. Did they give up on us, or did we give up on them? Was the feeling mutual?

There is a charming story from Africa, that relates how God wanted to get away from the human population. He lived on Earth, walking and working among the people he created. And yet, even without a dark angel to tempt them, humans sinned. The disappointed god keeps moving away, until his advisors tell him to return to his heavenly home. But wouldn’t you know it, the enterprising humans begin to work on a stairway to heaven, so that they can visit God. Realizing it will be physically impossible, they stop their work. And their leader invents the religion that will keep them connected to God.

You can see that story, God Retreats to the Sky, here.

We have to wonder what the ancients would think of our modern towers that reach into the heavens. We would have to tell them, that we no longer seek the gods, but financial gain. Thus are those towers built. The irony, in relation to the Biblical story, the Tower of Babel, is that in our towers, many languages are spoken, and understood. People of the world are inside, working. Cooperating amongst themselves to accomplish tasks.

Zeus hits these buildings with his lightening bolts. Or perhaps he alternates with Thor? Either way, the clever human engineers have made the buildings strong enough to withstand these attacks by the gods. The most hit building in the United States is Chicago’s Willis Tower. Why this tower? Location, location, location. The windy city is thunder showers prone, and the Willis is the tallest building in the city. It gets hit many times every year.

Come to think of it, Chicago is known for its wickedness. All those gangsters that have been doing business in that city for the past 100 years, must have brought the wrath of the gods down upon it.

That last god to walk this Earth was Jesus. He had no lightening bolts, nor did he chase women. By the time he arrived on the scene, cities were a thing, with Rome playing the big bully, looking down their noses at the Hebrews. Many of the locals in Israel dreamed of, and longed for, a messiah to set them free from the Romans. Jesus would be number 24 in a long list of messiahs that proceeded him. All failed.  Jesus refused to take on the Romans. But as irony would have it, 270 years later, Jesus became the king of the gods of Rome.

Jesus had a simple message: stop being hypocrites. Now there is one difficult task.

With this positive message, he also undid a few things his “father” did. Jesus didn’t have a message of, “Don’t do this, don’t do that.” His was, “Do this, do that.” Even in his Big Admonishment, “Let him who is without sin, cast the first stone,” there are no negatives in that sentences. And, when he then turns to the woman the event evolved around, he had another positive rule: “Go, and sin no more.” That is the same message many wise individuals have given us. You cannot start again, you can only do better moving forward.

My favorite, of all the old gods, is Ahura Mazda. Ahura Mazda means Lord of Wisdom. It can also mean Spirit Lord. Or the Prince of Light.  By extension, it means the highest order of life, that which makes us understanding, beyond knowledge.

The Bible also has a nod to this idea. “With all your getting, get understanding.” Which is the short version of Proverbs 4. Solomon was, I believe, a follower of Ahura Mazda without ascribing to the Persians’ religious practices. Certainly, it was the pearl in the mysteries of Eleusis.

Throughout the canon of myths, from the very oldest to the newer ones from the Middle Ages, wisdom is the thing. Wisdom goes beyond knowing what to do, when life presents humans with impossible situations. Wisdom recognizes that the human condition is dichotomous. That we get to deal with the light and the dark, with good and evil. The point of the ancients and their stories was how to deal with these events. If one adheres to a strong code of inner laws that are followed, religiously, wacky situations can be handled.

The wise ones knew this, and continue to know it. If you don’t favor the Bible, Jordan Peterson’s 12 Rules for Life covers situations very well indeed. Peterson is a wise man.

My new book, Don’t Do Dumb Stuff, is based on the stories of Greece, the Near East, Ireland, China, Mexico, and Denmark. Some of the stories are about the gods, most are about humans, and the dumb things they do that bring about tragedies. The worst sin, in my humble opinion,  that humans commit, is to lie. The worst lies are the ones they tell themselves. Shakespeare, a lord of wisdom himself, said it best, when he said, “Oh what a tangled web we weave, when we set out to deceive.”

Lying is the sin that begets all others. That includes the lies of omission.

The dark ones will lie to you. The light tells the truth. Zeus kept the first set of humans he created, in the dark. He created only men, and these men languished in a sort of gloom we could call limbo. Prometheus, a god of light, brought them fire. To bring fire is to bring light, and to bring the light is to tell the truth.

Is Zeus a god of darkness or of light, is the question to be pondered. Or, is he like us, full of his own fury of frustrations. The strong man, represented by Zeus, cannot control himself. That makes him weak. The strong woman, Hera, is also out of control. Thus she is the mirror that would control Zeus. In her own hatred, she too, is weak.

To answer the question about the gods walking among us, yes. The gods still walk among us. They do have different names now. But use your eyes to see, and you will. Use your ears to listen as well. Hear the gods of light say, “Wisdom is the thing, so go, and sin no more.”