The Graveyard

I found solace tonight with H.L. Mencken. I thought of him because my mood swings take me from despondency to fury before settling back being perpetually annoyed again. And I thought he might help.

And sure enough, he soothed me a bit.

So, the death toll has risen to 79,000 in Pakistan. And that’s only from a lousy quake. And wars too will escalate further devouring countries. Too many are dying everywhere. And many more will perish before this phase comes to pass.

How did Tolstoy put it?

‘Oh, didn’t we make a pretty finish!’ said Petritsky. ‘Volkov climbed on to the roof and began telling us how sad he was. I said: “Let’s have music, the funeral march!”

That last is the title of one of Mencken’s short essays which might allow us to indulge in the baseness of therapeutic Shaudenfraude:

Where is the graveyard of dead gods? What lingering mourner waters their mounds? There was a day when Jupiter was the king of the gods, and any man who doubted his puissance was ipso facto a barbarian and an ignoramus. But where in all the world is there a man who worships Jupiter today? And what of Huitzilopochtli?
[…]
All mighty gods in their day, worshipped by millions, full of demands and impositions, able to blind and loose—all gods of the first class, not dilettanti. Men laboured for generations to build vast temples to them—temples with stones as large as motor-lorries. The business of interpreting their whims occupied thousands of priests, wizards, archdeacons, cannons, deans, bishops, archbishops. To doubt them was to die, usually at the stake. Armies took to the field to defend them against the infidels: villages were burned, women and children were butchered, cattle were driven off. Yet in the end they all withered and died. And today there is none so poor to do them reverence.

I know it’s intemperate and frankly I do enjoy always imagining what my universe would have felt like with some other or more ancient gods presiding over it. But I want to have the pleasure –for a brief while at any rate--of looking at this blog and seeing a list of dead gods for a change:

Resheph................ Baal................... Anath.............. Astarte

Ashtoreth........................Hadad..................El................... Addu

Nergal.................. Shalem.................Nebo.................Dagon

Ninib ......................... Sharab.................... Melek.................... Yau

Ahijah.............Amon-Re.......................Isis..........Osiris

Ptah..........................Sebek....................Anubis ........................... Moloch?

Though a little different from my version, his essay in full to remind us again of the myriad gods now resting in their graveyard-- somewhere, everywhere!