Southern Legitimacy Statement: My brother, may he rest in peace, lived in and loved Atlanta, and I loved to visit him. I live just south of the Canadian border, where the bison and moose wander.
Gods Anonymous
“Hi, my name is Boreas, and I’m an extinct god.”
Greetings in different languages bounced around the bare walls of the tile-floored room in the church basement. These rooms were always the same, thought Boreas, cold and boring. Luckily he liked cold. After all, he had once been the god of ice and winter.
“Where you from, Boreas?” Asked a woman with a long dragon’s tail curled around her folding chair.
“Greece. Well, ancient Greece. It’s changed a lot since my time.”
Everyone nodded in understanding. This support group was a reminder that they’d been special once.
The man next to Boreas spoke. “I’m Waaqa, Ethiopian God of Coffee. I know y’all worship me still.” He lifted his cup in a salute and those gods with hands and mouths lifted theirs in kind, toasting to the bitter solidarity of their forgottenness.
Around the circle went the introductions, mixed in with bites from the donuts. The participants were varied—a goat, a bear, a nymph. The thread that stitched them together was a sense that they had once been famous, even though they had to introduce themselves now.
A woman bathed in flames—Atar, from Persia—facilitated. “Last week we had a nice chat about how to handle our feelings. Tonight, we’ll focus on self-perception. Would anybody like to share?”
Ashur fidgeted briefly before volunteering his story. “I was the god of war for centuries in Assyria and I was really good at it. I had shrines and carvings and symbols. Now, all the millennials just care about Thor. He wasn’t such a big deal. I mean, come on already—a hammer? Who fights with a hammer?”
There were nods all around. Many former gods had to grapple with jealousy.
Brigid ran her fingers through her long hair and spoke with a heavy brogue. “Now they’d call me Tradwife. Goddess of wisdom and smithing and animal husbandry is just too long a title, I guess. But dammit, I was so much more than just that! I was a poet too, and well, this is a secret of mine— I make excellent gyros.”
“That’s true,” Ülgen the Turkic god interjected, “She makes really good gyros.”
“Right? What’s he got that we don’t?” Ashur pointed to a crucifix on the wall.
“Well, he did walk on water,” Ülgen conceded.
Boreas added, “Anybody can walk on water once it’s frozen.”
Atar tried to get the meeting back on track. “Oh, you all know that Jesus is on borrowed time as well.”
Another participant spoke up. “I’m Enki from Mesopotamia. I know we’re all obsolete now. I understand that, and I know that all the gods living now will someday be obsolete. But the need is still out there, don’t you think?” Enki looked to the others in the circle, who listened and made tiny sounds of agreement, or looked to the ground and internally shook their heads. “People created us for a reason—fear or a need to make sense of the world, maybe. Or for companionship or control. Don’t those reasons still exist?”
A deep voice came from near the table stacked with treats. “The need for reassurance will always be there. Children have imaginary friends and adults have gods. Those friends and gods get put to the wayside when someone outgrows them, but the societal pull is really strong. That’s why were thrived in our own cultures for so long.”
Boreas raised a hand. “Enki raised a good question—does the need for gods still exist. I have a follow up question. Do we exist?”
Dewi Danu and Mezulla exchanged confused looks. Quetzalcoatl looked thoughtful while stroking his tail feathers. Waang farted.
“We must exist, right? I mean, someone invented us, so we came into existence. Does it just happen that we don’t anymore? Or maybe we still exist in this room, but don’t out there anymore?” Boreas pointed towards the stairs.
Loki sneakily braided Medusa’s hair. Binbeal created rainbows in his coffee.
The deep voice came again. “No, we don’t exist, Boreas. We never have.”
“Shut up, Abasi!” yelled Dazhbog, the Slavic sun god. “If we don’t exist, who’s talking right now?”
And as happened commonly, the meeting devolved into internecine squabbles, minor and major disagreements, and some light warfare.
Atar caught the group’s attention by bursting into flame. “Next week’s meeting will be on sacrifices. I hope you all can join me then. Thank you to Fornax for the donuts. She is indeed, the goddess of baking. Let’s close tonight with our prayer.”
The gods came together again, bowed their heads and recited together, “Gods, please let us be studied in sociology classes, worshipped by goth kids, and turned into Marvel Movies. Amen.” Armed now with a week’s worth of optimism, they dispersed.
Atar cleaned up the refreshments, and surreptitiously turned the picture of Jesus upside down.
Boreas walked out into the bright sunshine with Dazhbog. They mingled invisibly with the humans on the sidewalks. “Where you headed now?”
“I have a side hustle, haunting the castle at the Tokyo Disneyworld. It’s ok, I guess. Kind of boring, but the benefits are good—sometimes I can make children so scared, they wet themselves. You?”
Boreas lifted his heavy hair off the nape of his neck. “I think I’ll go to Chile. It’s winter there.” Also, he thought, Ataguchu, the Incan creation god was always good for a laugh.
“Chili’s? I love that place! That’s what Lucifer serves in Hell.”
Boreas didn’t correct him, and they separated at the corner.
“See you next week?” Dazhbog asked.
“I suppose so,” replied Boreas. He didn’t have anything else to do these days.
