Where is the graveyard of dead gods?

[Cyrus]

<font color="blue"> Where is the graveyard of dead gods? </font>

by H. L. Mencken



Where is the graveyard of dead gods? What lingering mourner waters their mounds?

There was a time 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 who of Huitzilopochtli ? In one year - and it is no more than five hundred years ago - 50,000 youths and maidens were slain in sacrifice to him. Today, if he is remembered at all, it is only by some vagrant savage in the depths of the Mexican forest.

Huitzilopochtli, like many other gods, had no human father; his mother was a virtuous widow; he was born of an apparently innocent flirtation that she carried out with the sun. When he frowned, his father, the sun, stood still. When he roared with rage, earthquakes engulfed whole cities. When he thirsted he was watered with 10,000 gallons of human blood. But today Huitzilopochtli is as magnificently forgotten as the dear departed Allen G. Thurman.

Once the peer of Allah, Buddha and Wotan, he is now the peer of Richmond P. Hobson, Alton B. Parker, Adelina Patti, General Weyler and Tom Sharkey.

Speaking of Huitzilopochtli recalls his brother Tezcatlipoca.

Tezcatlipoca was almost as powerful; he consumed 25,000 virgins a year. Lead me to his tomb: I would weep, and hang a couronne des perles.

But who knows where it is? Or where the grave of Quitzalcoatl is? Or Xiehtecuthli ?

Or Centeotl, that sweet one? Or Tlazolteotl, the goddess of love? Or Mictlan? Or Xipe? Or all the host of Tzitzimitles? Where are their bones?

Where is the willow on which they hung their harps? In what forlorn and unheard-of Hell do they await their resurrection morn? Who enjoys their residuary estates? Or that of Dis, whom Caesar found to be the chief god of the Celts? Of that of Tarves, the bull? Or that of Moccos, the pig? Or that of Epona, the mare? Or that of Mullo, the celestial jackass? There was a time when the Irish revered all these gods, but today even the drunkest Irishman laughs at them.

But they have company in oblivion: the Hell of dead gods is as crowded as the Presbyterian Hell for babies.

Damona is there, and Esus, and Drunemeton, and Silvana, and Dervones, and Adsalluta, and Deva, and Belisima, and Uxellimus, and Borvo, and Grannos, and Mogons. All mighty gods in their day, worshipped by millions, full of demands and impositions, able to bind and loose - all gods of the first class. Men labored for generations to build vast temples to them - temples with stones as large as hay-wagons.

The business of interpreting their whims occupied thousands of priests, bishops, archbishops. To doubt them was to die, usually at the stake.

Armies took to the field to defend them against infidels; villages were burned, women and children 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.

What has become of Sutekh, once the high god of the whole Nile Valley?

What has become of Resheph, Baal, Anath, Astarte, Ashtoreth, Hadad, Nebo, Dagon, Melek, Yau, Ahijah, Amon-Re, Isis, Osiris, Ptah or Molech ?

All were gods of the highest eminence. Many of them are mentioned with fear and trembling in the Old Testament. They ranked, five or six thousand years ago, with Yahweh Himself; the worst of them stood far higher than Thor.

Yet they have all gone down the chute, and with them all the following:

Arianrod, Nuada Argetlam, Morrigu, Tagd, Govannon, Goibniu, Gunfled, Dagda, Odin, Ogma, Ogryvan, Marzin, Dea Dia, Mara, Iuno, Lucina, Diana of Ephesus with the luminous face, Saturn, Robigus, Furrina, Pluto, Cronos, Vesta, Engurra, Zer-panitu, Belus, Merodach, Ubilulu, Elum, U-dimmer-an-kia with his mighty guard, U-sab-sib, U-Mersi, Marduk, Nin, Persephone, Tammuz, Istar, Venus, Lagas, Beltis, Nirig, Nusku, En-Mersi, Aa, Assur, Sin, Beltu, Apsu, Kuski-banda, Elali, and Nin-azu.

And Mami, Qarradu, Zaraqu, Ueras, and Zagaga.

Ask the rector to lend you any good book on comparative religion; you will find them all listed. They were gods of the highest dignity - gods of civilized peoples - worshipped and believed in by millions.

All were omnipotent, omniscient and immortal.


And all are dead.

[Cyrus]

Role-playing gamers can use the text for some spiffy handles !

[drudman]

U-sab-sib and U-dimmer-an-kia approach the orc fortress...

"Do we hear nothing as yet of the noise of the gravediggers who are burying God? Do we smell nothing as yet of the divine decomposition? Gods, too, decompose. God is dead. God remains dead. And we have killed him."
-Nietzsche, The Gay Science

[John Cole]

Aye, where are they? Here's Pound's answer:

The Return

See, they return; ah, see the tentative
Movements, and the slow feet,
The trouble in the pace and the uncertain
Wavering!

See, they return, one, and by one,
With fear, as half-awakened;
As if the snow should hesitate
And murmur in the wind,
and half turn back;
These were the "Wing'd-with-Awe,"
Inviolable.

Gods of the wingèd shoe!
With them the silver hounds,
sniffing the trace of air!

Haie! Haie!
These were the swift to harry;
These the keen-scented;
These were the souls of blood.

Slow on the leash,
pallid the leash-men

[Zeno]

Jabberwocky

by Lewis Carroll


’Twas brillig, and the slithy toves
Did gyre and gimble in the wabe:
All mimsy were the borogoves,
And the mome raths outgrabe.

“Beware the Jabberwock, my son!
The jaws that bite, the claws that catch!
Beware the Jubjub bird, and shun
The frumious Bandersnatch!”

He took his vorpal sword in hand:
Long time the manxome foe he sought—
So rested he by the Tumtum tree,
And stood awhile in thought.

And, as in uffish thought he stood,
The Jabberwock, with eyes of flame,
Came whiffling through the tulgey wood,
And burbled as it came!

One, two! One, two! And through and through
The vorpal blade went snicker-snack!
He left it dead, and with its head
He went galumphing back.

“And, hast thou slain the Jabberwock?
Come to my arms, my beamish boy!
O frabjous day! Callooh! Callay!”
He chortled in his joy.

’Twas brillig, and the slithy toves
Did gyre and gimble in the wabe:
All mimsy were the borogoves,
And the mome raths outgrabe.

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