Across the skies, we used to see faces in the beards of the clouds. Stern fathers would stare down upon us, quick with lightning to punish us, sometimes for no reason we could see. The world raged against us, directed by those gods we had created in faces of the clouds, the sun and the moon and the lesser gods that filled the night-time skies around us.
Even trees, rocks and streams could turn this world against us, or bestow a blessing. Animals had souls and spirits flitted from tree to tree as we flinched at every rustle in the undergrowth.
Now though, the gods have grown old and died, the clouds hide no faces and the sun and the moon no longer watch over us, ready to punish our transgressions. We have grown up a little more now and see such things as little more than the monsters that hide under children’s beds and lurk behind the ajar doors of their wardrobes.
The rustling undergrowth, or the thought that capricious spirits will rob us of all we hold dear as we walk alone down forest pathways, no longer scare us.
We have taken a few more small steps along the path of wisdom, leaving such old superstitions behind.
[See here for an explanation of these posts labelled as Fragments]
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