I should have known.

I should have known from the smell of it. I should have known by the taste of it. It had gone bad, very, very bad. I'm told that the sacrifices that have sat around too long before being offered are not likely to be accepted by the gods, and I was really behind on sacrificing, and  face it, nobody in this town will hire me if I don't go through the proper rituals.

Year after year of seasonal ritual has done nothing toward raising my standard of living. Housing is still expensive, and servants must be fed and we are one drought away from ruin. My debtors are stiffing me.

Yet, the prevailing narrative is "Appease the gods, damp their internecine rivalries, let them turn their attention to us who live in the world they control," but nothing seems to raise their consciousness! Should a god or goddess feel the urge to abduct a mortal and breed demigods, that seems the only time we mortals can influence fate. So it boils down to how seductive you can be to them and how good the sacrifice is. Sacrifice your dignity - which smells bad.

Hermas

As a kid, I grew up in a small city sacred to the god Hermes. 

The major industries there were tourism, messaging, health care, sports equipment, and a suitcase factory. Scattered around town were a number of hermas, which were just part of our landscape. Once in a while, we'd remember to place a sacrifice by them, usually something simple like fresh cut wild flowers or some baseball cards, or a plastic, candy filled caduceus from a nearby bodega.  

Each herma was sculpted by a different artist, and they were erected and maintained over a series of hundreds of years. We got familiar with them, assigning each an epithet, like "Hermes, speedy trickster", "Hermes the Border Guard", "Hermes,  3 and 2 in the 7th inning", and so on, based on the style and facial expression each displayed. 

Over time, many of their erect phalluses had been broken off, and sometimes there was an offering of dildos at their bases. Their noses also suffered, especially during Christian administrations, so some were given nose jobs with pug noses. 

The hermas are still there today, protected in tiny local historic districts, so, for instance, when the Mall was built, some of them were emasculated and incorporated into its walls as atlantes. 

Having so many iconic phalluses in daily consciousness made our town a little more "dress casual" or "dress optional" than neighboring towns. Since we were a seaside resort as well, this helped immensely with tourism. Hermas figure prominently in local industry branding, and every fourth day of the month, we'd have a little fest where we'd dress up as Hermes or a herma and hang out in the town square gazebo. 

There are a few other towns this devoted to their patron god or goddess (Apollo in Delphi comes to mind), but none quite so charming as ours.

Sacrificial Trees

2018-06-04 08:03:34-0400

It's that time of year when the Christmas trees go out. Buying, displaying, and disposing of Christmas trees is practically the only practice remaining of the religious ritual of sacrifice. Acres are given over to the growth of Christmas trees, nurtured for years until they are cut down, carted to parking lots, selected and bought, driven off, decorated for a few weeks, and then, usually without ceremony, stripped of finery and placed on the sidewalk.

In ancient times, the quality of the sacrificial goods was carefully evaluated to match the amount of godly appeasement with one's budget. It was a public ritual, and in many cases, a beneficent gesture from the gods in response to the sacrifice, say, a good growing season, benefitted the whole community. But American Christmas trees get no such ritual, and their sacrifice is not attended by requests for divine intervention. Yet here they sit, in rows in death as in life, out by the street: brittle, flammable, naked, and unsanctified. But what if we were to take these trees and collect them in a public square, and ignite them as in the old days, with praying, singing, and joy?