"When one person suffers from a delusion, it is called insanity. When many people suffer from a delusion it is called Religion."

- Robert Pirsig -

Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance

Skippy spagyrically ripped off both quotes from Richard Dawkins' book The God Delusion. He bought the book in Madrid and then sat reading it in Starbuckses and airports. It's a big book and the title on the cover is huge - you can read it - The God Delusion - from across the concourse. He was getting a lot of posed disapprovement. People would walk by him and mumble: "You're going to Hell and I'm glad!" Skippy would hold the book up higher - like a flag - so more touristas could see it.

Richard Dawkins, like James Watson, is taking a lot of shit. The Christian Nazis want the head of Dick Dawkins. The Academic Kommies want the balls of Jimmy Watson. They got Watson. He's old and near dithering so he's easy to dismiss. But Dicky is going to give the Evangelicals, the Creationists, the Moral Majority, and the Republican Party hissy-fits for decades to come. Richard Dawkins, and what he's saying about Ideas like God cannot be dismissed. "What if god was one of us," asked Joan Osborne. "What if god is the inevitable result of mediating the world thru symbols and is therefore a necessary delusion which evolution will slowly replace with gnosis and knowledge as we trip thru the Kenotic drama of the Shattered Vessels?" Asked Spinoza - with a leering twinkle in his large dark eyes.

Shiva is most often called "The Destroyer," but that's likely because his other attributes and avatars are not as fun to picture and imagine. Except, of course, the avatar above and the Cock-Bull Shiva-Nandi that got you to this page. Shiva has a 1000 names - but a Name in the Hindu milieu is more like an Epithet - or a Phylactery with a message. Shiva does not pop out of the Hindu pantheon fully formed. He had a previous Incarnation as the southern Indian god Rudra - a Vedic Sturm Gott. Rudra was the god of Sacrifice and the Pyre, but also Prosperity - which is the goal of Sacrifice. Rudra was the ancient Wielder of the Thunderbolt and his Destruction knew no boundaries. But the Etics will tell you he's older still and pre-dates the Indo-European gods altogether. Back in the ahistorical dark a god like Shiva-Rudra fades into the category of deities called Basic - and Elemental. Gods of Big Scary Noise. Skippy watched from his hotel balcony in Jaipur as a sudden clap of thunder sent the Monkeys leaping into the trees. Elemental gods are the forces of Nature set to Symbol. We Monkeys tend to make gods of those things which capture our attention. Pussy for instance. And since it's nearly always the male monkeys which make up the gods, Pussy turns to Cock like a Necker Cube - Flip - just like that.

Hindus love Shiva - but not as the Destroyer. They love him as Shiva-Lingam - where Linga = Phallus. So Shiva is worshipped as both the Creator and the Destroyer of Life. Barber says that's a perfect balance. "Gods with Perfect Balance," he told me in Paris in front of the Vitraux of the Pressoire Mystique, "are the mistakes we make when we must have symmetry to calm the raging mind." Shiva has Consorts - RockBitches and groupies - called Sakti, and Kali the Terrible, and the lithe and ready goddess Sati. But these are illusions since all these females are really just aspects of Shiva's girlish side. Shiva has 5 faces and either 2, 4, or 8 arms depending on what Shiva has to say. Shiva speaks in Mudras and Sacred Objéts so you have to watch his/her hands. Shiva has 3 eyes and you never want to be seen by the third which will instantly evaporate "all created things." In his 8-armed configuration Shiva holds the vocabulary of his Mudras in his hands: a Bow, An Hourglass, a Drum, a Club, a Trident, a Cord, an Elephant, and a Rat. The Chinese spoken language is composed of 245 Syllables which are combined to make up every Chinese name and word in existence. The Latin Alphabet does this with 26 abstracted symbols of objects and parts of the body whose identity has been lost to most. Shiva has more to say with less. Shiva has 5 faces and what Shiva says changes with the face and what he has in his hands.

In the Tantra Texts, Kali/Shiva stands in a Boat which floats on an ocean of Blood, "drinking from a Skull the lifeblood of the children she brings forth and eats back." Kali, in the East, is counterparted to Chronos/Saturn in the West. Both eat their children with relish. Both of their names mean "Time." Kali/Shiva is an Uroboric Bitch. It was Barber Perfect who bought the mask for me in Varanasi. Benares. Kashi of the Old Dragon. "From a Skull," he kept saying. "She drinks the blut of her kinder from a Skull, Lucky! Das ist der Graal. The Grail. Only fools und Romantiks see it as ein cup. A chalice. The origin of the Grail is in the Severed Head." When I told this to his brother, Pooler, he laughed and said that Barber did not probably realize how close he was to the truth. The first naturally available object for proto-monkey-man to use as a cup was the top of his own skull. In the Paleolithic, when the gods were accreting into their first forms, skulls were easy to come by. So for hundreds of thousands of years we used the Human Skull Cap for a container. Something to lift the water from the stream to your mouth. Something to gather berries in. Something full of Mana and psycho-angst, muy saliento - pierced with the hovering Spirit or Soul of its old owner. All the better if it was the skull of your own genes - or your enemy's. Meanings shift, mudra by mudra, face by face, sex by sex - and when you're finished you have a god with a 1000 names.

You see Shiva all over India - usually in his Phallic aspect as a Stone Lingam. Usually rising up out of a Yoni. It's all very Diabolus in Musica, all very Necker Cube. Which do you see first? The Dick or the Pussy. Which do you see as having Pride of Place? Not all the gods, but most of the gods are like Shiva - raw emotions given exterior containers which are Bearers of Meaning. Dawkins and the New Atheists are right about one thing: the human mind has not been designed by evolution and "nature" to adequately tell the Container from the Thing Contained. It is inevitable that we mistake the Masks of God for the Faces of God.

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