I absolutely am an atheist to tribal gods of Judaism, Christianism and and Islamacism. I sometimes enjoy, but do not believe in the pantheistic gods of Hinduism and find most of the gurus who come to America silly, stuck up and ambitious- (except for Kumare- so far. http://kumaremovie.com/ ;http://www.kumare.org/home/. I will write a post on this, I love this guy so much)
But, I love the outdoors. I love to garden and was watering yesterday AM and suddenly I just got high on the whole thing. The breeze, the sun, the earthy smells, the little plants so soon to give us their bounty, and I thought of my grandfather, “Mickey” we called him. He believed in fairies and from when I was the tiniest tot, he would pop in with my grandmother, “Gagi” for a quick visit, amidst their grand world tours visiting sheiks and kings and heads of state departments. He would get down on the ground with me and peek under leaves of grass, saying “no, not there, No, not here, and keep peeking” The first time we even played this game he finally said, “Oh! There she is!” I am looking at earth, the grass, for a bug or something. and ask what he sees. He says, “Why the grass fairy, of course!” So he describes her and points to her companions too and says for me to crinkle my eyes and I would see them too. So , of course, I did see them. He kept up this strange behavior every visit, each time showing me, then my little sister, after she was born, and my cousins if they were there too, new kinds of
fairies. We met grass fairies, tree fairies, cactus fairies and flower fairies. Lots of fairies. Rose fairies, fuchsia fairies and on and on..
The last time he introduced my sister and me to a new fairy was on the road to Bolinas over Mt Tamalpais. There were these patches of fog we could see, through the redwoods. They would drift across the road, then we drove through them, then a space where we could see the next patch of fog through the trees. Mickey said, “Mary, Molly, these are fog fairies”. And I thought to myself, they did look kind of like pictures of Polychrome the Rainbow’s daughter from the Oz books.
So, I have always been able to “see” fairies.
So once I thought of them for even a second, they appeared everywhere. Every single thing has, or is, a fairy. Rock fairies, water fairies, rainbow fairies, fish fairies, dragonfly fairies, housefly fairies. (LOL). Every single thing. It was a pantheistic revelation. For when there is someone to address, then suddenly the tree, animal, or cloud becomes an entity.
If more people talked to fairies, maybe there would be more respect for nature. And for machinery too. This is just the Irish way to say that everything has a spirit. If you believe that, then you must be respectful to all creation, or they will start talking back to you or worse, refuse to be friends, anymore.
Do any of you remember Artzybasheff? He used to draw anthropomorphized machines. My grandfather liked those drawings and he thought of machines just like that. So he talked to them when they had a problem and they told him what it was. I taught my hubby how to do that and it is amazing when he quits cussing and throwing wrenches and settles down to “listen”, the he quickly figures it out. Like the car “talked” to him.
Now, when he gets all upset and cussing, I just remind him to “get Cosmic”. It works like a charm.
In anthropology, we called that “anthropomorphizing” and it means attributing human characteristics to anything not human. If you are fundamentalist about it if you believe anything except that they are metaphors, so you can listen to them in English so to speak. I suppose it must be for convenience, but the belief in shared communication does allow you access to things your everyday consciousness may not even notice.
I have known people who really did believe everything has a spirit, and they were the most polite, humble, respectful, and kind communicators you could ever imagine.
So in my case, I think it is a metaphor as opposed to “real”, so I must be an atheist who likes metaphors such as being able to “talk” to trees and then letting them talk back, because I have a way to be open to listening. I know the dialog is all in my own head, but my head has access to billions of years of DNA and it works exactly the same way as listening to nature and fairies.
I once heard Timothy Leary say, “Read your own DNA” and so I did. At least a beginning where I imagined my ancestors back to the Pleistocene and realize that the metaphor works here, too. Just don’t get all caught up in believing anything for real; remember, it is all metaphors, not reality. Reality is when you come back to your senses and take up life where you left off when you started tripping.
Understanding Mortal Mind 