This is why the Greeks needed myth: for that boundary, to know where they stood amidst the infinite. No one can simply coexist with the ocean, storms, the cypress trees. They had to codify the elements with language and greater meaning, and create gods out of them—gods who looked suspiciously like themselves—so that even if they were powerless over

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But when Lucan describes the recall of troops from Gaul, he allows himself a diversion to mention Celtic gods and the ‘accursed blood’ spilt in order to propitiate them: ‘Savage Teutates, Esus’ horrid shrines, / And Taranis’ altars cruel . . .’ The Celtic names of these gods appear to be descriptive. ‘Teutates’ probably means ‘the god of the

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The Old Testament God rules with a heavy hand over a static moral world, but I believe that our world is instead presided over by an alternate entity, Coyote, the Native American deity, an indestructible, lecherous, hilarious, and improvisational trickster, straying into and surviving catastrophe (a little like his simplified great-grandson, Chuck

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