Hindus have the right idea, a pantheon that's not only robust at its mythological starting point but also confident enough in itself to allow for new additions. Just slide the ivory carving of Ganesh a little to the right and nudge the brass Hanuman to the left and there's plenty of room on the shelf for Jesus, who seems like a cool dude. (This, at least, is my incredibly culturally insensitive understanding of how it works.) And if I were to put together my own beggar's pantheon I would absolutely emulate that approach - and not just because Hanuman and Ganesh are definitely two dudes I want on my team, although they totally are, along with Dionysus, Gaea, Urthona, Bast, the archangel Michael, Thor, Loki, Gene Simmons, Yoda, Santa Claus and Batman.
Of course coming up with a collection of divinities who could kick cosmic ass and throw one hell of an after-party (in addition to being highly licensable for action figures) is the easy part. Constructing a workable philosophy that explains how the universe works and why and what if anything we're supposed to do with it proves a bit more of a challenge, but again, I'm sure that some brazen cribbing from pre-existing sources should get most of the job done. And at that point I'd have to make room again for astrology, my all-time favorite pseudo-scientific ancient mysticism.
I really do find it remarkable that people will get up in arms about Harry Potter corrupting the youth of America with satanic visions of the allure of witchcraft, and yet every major newspaper in America has for decades been carrying the daily horoscopes. Boy wizard who learns the values of friendship, family and sacrifice? Problematic. Arcane system for predicting the future based on pagan understandings of the movements of planets and arrangements of stars? Carry on - Jesus was a Capricorn. (Or Pisces. Yeah, I know.) I guess from a defensive Christian standpoint, astrology is pretty harmless: no death curses, minimal goat-imagery, and so on. And for all I know there are plenty of fundamentalists out there who want any and all mentions of the heathen zodiac purged from our God-fearing public discourse, but they don't get the media coverage that Harry Potter haters and would-be rock and roll censors manage.
So horoscopic astrology has been with us since a couple centuries BCE and is now so deeply ingrained that it is about as controversial as indoor plumbing. For what it's worth, I don't really believe in the daily horoscopes or the likelihood that the planet Venus's ascension in Sagittarius will make this Friday a better time to open a money market account than last Friday or next. (I don't believe in Gene Simmons, either, but the concept is fun to play with.) Still, I understand the appeal, which I think persists because it is wizardry with the trappings of science. Very very few laypeople really understand how manipulation of the electromagnetic spectrum works, but everyone has messed with the radio antenna and knows that the physical arrangement of things can affect the flow of invisible forces. And everyone gets how the moon affects the tides of the ocean, even if the true nature of gravity is something quantum physicists still debate. There's very little difference between a phenomenon which has no rational explanation at all and a phenomenon that has an explanation which can only be grasped by someone with multiple PhDs.
But for all my dismissive skepticism toward predictive astrology, I have always been fascinated by the personality-profiling powers of astrology. I am a Libra, my wife is a Cancer, my father is a Gemini - and all three of us embody the astrological definitions of those signs with remarkable specificity and accuracy. I've generally found that this is not terribly exceptional. And I'm sure if I really put my analytical mind to it, I would see that it's all a bunch of con-artist hokum, playing off our hardwired urges for pattern recognition and using generalizations to their best effect, blah blah blah. Maybe so. But in a world where psychics always get debunked and there is no Loch Ness Monster, I enjoy believing that there is a grain of truth to certain harmless pseudo-scientific ancient mysticism. Enjoy it enough to incorporate it into my imaginary Church of Universal Awesome, at any rate. Love one another, have fun, don't make me kick your ass, respect that sometimes a Taurus has just gotta be a Taurus.
And sometimes a Virgo's gotta be a Virgo. I honestly can't think of any other way to explain my September-born son - who I'm feeling just lazy enough to refer to as Virgil here - and his seemingly innate attraction to cleanliness. Don't get me wrong, his mother and I try to keep the house tidy and give it a thorough scrubbing once a week or so. Virgil doesn't exactly help, but he loves to pretend that he's helping. Put the child in the vicinity of any raglike material (a cloth diaper, a paper towel, a Kleenex, a sock) and any flat surface (the floor, the arm of the couch, sometimes the cat) and Virgil will pick up the rag and start wiping the surface down with an intensity of concentration usually reserved for brain surgery or manipulating nuclear materials. My wife and I both have expansive personalities and broadly diverse interests, but neither one of us is what you would call "fastidious" - yet Virgil seems headed down that path. I believe in genetics, but that explanation seems to come up short here. Virgil's date of birth and the planets' relative positions in the solar system that evening? Sure, why not?
(Man, if GeoCities hadn't shut down this week I would be setting up a Church of Universal Awesome web site and authorizing people to preside over civil unions RIGHT NOW.)
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