Snow in the brain – are gods reality or fiction

In episode 3, the Egyptian gods are on the stage. Anubis the god of death, represented by Mr. Jacquel, had a great significance in the ancient pantheon. Death is the only safe reality for man. This is because he is also aware of this. Thus it can be concluded that death is also an approach to consciousness and that this may endure dying. People thus live in two worlds simultaneously. In the physical, which is calculated by our brain and is fed by the sensory systems and is reproducible. As well as in a fictional, founded on faith, infinite and hypothetical. Mr. Wednesday to Shadow: “They believe in nothing – therefore they have nothing”. We know how strong a vision, a dream and a belief can be. “Only the faith in the gods keeps you alive,” says Wednesday. He thinks that he will be more afraid of forgetting than before the new gods.

The death cult of ancient Egypt is known. The people have worked a whole life for their tombs, which should allow a further life in the hereafter. For the terrestrial gods (pharaohs), hundreds of thousands of people have slaved the pyramids and the king’s tombs, and many of them died themselves. The business of death is to be found in every religion in different ways. In Christianity, people believed in a physical resurrection up to the late Middle Ages. Also the “billing” is known at the threshold of death – the recent court. Anubis – Mr. Jacquel – leads a recently deceased Muslim woman to a scale, in which her heart (good / bad) is weighed against a feather. After that, her destiny is determined, and she is allowed to choose one of five doors for her eternal life. All these myths are more and more forgotten. In a secular society, as in the EU, USA, China, hardly anybody really believes in a further life after death. Although the longing for it, still exists. Out of this need, with technological solutions and science fiction, transhumanism arose. This is understood as a life setting, which accepts technology as a life extension up to immortality. The beginning of this intellectual attitude can be found in Friedrich Nietzsche. In Nietzsche’s “Übermensch” there are already approaches to this. Many thinkers today are convinced that radical life prolongations through genetic engineering, nanotechnology and medicine become possible. The gods in white, so doctors are now called, would be a precursor of the “New Gods”. In the previous episodes, the new ones have not yet appeared, but they are working in the background.

The human genome is already decrypted. The Egyptian death cult was also a high technology. Preparing a corpse for thousands of years is an enormous achievement. The new gods will also use the technology, but combine a completely different spirituality with it. In the end, however, both gods are concerned about the power over man. That God, who is better able to control death and who can also market well, will become the mighty new.

Shadowmoon is a realist. He only believes that he sees and understands. Wednesday, however, as God knows that this is only an extremely small, limited section. Although Shadow has already experienced all sorts of impossible things, he does not believe in any fiction. Even his dead, living wife Laura still considers him a dream. Wednesday needs an unusual context for his bankroll. Snowfall at this time would attract attention and distract attention from its action. So he instructs Shadow to focus on snow on a mental level, and it actually begins to snow. Shadow notes the first time that he is the cause of an unnatural effect. Slowly he begins to believe in fictions. In the conversation with the youngest of the Zorya siblings, a fiction becomes real again. She takes the moon from heaven and transforms it into a silver coin. Zorya: “Do not lose it, you already have the sun”, meaning the gold coin and more his wife. The ancient gods provided people with fictions like a life after death, peace to all people, maidens in paradise, etc. The latter is an example from the Islamic tradition.

Islam is currently the religion that employs the “sexual” as the control instrument. Sex before marriage is unthinkable. Traffic with the same sex leads to immediate execution. Neil Gaiman assigned this problem to the ancient gods. A young Arab from Oman should sell “junk” in the US for his brother-in-law – no one wants to have. In doing so, he gets to know the taxi driver, a “jinn”. According to Koran, this is the third creature, next to angels and human beings who has created Allah. Djinn are beings that can not be defeated with conventional weapons. This requires magical powers. Both come near by a taxi ride and then spend a love night at the hotel. A scene of a homosexual act, as can hardly be seen on the TV. For Muslims is very repulsive and is also the signal that news is new. Each of the old American gods has something else to fear in terms of social and cultural development. All together have the Technical Boy and the Media as a threat.

The technical development in the last 100 years, up to the Internet, was scientific work. There was no alchemy, magic, or fiction. Hypotheses, experiments and measurements led to natural laws. Without electromagnetic field and quantum mechanics no smartphones. These developments needed exactly that, not what the ancient gods did so strongly – fictions. Although these are an enormous force such as pyramids, crusades, terracotta, and much more to prove. In addition to science, the new gods of America will also use their divine powers to win the people for themselves.

In no country, except the USA, are there so many cultures – gods. Their behavior has fused over the centuries. Czernobog, Wotan, Anubis, Anansi, Zorya, Jinn, Siri, etc. all have dominated the people. The new gods also want that. For this they will have to give man a fiction again; which? Until that is settled, the old gods continue to play. Shadow has persuaded Czernobog to another party and won it.