A Catalogue of Deities

I cannot tell you about the first deity I met because I swore not to do so.

I became so obsessed with the second deity I encountered that I devoted myself to it.  I do not remember how old I was when I first met it: when I found it in the form in which I recognised it I was all of 16 or perhaps younger, but the more I think about it the more I realise that it was always there; in the deserted farm buildings at night; in the television reports of the first Gulf War; on the penultimate step of the staircase.  There was a field between one of the fields of the farm I grew up on and the school playing field and the field of another farm.  I don't know whose field it was or how they accessed it.  It was surrounded by a mature hedge on all sides.  A single gateway broke the barrier, and, although it was a modern metal gate large enough to drive a land rover through, it did not lead out to anywhere.  The gate was overgrown with brambles and willow herb.  Inside there was a horse that I sometimes heard, walking past on the footpath on a moonless night, but never once saw.  I walked by that field twice a day for seven years and never saw anyone enter or leave.  I myself never thought to go in.  This was a realm of fear, the home of The Fear in the Night.

The gnawing madness of the possibility of a twilight realm hiding in plain sight outside the reach of man troubled me so.  It was fashionable to read H.P. Lovecraft, but I turned away: this was no joke.  I still have not read him.  What was there in the woods at night that one could legitimately fear?  I went to find out.  On moonless nights I would walk through the trackless woods without a torch, trying not to make a sound so that I could take whatever was there unawares.  In time, finding nothing, I came to the conclusion that I was the thing that people might fear.  There was nothing in the woods but me.  Through my own transgression against social standards - creeping torchless through the trees at night - I had become the thing that society feared there.  (But it occurs to me only now that, trivial though it would have been to accomplish, I never once looked in the field with the unseen horse.)

At University, playing games with aliases, I adopted the name The Fear in the Night.  I found it again, the deity, briefly, in a stand of beech trees atop what felt like but probably isn't a plague pit.  The Fear no longer lives with me so strongly, but only three years ago I found myself creeping silently through an unlit forest.  There was a campfire ahead, and I stood undetected in the trees for maybe twenty minutes, watching three teenage boys getting drunk.

The next time I encountered a god-like being, or rather perhaps a demon, I was living alone on an island off the west coast of Scotland.  There were a number of half-derelict houses on the island.  On the first night I slept in the first of these, but I knew it was not right.  I did not go upstairs in that house again without asking permission out loud.  I was aware that the previous warden had had some superstition of the island's graveyard and over time, after discovering his work diary, I came to realise that I was dealing with the same phenomena as he had.  Doors would open and close on their own.  It is easy to say that isolation breeds this kind of psychological reaction and you are probably right.  But nonetheless I experienced this as if it were real, so doesn't that make it so?

This being revealed himself to me on the last day.  After five months I came to leave that place.  I packed up my things and loaded them into the boat.  The tide was unusually high and everything took longer and was more difficult than it should have been.  I cast off, opened the throttle and headed out into the bay.  Turning round to look at my wake I saw him.  The Horned God - or was it Satan? - stood on the jetty watching me go.  He had hooves and furry satyr-like legs.  His dark-skinned chest was that of a man's, and his head was horned.  Just like in a drawing.  He was about eight foot tall.

The fourth deity came to me in a dream.  It is a good story, but, alas, I do not feel proud of the facts revealed by the tale and I will not relate it.

Five.  Walking in the woods I met a goblin.  He was wearing rags like old tracksuits torn and muddy.  He had a dog with him.  His skull came down between his eyes giving his head an overall V-shape.  He was hiding in a hazel bush and did not want me to find him.  But I gave way thinking it would be a boy or perhaps a deer.  After a few moments he came out.  We greeted each other, then he walked past me and left.

Six.  Sat under an apple tree in the garden of the house I later bought, I was visited by the Goddess of the Orchard, or perhaps the spirit of that particular tree.  For a moment I saw her fully in my mind.  She was young and bountiful and she asked me if I would protect the tree.  I agreed.

Finally, when the opportunity came to buy the house I stood, alone, looking at the building from the garden.  This is perhaps the most serious of all my meetings with supernatural beings.  I was weighing up whether to commit so much time and money to this project: did I really want to tie myself to this house?  As I stood alone, contemplating, The Holy Ghost came up behind me and put his hand on my shoulder.  He told me that it was my destiny to buy the house.

Once I had moved in, a man knocked on the door.  He asked me to go to the Kingdom Hall (of the Jehovah's Witnesses).  I declined.  He said that he did not need to talk to me about Christ because he could see that I was somebody who already knew God.  Perhaps it was coincidence, a clever tactic, or a misjudgement, but it certainly spooked me.  It's been two years.  He hasn't been back.

I was a atheist from birth until shortly before that happened.  I believed in God for perhaps 30 months but it is waning now.  I fear that I am beating the magic out of myself with work and by living at the wrong scale.  I would like to get that magic back.  I don't necessarily need God, but I do need to rediscover that grand view.