Before Science

Posted on by Opher

Before Science

Back before science

                They used the shaman

                                To explain.

He performed

                Ritual dances

                                To bring the rain.

He always ate the choice,

                Enjoyed the power.

Was waited on

                Every hour.

His pronouncement were the truth –

                Explaining mysteries without proof.

They wrote it all down

                To become the gospel word.

It mattered little

                That most was just absurd.

It did not need

                To be true.

As long as people

                Stuck to it like glue.

Opher – 26.6.2022

Religion is powerful. It is tribal. Its dress and ritual are intermixed with our cultures

Its messages can be interpreted in many ways. It is always open to interpretation and malleable. Most things can be justified.

The absurdities are glossed over.

The cultural influences carefully ignored.

Everyone is able to pick and choose the bits they want to. It can be used to vilify all war and sanctify war.

The establishment find it very useful. It is used to vindicate them. Its power is deployed. It unifies the tribe.

Putin uses it – appearing with ceremonies and religious patriarchs.

Ukraine uses it. Soldiers cross themselves and die with renewed vigour.

Poetry – Incandescent Days – a poem for life on planet Earth.

Posted on by Opher

This planet revolves around the sun. In man’s earliest days it was a thing of wonder, bringing light, heat and life. It had to be a God and was worshipped. The beliefs were that the rituals could unlock and control the powers it possessed.

Our ancestors were wrong but even so the sun was the giver of all life.

The sun’s heat was sufficient to melt ice and liberate vapour. Water is the medium of all living things. None can live without it.

The sun’s light caused photosynthesis to produce the oxygen we breathe and liberate our thoughts. With the energy it donated to us we dissected its secrets and learnt that it was no god and our powers could not touch it.

Life is change. With each day our bodies transform from egg and sperm to death. In millennia we evolve. And the sun itself must change. The giver of life will one day turn destroyer but its passing may produce life for others to evolve on distant worlds. For we are the stuff of exploding stars.

Incandescent Days

Incandescent days beneath a nuclear globe

Worshipped from days long gone

Creating green explosions on the crust.

No gods to implore but iron to rust

And chemistry to leave within the dust.

 

Hydrogen to helium

And energy to burn

Upon the mantle of our shelf

As quarks are rearranged

To radiate through space

And illuminate ourselves.

 

Excited electrons create the air

As pigments dance in ecstasy

To where

They are passed to the chemistry

That dares

To change its state.

For change is the law

And all our fate.

 

Opher 3.7.2015