THE INFUSION OF BELIEF AND THE CITY IN THE SKY

FOREWORD: This article will have two voices. One is more or less rational and is careful with connecting ideas; read it like non-fiction, if such a thing even exists. Another is more bold; adventurous, like the perception of a fictional writer or a poet on a rationally induced trance state. It is necessary. Just a head’s up.

In many traditions throughout the planet we can find traces of the worship of fetishes. Fetishes are objects considered to hold supernatural power. These objects — they can be statues, dolls, even elements of the natural world — are believed to have an existence beyond its mere physical materiality. They are omens, signs of the supernatural, of greater abstract forces that we, small limited humans, can only perceive by symbolic and divinatory means. …