Kalibayan Lore Drop: Divine but Confused

I didn’t set out to write a Genesis story this last week. I was working on scenes about political corruption, magical strip-mining, and some light spycraft. But then some gods showed up.

I’ve been thinking a lot about Caliban upon Setebos, the poem by Robert Browning. You have this brute, Caliban, reflecting on his vengeful, crude god, Setebos. It’s a meditation, a question, really. If God made man in their image, and man is cruel and evil, then what does that say about God? Maybe meditation is too soft a word. Tirade is more accurate.

I thought about the inverse of that--which I believe is the accurate story--how we created God in our image. And isn’t it all just one big story of how humans fall in love with projections? We hold this giant mirror up to the world and only want to see things reflected back at us. “Give us something familiar, something similar to what we know already, that will keep us steady,” as Fiona Apple sings.

In the world of Kalibayan, gods form when enough people remember events together with enough feeling. According to the old myths of Bayán, the world remembered everything. And from that remembering came The Firsts—the earliest gods, born from the strongest collective emotions: grief, awe, love, violence.

They were remembered into being. Very mortal constructs. Pieced together.

Which means, they’re not omniscient. They’re definitely not perfect. They are mirrors. Just bits of memory with so much momentum. Because memories are fickle things. What happens when people remember things differently? How do conflicting memories shape these gods?

And like anyone who’s half-formed and full of feeling, they ask hard questions.

That’s where the excerpt below came from—an echo of that mythic beginning.

What if divinity wasn’t about power or fate, but emotional aftermath?

What if a god was born from something you couldn’t stop feeling?

What if gods were verbs?

What if they asked what we all ask?

Are we real? Do you love us?

My intention with this project is not to get into theology. But I do like to think about divinity. And while I was raised Catholic, I definitely vibe more with the Greek pantheon than the Holy Trinity. More soap opera than PBS pledge drive.

I'm a bit of a control freak, and I find myself with a story full of lore and characters that can't and, more importantly, refuse to be figured out. There are no linear paths. And truly, what stories have only linear paths? Certainly, not any ones I find interesting. Ultimately, I think I'm writing a story about human nature, relationships, and their complexities.

Mostly, I'm learning to let things go and accept that not everything has to be resolved or explained. It's easy to accept that not all characters have to understand every situation, or understand themselves or each other. It's harder to accept that I don't have to understand all the characters or figure out every situation, because life doesn't always afford that luxury. Of course, within reason. I'm not suggesting leaving giant plot holes in my story, don't worry.

It was also fun to realize that not everyone in the world has to understand how the magic works. And maybe the gods don't have any idea what the fuck is going on. Or maybe they do and they just don't care.

This foray into fiction has been very educational, liberating, and challenging in new ways that poetry wasn't.

I'll be dropping more WIP articles, excerpts, yapping about ideas, character intros, etc. here. I'd be honored for y'all to follow along, let me know what you think, and pass along some knowledge to a baby fiction writer if you feel moved to do so.

And if you've made it this far reading, thank you. Truly.