My name is Mikotaki. These days I have a part-time job providing therapy for gods.
I use this Ramman Spectrometer. Perhaps you have heard already of a device called a Raman Spectrometer. The difference between the ordinary Raman spectrometer and the Ramman spectrometer I possess is that the former uses a laser to vibrate photons in the molecules of a desired sample and then provides information about those vibrations to analyse the constitution of the sample, while the latter allows me to do the same, but on gods. No (Phrygian) cap.
It was built for me by Rammanu, or Ramman, of Canaan, as a sign of gratitude for my having discovered he was at least 80% water, thereby equating him with Baal and elevating him to the apex of the Canaanite pantheon.
I have a second useful tool, burnt-in sense – which is to say, I have the external item, the sign that the beings of the world should believe me, the burnt incense, but more importantly that I have the real tool necessary to perform this job – burnt-in sense, or, if you have a boring mind, common sense. I didn’t get it from any particular god. One day they let me into the ziggurat at Ur and I took some spare candles. Oh, and I read a lot of books.
You may say neither of these tools (the spectrometer and the candles) seem useful for anything a human may recognise as being therapy. To which I would reply that I’m working with gods who are very proud and don’t like to be told they have psychological problems. Something nominally approximating objectivity is required, rather than the usual namby-pamby reclining on the couch in my office and unpacking personal dramas. I tried that with Hades; now my lease only lasts six months of every year (I travel the other six).
Yes, I have avoided many instant vaporisations. I have also been told more than a handful of times that a god will do to me what YHWH did to Sodom and Gomorrah.
Before this, I was a shrine maiden, but I got bored of that and left Sounion.
I’ll tell you about a typical job. A certain incident happened during a…I suppose you’d call it a therapy session, or maybe an exorcism – although those can be the same thing – and I had to use all of my tools, physical and mental, to complete the job.
Thoth approached me, saying that Bastet had become fiercer over time, and complained frequently of heartache. When I accompanied him to the Egyptian pantheon, she was scratching at the walls, more like a real lion than a goddess.
“We’ll need to restrain her.” I said.
The other gods prepared the necessary tools and strapped Bastet to a gold altar. I pointed the Ramman spectrometer at her. A bulky beige device, it was, with a tiny tube extending from the front – the laser.
There seemed to be some obstruction round the heart. Meanwhile, Bastet clawed and writhed and shook her restraints.
“Can we get anything better than this to tie her down with?”
The ceiling was shaking. She was actually damaging the temple’s foundations, barely held in check by the straps they’d brought me. I was out of time – she was about to escape.
Two things happened in the same instant – I brought the burnt incense to cover my face and she broke the strap around her wrist and clawed at me. I blinked; one inch further and I would have lost an eye.
After much sprinting up walls and carving at ancient sacred tapestries, Bastet was restrained once again.
“Really. Common sense would tell you leather’s not enough, wouldn’t it?” I chastised the gods, who looked ashamed.
I continued scanning the goddess, focusing now on the chest. Yes, the heart. Something…
Almost 50% carbon, some oxygen, nitrogen, sulphur. Incidentally, you may be asking – doesn’t a Raman spectrometer need to be pointing the laser at one small spot? Doesn’t it need to be unobstructed? Don’t you need to keep the sample in a little isolated chamber? I hadn’t made any incisions into Bastet. The answer to these questions is…don’t ask, okay? Or I’ll do to you what YHWH did…
Right. Glad we’re on the same page.
The heart is supposed to give readings of calcium ion and sodium. I wasn’t getting those. I was getting results more consistent with…
“You have a hairy heart.” I said to Bastet. “This is why you are experiencing chest pains.”
At once she calmed down, stopped writhing and scratching, and looked directly at me. A disconcerting languor was in her feline eyes.
This is usually how it is – once you identify the problem, well, it remains a problem, but it stops hurting. Because what hurts is the unknown, the unclaimed. There’s a difference between a source of angst and a source of chaos. This is why Bastet calmed down as soon as I told her the issue. All gods are like this, by the way.
“If the problem is hair,” the goddess replied, “hadn’t it better be shaved?”
The other gods, nonplussed, waited for me to speak.
“Very well!” I proclaimed. “On to the Shaving of the Hairy Heart. Step One. What do you think we should do?”
“You don’t know?”
“I always ask the patient. This is therapy, after all. You decide the manner in which you’re to be treated.”
“Then I say this hair on my heart is a coarseness, and it must be shaved; I say that any solution must be a permanent solution; and I say you carry a laser in your hand. Therefore, the obvious solution is that you use laser hair removal.”
The other gods were shocked. But I had expected an answer like this. Having in-sense, in-sight, led me to the same place as Bastet. But it was necessary that she herself recognise what needed to be done. “Excellent.”
As a matter of fact, I did have the ability to tune the laser in such a manner as to comply with Bastet’s wish. Ramman spectroscopy, unlike the commonly known Raman version, could if necessary incorporate a destructive element. Once analysed, in other words, I could target the hair alone and burn it off.
The process was slow, but no more painful than any ordinary shave. Five minutes passed and Bastet had a hairless heart. (The ingrown hairs were extracted by the Ramman spectrometer. How? YHWH.)
“I feel much lither.”
And in fact she was a great deal smaller, for hair had been shaved off the outside as well – chemically, it was the same substance, after all. In fact, I’d removed far more than I’d anticipated: rather than a lion, Bastet was now a cat, a little golden-brown cat rolling around on the altar. But her hair, which had collected on the floor – being divine, its cells were unable to die, and it took shape before our eyes; it assumed the form of a new lion.
“Who are you?” I asked.
Out of its curls a feline mouth formed. “I am Sister Sekhmet. I am a being of my own; not subordinate to Sister Bastet. I am a protector, a warrior. Thank you for your ministrations. Escape was rapidly becoming a necessity; there was too much of me to subsist as a mere aspect of Sister Bastet.”
The present pantheon were satisfied with this outcome, as were Bastet and Sekhmet, so I considered the job complete. I sent the gods an invoice, got paid and went on my way.
And that’s a typical day on the job. Sometimes, it’s a little more dangerous, and sometimes it’s a little harder to give the gods therapy, but they can’t lie, and if you don’t do anything stupid they won’t do much to you. You’ve just got to keep your tools handy – your scientific instruments, incense, and in-sense.
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