Ophiucus.
"Once having set up her idols and built altars to them it was inevitable that she would worship there. It was inevitable that she should accept any inconsistency and cruelty from her deity as all good worshippers do from theirs. All gods who receive homage are cruel. All gods dispense suffering without reason. Otherwise they would not be worshipped. Through indiscriminate suffering men know fear and fear is the most divine emotion. It is the stones for Altars and the beginning of wisdom. Half gods are worshipped in wine and flowers. Real gods require blood."
-ZNH, Their Eyes Were Watching God
"Lyra thought it looked more like cruelty than love..."
-Pullman, The Golden Compass
"Mythology may be regarded as the poetry of religion... Legends combined into a regular system under the hands of the poet, and the rude outline moulded into forms of ideal beauty... are the objects of adoration in credulous age, and the delight of all succeeding ones. Such were the beautiful inventions of Hesiod and Homer, who... created the theogeny of the greeks. An assertion not to be taken too literally since it is hardly possible that any man should create a religious system for his nation. They only filled up the shadowy outlines of tradition with the bright touches of their own imaginations until they had clothed them in beauty which kindled the imaginations of others."
-Prescott, History of the Conquest of Mexico
-ZNH, Their Eyes Were Watching God
"Lyra thought it looked more like cruelty than love..."
-Pullman, The Golden Compass
"Mythology may be regarded as the poetry of religion... Legends combined into a regular system under the hands of the poet, and the rude outline moulded into forms of ideal beauty... are the objects of adoration in credulous age, and the delight of all succeeding ones. Such were the beautiful inventions of Hesiod and Homer, who... created the theogeny of the greeks. An assertion not to be taken too literally since it is hardly possible that any man should create a religious system for his nation. They only filled up the shadowy outlines of tradition with the bright touches of their own imaginations until they had clothed them in beauty which kindled the imaginations of others."
-Prescott, History of the Conquest of Mexico