The placebo effect may be a good example to begin with. Although it maintains the almost paradoxical definition as being “medically ineffectual” though being regularly responsible for a “perceived or actual improvement in a medical condition”, we may at least say for certain that the logically derived mechanisms for its effectiveness are somewhere rooted within thought itself, or, believing that the placebo will actually do some good. This belief-derived effect has sometimes manifested itself in the stimulation and activation of the immune and nervous system, almost as if they were being sent the message to “prepare themselves” for the faux-medicine. With this fact in mind, it becomes quickly apparent that consciousness itself may have a direct impact on the physical, material body. As a revision of that thought, it may be more correctly assumed that the body itself is a participating member in the whole of, and is connected to what we tend to convey as consciousness, whatever it may or may not truly be.

In this sense, it may have been necessary for early man to externalize his most pressing worries and desires in the form of Gods; aggregates of thought which were granted governance and supremacy over various aspects of the human condition, and by way of some manner of religious surrenderance, ritualistic re-internalization or perceived divine contact, they might have occasionally managed to bridge the mirrored aspects of that particular god within themselves.

In other words, the imminent juxtaposition between that which was birthed from the internal, made external and given the mask of an anthropomorphic personification of some desire or trouble, connected back to, understood through its own voice and by means of some primordial placebo effect might have indeed aided the species in regards to their budding acclamation and comprehension of such alien subjects as agriculture, mathematics, metallurgy, more fair and concise political and cultural systems and the continued and burning libertarian ideals of the civilized human agenda. Big stuff, indeed, however…

Even today we live alongside various Gods and spirits, although we may have abandoned the practice of their anthropomorphization, but even this is not always the case. One may easily argue, given this point of view, that the ideal and concept of Liberty had been anthropomorphized into one of the best known and most recognizable Goddess monuments in the modern world; the statue of liberty. If one were to really get into the subject, he or she may become astounded by the sheer measure of calculation and pretentiousness demonstrated by the Freemasons and others in the laying out and architecture within Washington DC, with many historical buildings and monuments being made and placed in accordance with the constellation and symbolism ofthe Goddess Virgo. Some still may be taken aback when learning of the rituals held by the Bohemian Grove, an exclusive club where the wealthy and powerful meet to gather around a gigantic carved Owl statue, likely symbolizing knowledge and sacrifice. The practice of externalizing psychic concepts into symbolic figures and totems is not yet completely out of style, even amongst the rich, the powerful and the rational. Most of these modern practices of God or Goddess reverence as they pertain to the externalization of symbolic concepts may be quickly brushed away as nostalgic divergence; the question is whether or not it might hold a positive effect or any effect at all, in which case the only real path towards an answer is: try it for yourself.

Found in On the Mechanism of Gods, Godesses, Servitors & Egregores by Frater E.S.