Ix Hun Tah Dz’ib, Ix Chebel Yax, and Chibirias are all names recorded for the Mayan creator deity who had a red paintbrush and used it to color red clay, flowers, bird parts, and the like throughout the jungle.

But what if there really are no deities, demons, potentialities, outside of us? What if everything wonderful, awful, or ethereal is another piece of Earth, bursting forth at a particular moment? Maybe even our stories, myths, and fantasies, considered to be of some invisible or imaginary place, are all, from beginning to end, of the Earth.

What if we, and our gods, really have no say in the matter? Not so much in a Determinist sense, but simply in a sense our culture seems to have lost — however, one that many individuals are actively grappling with — that we are inextricably woven into the fabric and life of this planet, and beyond that fact we don’t understand it at all. We have an endless supply of mechanical implements to measure the Hows and Whens, but, just as an MRI can’t reveal “our” thoughts, maybe we don’t have a clue about Earth’s real self, or the part we play.