The prophet's dictionary guide to the supernatural

libations, drink offerings that were often intoxicants. Wine and beer were the most popular ones. With these were prayers and petitions offered with prophetic utterances delivered as the god’s response to them. Many of them were ordinarily inspired by drugs and potions specially chosen for their hallucinogenic affects. For prophetic words and augury, divination was employed to hear back from the god. Official and annual celebratory rituals further included dramatizing what the god was doing, or had done, in the invisible world. Often these took the form of fertility rites where the god was depicted as engaging in sexual intercourse with his or her consort (spouse), warring with the gods of their neighbors, meting out judgment and punishment on their disobedience and failures, or legislating their spiritual government to be handed down to the rulers. The dramatic performance was believed to be the means by which the worshippers could discover what their mysterious god was doing. To witness the deity behaving much like themselves was important to the formation of their bond and reliance upon it. People love thinking their god is just like them, even though they recognize flaws in themselves the god is to remedy. The comfort in worshipping something potentially as frail as themselves was desired to ease their own sense of inadequacy and helplessness. Meanwhile, in many cases, the dramas were physically imitated on earth—on the altar—by the officiating priests and priestesses of the cult to manifest the god’s power in the earth. Some dramatizations that portrayed the chief deity’s pantheon warring, judging, legislating, and decreeing served to instill fear, faith, and awe within the followers. The outcome of the dramatizations was construed as the message of the god on matters affecting their existence. Nevertheless, fertility rites were the most favored ritual, for obvious reasons, and because the concern over food was ever prevalent in minds of nomadic and agricultural civilizations. The types and forms of ritual worship were meticulously designated by the deity through its officials and functionaries. What was prescribed demonstrated the ways the deity would respond to a worshipper. Any variation or deviation courted judgment and punishment as the character of the god was reflected in the rituals assigned. The deity’s powers and manifestations were defined by the customs and observances they prescribed. They were also limited by, or contingent upon, their worshipper’s ritual obedience as well. The rituals were the basis of the god’s responses that serve to express his or