Consanguine - Wombs of Belief and Confirmation

In some secrecy the holy man arranges
Images such as vestments, candles, and robes
To befit the coming throng of worshippers
Who look to him, to give meaning in the words of their God.
They do this without knowing what it is
The objects mean, not to be confused
With what they symbolize.
The houses of the holy are draped in images
In objects that to any outsider seem trinkets
Of minor sorcery.
Callous nonsense.
Even the non-theist holds images near and dear.
Identifies with them like foal to mare.
The image of the atom, equation, and scalpel.
The houses of scientism are not different from churches and synagogues.
Wombs of belief.

(and confirmation. And yet, by some communal pact, we are dominated by the images of the worshipped. No man escapes what he invests his soul in, which, more often than not, are images. Images of the wife and child, of the grand monument bearing his name, of the world laid bare for the fervent explorer)

A cross and a crown:
We are slaves to masters we create.
To take all these substances and make them sing
Their canary song
At our beck and call.
A power reserved for practitioners of ceremony.
And he preaches to us; nay,
He dictates to us what the images before us mean.
And speaks nothing of conduits
Bread-flesh and win-blood make with sacredness
Within our souls.
We make peace with this.

Drink of the wine
Feast of the bread.

And take of these substances and images what we require from them.
And forever dismiss the dictator of images.

"A spectacular killing carried out as the solemn and collective nature of religion dictates has the power to reveal what normally escapes notice."