Not seeing gods

My inability to perceive big tech companies (and other ogregores) as potent presences worries me. They have godlike powers, and yet I don’t experience them as such. To understand the consequences, I asked GPT-4 and Gemini-1.5 Pro for examples from mythology and folklore of people who didn't see supernatural beings, to their detriment. The pickings were rather slim.

GPT-4’s response combines two attitudes which seem distinct to me: (1) being unable to recognize the presence of supernatural beings, and (2) being unwilling to acknowledge their power. For now, I’m going to ignore the second category, not “fearing” the gods, i.e., not acknowledging their power—but see endnote [1] for a placeholder.

Here are some example of the first category, not recognizing the power of gods.

Loki often disguises himself, and sometimes those who fail to see through his disguise may suffer consequences as a result of his tricks. For example, Loki turning into a mare to lead away the stallion helping a jötunn to build the walls of Asgard, led to the project’s failure and the jötunn’s death. Loki disguised Thor as a bride and himself as a handmaiden to retrieve Thor’s hammer from the jötunn Þrymr (aka Thrym), leading to Thrym’s beating (death?). Loki turned into a fly to hinder the dwarf Sindri in helping his brother Brokkr make of treasures, but in this case it turned out well for the dwarves since they still won their bet against Loki.

In some Native American traditions, particularly among the Navajo, there are tales of Skinwalkers—witches or other beings with the supernatural ability to turn into animals (Legends of America, Wikipedia, Quora). GPT-4 claims that those who cannot see or recognize Skinwalkers may fall victim to their malevolent actions, which can include bringing illness, bad luck, or even death to those they target, but I wasn’t able to find definitive evidence for this..

In the Book of Numbers 22:21-39 (NIV), Balaam angered the Lord who sent his angel to block his path. Balaam couldn’t see the angel but his donkey could, and refused to move forward in spite of three beatings, saving Balaam from the Lord’s wrath. In Numbers 22:33 (NIV), the angel says, “The donkey saw me and turned away from me these three times. If it had not turned away, I would certainly have killed you by now, but I would have spared it.”

In the Odyssey, Athena disguises Odysseus as a beggar when he returns at last to Ithaca. He is able to enter his house without being revealed to the suitors and slaughters them. This isn’t really the case I’m looking for; Odysseus is disguised by supernatural means but isn’t a disguised supernatural being himself.

Gemini-1.5-Pro pointed me towards folktales that emphasize the importance of respecting omens and warnings from the spirit world. The LLMs present many examples of ignoring black dogs leading to disaster, but the only one I was able to verify was an uncited claim in a Wikipedia article that long-haul truckers say that seeing a black dog with red eyes in your peripheral vision is a sign of a fatal crash being imminent, and that you should pull off immediately. Hooting owls are a bad omen but I couldn’t find evidence that ignoring the calls has dire consequences. The same for hungry ghosts, yurei, and Anansi. Gemini seemed to be telling me what I wanted to know, but I couldn’t confirm any of the claims.

Jesus on the road to Emmaus is an example of people not recognizing the god but being none the worse for it (Luke 24:13-35, NIV). After the two men eventually recognized the rised Jesus when he broke bread, he disappeared.

Updates

April 17, 2024: Added Emmaus story.

Endnotes

[1] “Fearing gods” merits its own treatment; stay tuned. Briefly, GPT-4 suggested the following examples, embellished with links via Perplexity.ai: 

In Celtic culture, people who disrespect fairy mounds (the Aos Sí, or fairy folk, inhabit a world invisible to most humans) might find themselves cursed, their livestock sickened, or their fortunes dwindled. For example, a man who tried to blast a dolmen suffered a septic hand, and a man who had engaged workers to level an earthwork fairy fort fell dead (Wikipedia); the financial ruin of developer Seán Quinn in 2011 was blamed on his moving a fairy fort (RTE)

In Japanese folklore, the tengu, a type of yokai that can take on the form of a bird-like humanoid, are known to abduct those who fail to pay them respect or who boast too loudly of their own abilities. For example, tengu were understood in the 13th century to be interested in kidnapping children and young adults—especially those who trespassed, knowingly or not, into their sanctuaries (New World Encyclopedia).

In Slavic folklore, a domovoi is a household spirit that guards the home. If the family fails to recognize or appease the domovoi, it can become mischievous or even malicious, causing disturbances, breaking things, or bringing bad luck to the household. According to Astonishing Legends, a domovoi can cause a trouble if he or his rules aren’t respected, like messing up the house, injuring livestock, or breaking beloved belongings.