--As a polytheist, I've been able to see the blessings as just that--blessings! these are time honored methods, inseperable from the kami, or from the prectice of making a khuk. Sorta like Japanese smiths and ancient Kush (African) smiths -- Working steel required prayer, a nearly shamanic mindset, and alchemy.
Bill, your description on the atomic level called out to me, and made me recall part of the creation story of the North.
A great Giant, Ymir, was floatinng around in space after the creation (by the meeting of Fire and Ice in Ginungagap). He represents formless matter, potential, resorces from out of the void. Three gods, Woden, Wili and Weh, Come upon his vast bulk, and They begin to cut and stab at him. His blood forms the rivers, oceans. They pulled and pushed at his flesh, until the land was made, his bones poked thru the skin, making mountains, his hair is the trees and bushes, his mighty skull forms a dome over the earth, and the clouds are his brains. (four dwarves -- Northri, Suthri, Oestre, Veste <North, South, east, west> hold the skull up, and light can still get around it. When its overcast, is that the skukk in the way?) The gods blew burning cinders into the sky to create the stars, etc.
What's the point? Simply this -- the Kamis are the gods in the parable, and the steel and horn and bone and wood are Ymir. We humans follow this godly practice of forming and reforming stuff into other useful stuff. This very act is divine.
I call this the Ymir principle, and it applies to all matter of enregy and matter transforms. Another one - The food you eat is Ymir, and your digestive tract is the gods, remaking matter into emergy with chemical transformations.
Sorry- T.M.I.
Keith
