ABSTRACT
This chapter asks difficult questions about the extent to which gods might possess thingly qualities and whether the affordances of divinity were necessarily limited to those of human-made anthropomorphic cult statues. It ponders not only whether gods are things, but if so, whether there are ways to flatten their relationship with other things without resorting to anthropocentrism, or in other words the shaping the thingliness of gods in humanity’s image. The chapter addresses these issues by asking how far it is possible to escape from traditional forms of understanding concerning the more-than-human divine components of an assemblage that frame it in purely human terms. By way of example it explores this from two angles, examining how different ways of being affected by the qualities of divine thingliness could produce disparate forms of religious knowledge. First, it considers what happens when intangible concepts of divinity are given material character in the form of images and statues. Then it examines the opposite standpoint: rather than giving the divine material form, how might divine affordances already be tangible within the physical world? This means examining ways in which divine thingliness might manifest through human-made artefacts that were not designed for the purposes of representing the divine, as well as natural elements such as water.
