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" The Pantheons made themselves apparent in the blink of an eye; perhaps less. At one instant the planet was a place of faith, doubt, and godlessness, the next there was room for none of these. Who needed faith when the senses confirmed all? As for doubt and godlessness, they were absurdities now that every deity that had ever appeared in human consciousness (and some several hundred thousand who had never made it) had manifested themselves. The Coming was indiscriminate; it made no distinction between great divinities and small. There were vast and transformative powers abroad, deities that brought with them fleets of angelic vehicles and all manner of divine paraphernalia, but there were also threadbare local gods, guardians of painted rocks, spirits of bamboo groves; presences that healed sores and brought lovers, demons who haunted empty roads and forsaken hotels. A world of yearning and need was suddenly a place of surfeit; and the end of mankind began, for there was nothing left invisible, or unknowable, and therefore nothing left to hope for or desire. "
― Clive Barker , Chiliad: A Meditation
