In Ancient Greece and Rome, citizens believed their cities were protected by a chief god. This god claimed the city, lived there, and protected it. Worshipping the city god honored the city. The rituals honored the city’s people. These “gods of place” extended to rivers and sacred groves; even individual neighborhoods had protector gods.
These gods functioned like a network of rulers. When the god wasn’t known, residents still paid their respects. In Cato’s On Agriculture he remarks that before clearing an unknown grove, a farmer made an offering to the unknown protector god of that grove.
These individual city gods were part of the Roman pantheon. Whatever god or gods you worshipped, Rome expected loyalty to its imperial cult. Maintaining the rituals and giving respect strengthened the state and its citizens, on a higher level than the city.
All these rituals created a deep sense of place that is in many ways gone from today’s world. We are too mobile, too quick to build, too fast to destroy. Our movement means it’s hard to maintain the gods of place for long.
Yet one ritual perseveres – football. Football combines deep ritual, city iconography, and devotion, bringing a city together in ways no other ritual or sport does in the United States. Consider that regardless your politics, your race, or your membership – you belong to the cult of the local football team. You don’t need to be a fan to want your local team to win. This is healthy.
Next time you go to a football game, consider this: By supporting the team, you pay respect to your city. The deep fans are priests, holding the lore and mysteries. When you travel to the city to attend a game you go in pilgrimage to honor the city and its spirits.
In that spirit, I created this video with the iconography of the Chicago Bears, and Chicago’s spirit. A bear god, wreathed in the great Chicago fire, a monster – the monster of the midway. The Sears Tower and the Statue of the Republic flank on his left. Witnessing the summoning of this bear god are Chicago’s mayors who unfurl the city’s flag.
Note that Brandon Johnson is omitted given that he may be the mayor who loses the Bears to Indiana. In antiquity, losing a god was a catastrophe. Taking a city’s god was a way to conquer it. Unless Johnson comes up with a plan to keep the Bears in Chicagoland, then by this metaphor he abandons his role as city protector, staining his tenure. If he keeps the Bears, then he will have earned his place.
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