You may have answered this before but are you a God who IS a thief, you steal FROM gods, or you steal gods? Collecting deities like Pokemon
The moniker was bestowed as an acute derogatory term by a Tumblrite who was hella annoyed that I included deities in my "dream" posts to whom I have no apparent cultural connection. That the deity that was the last straw for this person happens to be a god of thieves made the entire affair extra humorous. To the point that said god of thieves asked me to take on that moniker as a request (read: offering) to him AND to extra annoy the Tumblrite who thought they were the sole arbiter of the discussion because who the fuck is this person speaking on behalf of a god who already made their boundaries known to me?
The moniker stuck. HARD. Those who knew me when I was more gregarious online and thus more open with my "travels" loved to pick on me about it, because I was (and still am) actively avoiding being attached (read: leashed) to any divinity, be it by oath or otherwise. So the idea of me stealing gods like a rogue Pokemon trainer was just the height of hilarity.
I didn't get to save the picture, but someone made a quick drawing to commemorate the mental aneurysm that my embrace of the moniker created. There is a drawing of [someone that's supposed to be me], in a stolen convertible, license plate "FELETES1", driving off laughing. There are taped boxes in the backseat labeled "STOLEN GODS". And Hermes is peeking out from the unlatched trunk facing the viewer with his finger over his mouth to shush the viewer.
I think of that picture every time someone gets silly about religious boundaries. Are there closed religious practices that I have no right to demand insider info on? Absolutely. There are practices that do require the right bloodline to enter, and I will be out in the street because that's not my right. There are practices that require a certain initiation rite to properly enter into and receive benefit of, and for those practices, no amount of self-initiation is going to be satisfactory because the lineage is required for a reason. There are practices that require access to certain places, certain things, certain rituals for the practitioner to have certain blessings and obeisances for. I will never meet those requirements so I have no right to speak of what I know as if I was someone who has.
But, there are certain religious practices that were forced onto other peoples, if not by the might of swords, then by the might of the markets. There are certain religious practices have remade themselves to adjust to the modern world, that may have been closed at one time, but opened themselves to become accessible to all. There are certain religious practices that are documented as never giving a flying fuck about the practitioners as long as the practitioners behaved themselves, and you can't close a barn door when the barn was never built in the first place.
And then there's people like me: Culturally cut off from ancestral lineages. Culturally cut off from the predominate religion of the area because [insert bullshit reasons here]. Culturally and religiously isolated and trying to find a way through this hot mess, and if Other People's Gods™ look over and hand me a travel bag with a skin of water, who the hell am I to turn that down?
So, to answer your question, I am a person that steals gods, but only if the god wanted to be "stolen" in the first place. Please disregard the snickering sounds from the box I'm preaching from.
