“There is one species of humans but almost a million species of insects. Most people think that makes us special.” The Church of Arachnids and Insects was founded in Kyoto by the Japanese polymath Rice Reggs (his father was British), who was bitten by a bug as a teen and has had bug fever ever since. “Most people pity the short life-cycle of the mayfly, but they are thinking of only their mating stage. In fact they live for years underwater as nymphs, moulting as many as fifty times, so you see their lives are really exciting.” We asked Rice how bugs can teach us how to be better human beings, which we presume is one of the main goals of most terrestrial religions. “Many religions,” Rice told us, “want you to feel that the gods created the universe just for you to attain perfection. This is not true of our church. Humans are more like other creatures than we sometimes like to admit. We see spiders and insects as tiny perfections. We want you to know that you, too, are already a tiny perfection. You have a part to play even if you aren’t a leading character.” “Speaking of mayflies, people have seen them as a link between heaven and earth. I see them as an example of the transformative potential of intention. If we attend to the world around us, each species, even each bug can teach us what it means to live in harmony with creation.” Unfortunately, harmony doesn’t mean uniformity. Otherwise, there would be only one species of animal on earth, and it wouldn’t likely be human. The Church of Arachnids and Insects has already spawned a sect that doesn’t care for spiders. “By the way,” Rice told us. “Bugs are only one kind of insect.”
Unknown religions