The Onion has an interview with Alan Moore, talking about the FROM HELL film, comics, and magic. Toward the end of the interview, he says:

“With magic, I worship a second-century Roman snake god who, on the best evidence that I can dredge up from that period, was some kind of elaborate glove-puppet that was being controlled by a second-century snake-oil salesman, basically a complete fraud, huckster, and showman. I don’t want anybody else to start worshipping this god. I find something a bit unnatural in the idea of being bound together in spiritual ideas with people. I’m sure that, in our natural state, we all believe something entirely different. I don’t necessarily want anybody to believe the same things I believe, which is one of the reasons why I’ve adopted such a patently mad sort of deity.”

This is interesting to me because it sets down something I’ve been trying to put into words for the last year or so. My beliefs are just that. Mine. I don’t tell other people about them in any detail – I stop at “I practice chaos magic” if I say anything at all. The idea of someone else believing the same things as me would just be ludicrous. The “gods” I give acknowledgement to are ridiculous and mad things, by my choice. I don’t want to be able to take my own beliefs seriously. It would defeat the point. So I don’t explain them to others.