Yes! It’s reminiscent of Lem’s Ananke and Terminus for me, with illusions and inevitability of the former and feeling of soul in objects in the latter. Also there’s Eco’s Foucault’s Pendulum (which I still haven’t read in full, only in small pieces enjoying them quite a lot), addressing European occultism and fascism, which relays well a similar emotion that in fascism existed related to machinery, which was then new. Radio, automobiles.

Well, it kind of needs to be stupid at least. If it was smart it could talk back and then it loses its usefulness for the purpose of idolatry.

I think how we understand objects is important too. For the purpose of idolatry it’s sufficient to have only a small gap between functionality and understanding in the domain of will and choice.

Ancient fortunetellers looking at bird intestines were different from what their visitors expected only in that. Their visitors knew they want to learn what gods tell and not men, and that gods are not same as men, but more like the soul of the world around them. The only difference was will and choice, but these are infinitely small. One person can be predicted many years forward down to small things, if you learn enough about them. Whether they have will and choice is a question of metaphysics, in life it’s not resolvable. And it’s the same with whichever gods they believe in.

(And it had a functional role, a random decision is often better than one dictated by indirect application of interest.)