In conventional parlance, vanity is the excessive belief in one's own abilities or attractiveness to others. In many religions vanity is consiered a form of self-idolatry, in which one rejects God for the sake of one's own image, and thereby becomes divorced from the graces of God. The stories of Lucifer and Narcissus (who gave us the term narcissism), and others, attend to a pernicious aspect of vanity.