Blacksun December, 2008
Probably one of the most striking differences between modern Paganism and the more predominant western religions is the fact that we have multiple gods and goddesses. More than any other, this difference is the most disturbing to the monotheistic / revealed religions espoused by millions in Western and Middle Eastern cultures. It rankles and offends them in most cases and they find such ideas impossible to comprehend. And, for many folks within the Pagan religious expressions, it is difficult to explain in any way other than to say, “Well, that’s what I believe.” That’s hardly comforting to the monotheists and it usually doesn’t sit well even within our own minds. The question of who are ‘the gods’ and exactly what sort of attributes we ascribe to them is not an easy subject to tackle.
For convenience, I’m going to not continually type ‘and goddesses’ every time I use ‘god,’ ‘the gods,’ or ‘god forms.’ Suffice it to say that I’ve given up trying to satisfy everybody in my writings. Not only is it an impossible task, it’s a thankless one as well. Whatever I use, it has no meaning concerning gender. We speak of gender when discussing particular god forms, but even then it is less about gender than a similar discussion about flowers would be. Our concept of ‘god’ or ‘goddess’ is based solely on a human condition that we are attempting to relate to. I expect that ‘sex’ between deities is not dependent on any definition we might come up with concerning gender.
First of all, let me give you my take on who or what the gods are. I settled into a Unitarian church after trying out a lot of churches in my city between the ages of 12 to 18. One of the best things I heard in that Unitarian church was the ‘joke’ about when god made man in his own image, man returned the favor. Cute, but it says volumes about how we think about deity. For thousands of years, we’ve painted pictures of gods and goddesses, written long treatises about what they may be like, and generally made asses of ourselves trying to prove who was right or wrong. Pagans don’t tend to get upset over what name or image of a god or goddess somebody else holds dear, but we also don’t (as a group) tend to think too hard about exactly what the nature of deity might be. We kind of dance lightly around the subject and go back to other areas of our spirituality that might seem safer or less mentally taxing. While that may be one of the reasons we don’t have any big arguments about the many different viewpoints we embrace, it also is a weakness in our understanding of what it means to worship any of these thousands of god forms.
My concept of deity is that it is a subject that’s way too big for any one human consciousness to grasp. It’s a lot like the number we call infinity. Even though we can play with it in mathematics, it still is beyond meaning in our minds because that is part of its definition. Deity is not one, or two, or any other number we can count. It is beyond that. Deity contains all those numbers but is more than all of them combined. What we can get our minds around is something far more pedestrian, much more like what we are used to. Thus, Zeus becomes Mr. Big, the somewhat tyrannical figure who will often take advantage of the fact that he’s the boss but also has a more ‘human’ side to him that comes out even when his schemes seem to be abusive. Hera, a goddess herself, is the long-suffering wife who has hissy fits over her husband’s affairs and who is hardly ever more than a wrong look away from attempting retribution or revenge. We can relate, right?
Personally, I don’t know anyone who uses Zeus or Hera as the central figure on their altars (though I expect there are folks who do), but this is just an example. These god forms are projections of our own lives and culture but in archetypical form. They represent aspects of that bigger thing we call deity that we can’t quite get our minds around. Some Pagans use the generic forms we call The Lady and The Lord, or God and Goddess. Even these are projections of our understanding of the world as incarnated beings. When questioned about our own favorite god forms, we invariably pick one out a mythology that resonates with us. That’s our choice. In spite of all the cosmic power we ascribe to our god forms, it seems none of them can force us to believe in or worship them without our consent. How strange. “We reserve the right to refuse worship to any who do not please us.” It should be cross-stitched into our altar cloths.
Once, many years ago, my wife and I played at using Loony Tunes characters to portray many of the god forms that were popular among us and our Pagan friends. Has it ever occurred to you that Bugs Bunny acts a lot like Loki or Coyote? I don’t even want to get into who Taz reminded me of! But can you see what I mean about our involvement in how the god forms are depicted?
At this point, it might look like I’m saying we invented the gods. This would be blasphemous to those monotheists who insist they know who God is. But, yes, in a way that is what I’m saying. However, it goes beyond that… way beyond that.
One of the lines that anthropologists draw concerning what is human and what isn’t has to do with how we depict our world. If we can draw graffiti on the walls, then we’re human. If we can decorate our graves with trinkets, we’re human. If we can carve fat-bellied naked women, we’re defiantly human. It seems that we’ve had some idea of deity for just as long as any of these other abilities. We may not have built big cathedrals back then (though most scholars agree that Stonehenge has some kind of spiritual significance), but we expressed our spiritual natures in a wide variety of ways even when we could hardly chip rocks. It would seem being human means we have some instinct or desire for there being something beyond us, something that makes everything make a lot more sense than what we are able to understand. In other words, humans have a sense of deity.
Our abilities to describe deity have produced a rich variety of images and concepts, but none of these productions come even close to what we would call the reality of deity. So it shouldn’t be too surprising that there are so many differing descriptions out there. In fact, it would be amazing if there weren’t. When we say so-and-so is The God, we are bound to butt up against somebody else’s concept of The One True God. The old argument of whose god is bigger extends back before recorded times. The gods, as we perceive them, are how the archetypal forms combine with our sense/need/ instinct for deity.
One of the most interesting things about archetypes is the role they play in our minds. They are specialized symbols that seem to be universal to all humans. They are the foundation for what is termed the ‘collective unconscious,’ that body of information that is ubiquitous to us all. In some instances, part of this collective is arbitrary but has become the agreed-upon ‘reality’ of our species. The archetypes are huge, complex blocks of related information that appear to be formed at a surprisingly early age. Some speculate that they begin before birth! Almost without exception, certain archetypes appear before others, but usually by about the age of six, the human child has nearly all the archetypes formed in their unconscious and it takes extreme measures to modify or substitute them from that time on. Some of these archetypes are so ingrained, they can never be changed. We might add new tidbits of information to them as we grow, but they will remain pretty much as they are for the rest of our lives.
To say the archetypes are within us is only partly true. As hard a concept as it may be, the other part that is true about archetypes is that we are within them! We live our lives as part of the archetypes. We order our perceptions to coincide with them, making them the compass of our existence. Our understanding of deity must agree with these archetypes as well. The resonance we feel when we choose our god forms is its agreement with our archetypical images and how we prioritize those archetypes. Every iteration of deity, each god or goddess or spirit of any kind, is but a facet of that larger gem that we are driven to seek.
Worship is an expression of desire. Our desire to find deity is so much a part of our being, so strong a force, we have killed and died for it. Deity may always be beyond our understanding but it is never beyond our desire. That we each might find a different aspect of deity that fits what we desire most is not surprising; even fast-food places offer more than one kind of hamburger. Would you like to super-size that goddess?
Pagans tend to worship more than one aspect of deity; we have multiple god forms that reveal our deepest desires. This shouldn’t be surprising because we don’t have just one desire or even simply one at a time. We are complex beings and our choice of gods that resonate with complexity reflects that fact. When I say we resonate with a god form, I mean that it is the chosen form that best expresses our desires at the time. Many Pagans say that their discovery of whatever brand of Paganism they currently follow was like ‘coming home.’ Very likely this means they felt a greater comfort level with a spirituality that gave them more freedom to express their desires. Multiple god forms allow for a life more deeply ingrained with spirit, more meaningful and connected with parts of deity.
Deity is not one thing, remember. It is beyond and outside of any count. The variety of god forms we use to express our participation within deity is strictly up to us. No matter how hard we try, we won’t ever truly understand all of deity because that is part of its definition. But if we don’t try, if we don’t find god forms that resonate with our deepest desires, then we will lead lives that are devoid of our own spirit and any outside form of worship we might display will be a hollow shell… as will we.
Now… would you like fries with that, too?
Tags: belief, deity, god, goddess, pantheon
