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.\u00a0 More than any other, this difference is the most disturbing to the monotheistic \/ revealed religions espoused by millions in Western and Middle Eastern cultures.\u00a0 It rankles and offends them in most cases and they find such ideas impossible to comprehend.\u00a0 And, for many folks within the Pagan religious expressions, it is difficult to explain in any way other than to say, \u201cWell, that\u2019s what I believe.\u201d\u00a0 That\u2019s hardly comforting to the monotheists and it usually doesn\u2019t sit well even within our own minds.\u00a0 The question of who are \u2018the gods\u2019 and exactly what sort of attributes we ascribe to them is not an easy subject to tackle.<\/p>\n
For convenience, I\u2019m going to not continually type \u2018and goddesses\u2019 every time I use \u2018god,\u2019 \u2018the gods,\u2019 or \u2018god forms.\u2019\u00a0 Suffice it to say that I\u2019ve given up trying to satisfy everybody in my writings.\u00a0 Not only is it an impossible task, it\u2019s a thankless one as well.\u00a0 Whatever I use, it has no meaning concerning gender.\u00a0 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.\u00a0 Our concept of \u2018god\u2019 or \u2018goddess\u2019 is based solely on a human condition that we are attempting to relate to.\u00a0 I expect that \u2018sex\u2019 between deities is not dependent on any definition we might come up with concerning gender.<\/p>\n
First of all, let me give you my take on who or what the gods are.\u00a0 I settled into a Unitarian church after trying out a lot of churches in my city between the ages of 12 to 18.\u00a0 One of the best things I heard in that Unitarian church was the \u2018joke\u2019 about when god made man in his own image, man returned the favor.\u00a0 Cute, but it says volumes about how we think about deity.\u00a0 For thousands of years, we\u2019ve 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.\u00a0 Pagans don\u2019t tend to get upset over what name or image of a god or goddess somebody else holds dear, but we also don\u2019t (as a group) tend to think too hard about exactly what the nature of deity might be.\u00a0 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.\u00a0 While that may be one of the reasons we don\u2019t 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.<\/p>\n
My concept of deity is that it is a subject that\u2019s way too big for any one human consciousness to grasp.\u00a0 It\u2019s a lot like the number we call infinity.\u00a0 Even though we can play with it in mathematics, it still is beyond meaning in our minds because that is part of its definition.\u00a0 Deity is not one, or two, or any other number we can count.\u00a0 It is beyond that.\u00a0 Deity contains all those numbers but is more than all of them combined.\u00a0 What we can get our minds around is something far more pedestrian, much more like what we are used to.\u00a0 Thus, Zeus becomes Mr. Big, the somewhat tyrannical figure who will often take advantage of the fact that he\u2019s the boss but also has a more \u2018human\u2019 side to him that comes out even when his schemes seem to be abusive.\u00a0 Hera, a goddess herself, is the long-suffering wife who has hissy fits over her husband\u2019s affairs and who is hardly ever more than a wrong look away from attempting retribution or revenge.\u00a0 We can relate, right?<\/p>\n
Personally, I don\u2019t 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.\u00a0 These god forms are projections of our own lives and culture but in archetypical form.\u00a0 They represent aspects of that bigger thing we call deity that we can\u2019t quite get our minds around.\u00a0 Some Pagans use the generic forms we call The Lady and The Lord, or God and Goddess.\u00a0 Even these are projections of our understanding of the world as incarnated beings.\u00a0 When questioned about our own favorite god forms, we invariably pick one out a mythology that resonates with us.\u00a0 That\u2019s our choice.\u00a0 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.\u00a0 How strange.\u00a0 \u201cWe reserve the right to refuse worship to any who do not please us.\u201d\u00a0 It should be cross-stitched into our altar cloths.<\/p>\n
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.\u00a0 Has it ever occurred to you that Bugs Bunny acts a lot like Loki or Coyote?\u00a0 I don\u2019t even want to get into who Taz reminded me of!\u00a0 But can you see what I mean about our involvement in how the god forms are depicted?<\/p>\n
At this point, it might look like I\u2019m saying we invented the gods.\u00a0 This would be blasphemous to those monotheists who insist they know who God is.\u00a0 But, yes, in a way that is what I\u2019m saying.\u00a0 However, it goes beyond that\u2026 way beyond that.<\/p>\n
One of the lines that anthropologists draw concerning what is human and what isn\u2019t has to do with how we depict our world.\u00a0 If we can draw graffiti on the walls, then we\u2019re human.\u00a0 If we can decorate our graves with trinkets, we\u2019re human.\u00a0 If we can carve fat-bellied naked women, we\u2019re defiantly human.\u00a0 It seems that we\u2019ve had some idea of deity for just as long as any of these other abilities.\u00a0 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.\u00a0 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.\u00a0 In other words, humans have a sense of deity.<\/p>\n
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.\u00a0 So it shouldn\u2019t be too surprising that there are so many differing descriptions out there.\u00a0 In fact, it would be amazing if there weren\u2019t.\u00a0 When we say so-and-so is The God, we are bound to butt up against somebody else\u2019s concept of The One True God.\u00a0 The old argument of whose god is bigger extends back before recorded times.\u00a0 The gods, as we perceive them, are how the archetypal forms combine with our sense\/need\/ instinct for deity.<\/p>\n
One of the most interesting things about archetypes is the role they play in our minds.\u00a0 They are specialized symbols that seem to be universal to all humans.\u00a0 They are the foundation for what is termed the \u2018collective unconscious,\u2019 that body of information that is ubiquitous to us all.\u00a0 In some instances, part of this collective is arbitrary but has become the agreed-upon \u2018reality\u2019 of our species.\u00a0 The archetypes are huge, complex blocks of related information that appear to be formed at a surprisingly early age.\u00a0 Some speculate that they begin before birth!\u00a0 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.\u00a0 Some of these archetypes are so ingrained, they can never be changed.\u00a0 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.<\/p>\n
To say the archetypes are within us is only partly true.\u00a0 As hard a concept as it may be, the other part that is true about archetypes is that we are within them!\u00a0 We live our lives as part of the archetypes.\u00a0 We order our perceptions to coincide with them, making them the compass of our existence.\u00a0 Our understanding of deity must agree with these archetypes as well.\u00a0 The resonance we feel when we choose our god forms is its agreement with our archetypical images and how we prioritize those archetypes.\u00a0 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.<\/p>\n
Worship is an expression of desire.\u00a0 Our desire to find deity is so much a part of our being, so strong a force, we have killed and died for it.\u00a0 Deity may always be beyond our understanding but it is never beyond our desire.\u00a0 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.\u00a0 Would you like to super-size that goddess?<\/p>\n
Pagans tend to worship more than one aspect of deity; we have multiple god forms that reveal our deepest desires.\u00a0 This shouldn\u2019t be surprising because we don\u2019t have just one desire or even simply one at a time.\u00a0 We are complex beings and our choice of gods that resonate with complexity reflects that fact.\u00a0 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.\u00a0 Many Pagans say that their discovery of whatever brand of Paganism they currently follow was like \u2018coming home.\u2019\u00a0 Very likely this means they felt a greater comfort level with a spirituality that gave them more freedom to express their desires.\u00a0 Multiple god forms allow for a life more deeply ingrained with spirit, more meaningful and connected with parts of deity.<\/p>\n
Deity is not one thing, remember.\u00a0 It is beyond and outside of any count.\u00a0 The variety of god forms we use to express our participation within deity is strictly up to us.\u00a0 No matter how hard we try, we won\u2019t ever truly understand all of deity because that is part of its definition.\u00a0 But if we don\u2019t try, if we don\u2019t 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\u2026 as will we.<\/p>\n
Now\u2026 would you like fries with that, too?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
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.\u00a0 More than any other, this difference is the most disturbing to the monotheistic \/ revealed religions espoused by millions in Western and Middle Eastern cultures.\u00a0 It rankles and offends them in most cases and they find such ideas impossible to comprehend.\u00a0 And, for many folks within the Pagan religious expressions, it is difficult to explain in any way other than to say, \u201cWell, that\u2019s what I believe.\u201d\u00a0 That\u2019s hardly comforting to the monotheists and it usually doesn\u2019t sit well even within our own minds.\u00a0 The question of who are \u2018the gods\u2019 and exactly what sort of attributes we ascribe to them is not an easy subject to tackle. For convenience, I\u2019m going to not continually type \u2018and goddesses\u2019 every time I use \u2018god,\u2019 \u2018the gods,\u2019 or \u2018god forms.\u2019\u00a0 Suffice it to say that I\u2019ve given up trying to satisfy everybody in my writings.\u00a0 Not only is it an impossible task, it\u2019s a thankless one as well.\u00a0 Whatever I use, it has no meaning concerning gender.\u00a0 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.\u00a0 Our concept of \u2018god\u2019 or \u2018goddess\u2019 is based solely on a human condition that we are attempting to relate to.\u00a0 I expect that \u2018sex\u2019 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.\u00a0 I settled into a Unitarian church after trying out a lot of churches in my city between the ages of 12 to 18.\u00a0 One of the best things I heard in that Unitarian church was the \u2018joke\u2019 about when god made man in his own image, man returned the favor.\u00a0 Cute, but it says volumes about how we think about deity.\u00a0 For thousands of years, we\u2019ve 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.\u00a0 Pagans don\u2019t tend to get upset over what name or image of a god or goddess somebody else holds dear, but we also don\u2019t (as a group) tend to think too hard about exactly what the nature of deity might be.\u00a0 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.\u00a0 While that may be one of the reasons we don\u2019t 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\u2019s way too big for any one human consciousness to grasp.\u00a0 It\u2019s a lot like the number we call infinity.\u00a0 Even though we can play with it in mathematics, it still is beyond meaning in our minds because that is part of its definition.\u00a0 Deity is not one, or two, or any other number we can count.\u00a0 It is beyond that.\u00a0 Deity contains all those numbers but is more than all of them combined.\u00a0 What we can get our minds around is something far more pedestrian, much more like what we are used to.\u00a0 Thus, Zeus becomes Mr. Big, the somewhat tyrannical figure who will often take advantage of the fact that he\u2019s the boss but also has a more \u2018human\u2019 side to him that comes out even when his schemes seem to be abusive.\u00a0 Hera, a goddess herself, is the long-suffering wife who has hissy fits over her husband\u2019s affairs and who is hardly ever more than a wrong look away from attempting retribution or revenge.\u00a0 We can relate, right? Personally, I don\u2019t 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.\u00a0 These god forms are projections of our own lives and culture but in archetypical form.\u00a0 They represent aspects of that bigger thing we call deity that we can\u2019t quite get our minds around.\u00a0 Some Pagans use the generic forms we call The Lady and The Lord, or God and Goddess.\u00a0 Even these are projections of our understanding of the world as incarnated beings.\u00a0 When questioned about our own favorite god forms, we invariably pick one out a mythology that resonates with us.\u00a0 That\u2019s our choice.\u00a0 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.\u00a0 How strange.\u00a0 \u201cWe reserve the right to refuse worship to any who do not please us.\u201d\u00a0 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.\u00a0 Has it ever occurred to you that Bugs Bunny acts a lot like Loki or Coyote?\u00a0 I don\u2019t even want to get into who Taz reminded me of!\u00a0 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\u2019m saying we invented the gods.\u00a0 This would be blasphemous to those monotheists who insist they know who God is.\u00a0 But, yes, in a way that is what I\u2019m saying.\u00a0 However, it goes beyond that\u2026 way beyond that. One of the lines that anthropologists draw concerning what is human and what isn\u2019t has to do with how we depict our world.\u00a0 If we can draw graffiti on the walls, then we\u2019re human.\u00a0 If we can decorate our graves with trinkets, we\u2019re human.\u00a0 If we can carve fat-bellied naked women, we\u2019re defiantly human.\u00a0 It seems that we\u2019ve had some idea of deity for just as long as any of these other abilities.\u00a0 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.\u00a0 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.\u00a0 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.\u00a0 So it shouldn\u2019t be too surprising that there are so many differing descriptions out there.\u00a0 In fact, it would be amazing if there weren\u2019t.\u00a0 When we say so-and-so is The God, we are bound to butt up against somebody else\u2019s concept of The One True God.\u00a0 The old argument of whose god is bigger extends back before recorded times.\u00a0 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.\u00a0 They are specialized symbols that seem to be universal to all humans.\u00a0 They are the foundation for what is termed the \u2018collective unconscious,\u2019 that body of information that is ubiquitous to us all.\u00a0 In some instances, part of this collective is arbitrary but has become the agreed-upon \u2018reality\u2019 of our species.\u00a0 The archetypes are huge, complex blocks of related information that appear to be formed at a surprisingly early age.\u00a0 Some speculate that they begin before birth!\u00a0 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.\u00a0 Some of these archetypes are so ingrained, they can never be changed.\u00a0 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.\u00a0 As hard a concept as it may be, the other part that is true about archetypes is that we are within them!\u00a0 We live our lives as part of the archetypes.\u00a0 We order our perceptions to coincide with them, making them the compass of our existence.\u00a0 Our understanding of deity must agree with these archetypes as well.\u00a0 The resonance we feel when we choose our god forms is its agreement with our archetypical images and how we prioritize those archetypes.\u00a0 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.\u00a0 Our desire to find deity is so much a part of our being, so strong a force, we have killed and died for it.\u00a0 Deity may always be beyond our understanding but it is never beyond our desire.\u00a0 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.\u00a0 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.\u00a0 This shouldn\u2019t be surprising because we don\u2019t have just one desire or even simply one at a time.\u00a0 We are complex beings and our choice of gods that resonate with complexity reflects that fact.\u00a0 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.\u00a0 Many Pagans say that their discovery of whatever brand of Paganism they currently follow was like \u2018coming home.\u2019\u00a0 Very likely this means they felt a greater comfort level with a spirituality that gave them more freedom to express their desires.\u00a0 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.\u00a0 It is beyond and outside of any count.\u00a0 The variety of god forms we use to express our participation within deity is strictly up to us.\u00a0 No matter how hard we try, we won\u2019t ever truly understand all of deity because that is part of its definition.\u00a0 But if we don\u2019t try, if we don\u2019t 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\u2026 as will we. Now\u2026 would you like fries with that, too?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":43,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"iawp_total_views":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-854","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/paganpages.org\/emagazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/854","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/paganpages.org\/emagazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/paganpages.org\/emagazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/paganpages.org\/emagazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/43"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/paganpages.org\/emagazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=854"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/paganpages.org\/emagazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/854\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/paganpages.org\/emagazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=854"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/paganpages.org\/emagazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=854"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/paganpages.org\/emagazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=854"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}