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But we live in a society where the loudest voices scream that there is only one God and the second loudest voices scream there are no Gods. It can be hard to hear the Gods over all that screaming, hard to not passively conform to our family, friends, and neighbors who are sure they have the truth, even though they’ve never seriously considered the question.
Are the Gods many, one, or none? We owe it to ourselves to contemplate this question and to choose the answer that seems most likely to us, rather than simply accepting what we were told as children – or acquiescing to the loudest voices in the public square.
How did the universe begin? Where did we come from? What happens after we die? How should we live while we’re here? People have been arguing about this for at least as long as we’ve been human and they’re not going to stop any time soon.
Metaphysics is the branch of philosophy that deals with these questions, with our foundational assumptions about the world and the way it works. Everyone has a metaphysics, but for most people, they’re “what everybody knows” and “common sense” and “just the way things are.” They’re what they were taught as small children. They never consider that perhaps their fundamental assumptions are wrong, or that another explanation might be better, or that another approach might be more in line with their values.
We need to do our best to explore these questions while still accepting that our answers will always be tentative and uncertain.
And we also need to remember that just because something is uncertain doesn’t mean any answer is a good answer. Some answers are more likely than others – and some answers are either demonstrably false or so unlikely they can be safely dismissed.
Whether we’re exploring religion, art, science, or anything else, we need not – and I argue, we should not – start from zero. Technology has advanced to unbelievable levels because each generation has built on the discoveries and innovations of previous generations. We can do the same in religion.
We have some of the sacred stories our ancestors told. We have some of their beliefs, some of their liturgies, some of their “spiritual technology” – if we’re fortunate, if those things weren’t either lost to time or deliberately destroyed by conquering religions.
Tradition need not be ancient. There is no ancient lore about Cernunnos. But there is modern lore, and that’s a good thing.
Tradition is a place to start. But it’s not everything.
The main problem with this is that many monotheists take that a step further and argue that the prime mover must be their God, when it might be a different God. Or it might be someone or something that is beyond our capacity to comprehend.
Still, our inferences point us in the direction of Gods, in one form or another.
I’m reluctant to call first-hand experience of the Gods a human universal because many people have trouble with this. The dominant religion tells us such experience is impossible (except through their approved methods, which don’t work every time for every person) and popular culture leaves us expecting a spectacle out of a comic book movie.
Most religious experiences are far more subtle. Some aren’t, but most are.
Some of these experiences are a connection to a greater whole. This leads us to pantheism, the idea that the Divine is everywhere in everything.
Other experiences connect us to an individual person. This leads us to classic theism, either polytheism (many Gods) or monotheism (one God).
My own polytheism is grounded in a framework of pantheism. We are all part of a greater Whole, even though we cannot relate to the Whole as we relate to ourselves and to other parts.
And then before Denton CUUPS’ first Egyptian Summer Solstice ritual in 2004, those of us who were presenting the ritual decided to spend nine nights in meditation, one night on each deity of the Ennead. As I progressed through the meditations, I realized that my experience of Isis was different from my experience of Osiris, and both were different from my experience of Set and of Nephthys.
And then it hit me: if I experienced the Gods as individuals, then I should understand them as individuals and I should relate to them as individuals. That approach works very well for me, and for others.
And so we have the God of the Sun and the Goddess of the Moon and the God of This Mountain and the Goddess of This River and so on. When we see the Gods in their functions, it follows that the God of the Sun and the Goddess of the River are not the same. They have different areas of interest, different names, different personalities. Our experiences of this functionality tells us the Gods are many, not one.
But even where our ancestors understood that deities have functions, they also told stories about the Goddess of This or the God of That doing things that had nothing to do with This or That. In other words, they were behaving like whole persons.
The Gods are many, and the Gods are individuals, not simply functions.
We can form relationships with the many Gods.
I have a priestly relationship with Cernunnos and with Danu. I have a sworn relationship with the Morrigan that is not priesthood, but that often functions like it.
I have informal but regular relationships with Lugh, Brighid, Isis, Thoth, and Cerridwen. I have made no promises to them, but we seem to find ourselves working toward similar goals in similar ways, so I have their statues on my altars and I pray to them every night.
I pray, meditate, and make offerings. I listen for their calls and their instructions. Mainly, I try to incorporate their virtues and values into my life – I try to be more like them, even though I know I can’t come close to their level of wisdom and virtue.
The English word “religion” comes to us in part from the Latin word religare, meaning “to bind together.” It has the same linguistic roots as the English word “ligament.” Religion is a set of protocols for forming and maintaining relationships, especially relationships with the Gods.
We can evaluate the results of accepting or rejecting those propositions.
Does it make your life better? Not easier – good things often make your life anything but easy – but more meaningful. Does it help you deal with the challenges of life? Does it help you find your place in the world? Does it help you deal with the knowledge that you are alive but someday you will die?
For me, that answer is an unqualified yes.
Cernunnos has been with me since before I knew who he was. He helps me remember that I’m a part of Nature – neither its head nor its center, but one part among many.
Danu has been with me since early in my Pagan journey. She doesn’t say much, but what she does say is filled with wisdom.
I seem to work for the Morrigan more than for anyone else, and that’s fine. I strongly support her mission of sovereignty, and while I am not a warrior, I find great meaning in doing my part in these difficult times. The Morrigan holds my death, and I take comfort in that… particularly as I get older.
Other deities are a part of my life. Some are part of my regular practice. Some I hear from or speak to occasionally, and some manage to draft me into their service unexpectedly.
My life is better with the Gods in it, and I am thankful for them.
And now it’s fading.
Christianity is still the most popular religion in the West, especially in the United States. But it does not have the cultural dominance – or the sheer numbers – it had 10 years ago, much less 60 years ago (church attendance peaked around 1960). Now people are free to follow the path that calls to them, that seems right to them.
For many of us, that means acknowledging, honoring, and worshipping many Gods.
The Case For Polytheism
We do not need anyone’s approval to be Pagan. We do not proselytize, so we have no need to craft brilliant arguments to convince others of the reality of the many Gods. Those of us who are polytheists simply need to acknowledge the Gods and choose to worship, work with, and work for one or more of them.But we live in a society where the loudest voices scream that there is only one God and the second loudest voices scream there are no Gods. It can be hard to hear the Gods over all that screaming, hard to not passively conform to our family, friends, and neighbors who are sure they have the truth, even though they’ve never seriously considered the question.
Are the Gods many, one, or none? We owe it to ourselves to contemplate this question and to choose the answer that seems most likely to us, rather than simply accepting what we were told as children – or acquiescing to the loudest voices in the public square.
Religious questions are inherently uncertain
If we’re going to explore foundational questions of religion and metaphysics, we have to begin with an admission: these questions are inherently uncertain. We cannot prove the existence – or the non-existence – of the Gods in the way we can prove or disprove various concepts and phenomena in science and mathematics.How did the universe begin? Where did we come from? What happens after we die? How should we live while we’re here? People have been arguing about this for at least as long as we’ve been human and they’re not going to stop any time soon.
Metaphysics is the branch of philosophy that deals with these questions, with our foundational assumptions about the world and the way it works. Everyone has a metaphysics, but for most people, they’re “what everybody knows” and “common sense” and “just the way things are.” They’re what they were taught as small children. They never consider that perhaps their fundamental assumptions are wrong, or that another explanation might be better, or that another approach might be more in line with their values.
We need to do our best to explore these questions while still accepting that our answers will always be tentative and uncertain.
And we also need to remember that just because something is uncertain doesn’t mean any answer is a good answer. Some answers are more likely than others – and some answers are either demonstrably false or so unlikely they can be safely dismissed.
Knowing the Gods through tradition
Most people start here, and that’s fine. The problem is that too many people never move beyond here.Whether we’re exploring religion, art, science, or anything else, we need not – and I argue, we should not – start from zero. Technology has advanced to unbelievable levels because each generation has built on the discoveries and innovations of previous generations. We can do the same in religion.
We have some of the sacred stories our ancestors told. We have some of their beliefs, some of their liturgies, some of their “spiritual technology” – if we’re fortunate, if those things weren’t either lost to time or deliberately destroyed by conquering religions.
Tradition need not be ancient. There is no ancient lore about Cernunnos. But there is modern lore, and that’s a good thing.
Tradition is a place to start. But it’s not everything.
Knowing the Gods through reason
Most of the classic “proofs for the existence of God” are based on inference. Given that we know certain things, other things are likely to also be true. This goes all the way back to Aristotle’s “prime mover” which said that since everything has a cause, there must be a first cause that itself is uncaused.The main problem with this is that many monotheists take that a step further and argue that the prime mover must be their God, when it might be a different God. Or it might be someone or something that is beyond our capacity to comprehend.
Still, our inferences point us in the direction of Gods, in one form or another.
Knowing the Gods through experience
Before humans thought rationally about the Gods, they experienced the Gods.I’m reluctant to call first-hand experience of the Gods a human universal because many people have trouble with this. The dominant religion tells us such experience is impossible (except through their approved methods, which don’t work every time for every person) and popular culture leaves us expecting a spectacle out of a comic book movie.
Most religious experiences are far more subtle. Some aren’t, but most are.
Some of these experiences are a connection to a greater whole. This leads us to pantheism, the idea that the Divine is everywhere in everything.
Other experiences connect us to an individual person. This leads us to classic theism, either polytheism (many Gods) or monotheism (one God).
My own polytheism is grounded in a framework of pantheism. We are all part of a greater Whole, even though we cannot relate to the Whole as we relate to ourselves and to other parts.
Multiple differing experiences imply multiple individual deities
I struggled with polytheism in my early Pagan days. I had grown up and spent my whole life as a monotheist and I had internalized monotheist concepts.And then before Denton CUUPS’ first Egyptian Summer Solstice ritual in 2004, those of us who were presenting the ritual decided to spend nine nights in meditation, one night on each deity of the Ennead. As I progressed through the meditations, I realized that my experience of Isis was different from my experience of Osiris, and both were different from my experience of Set and of Nephthys.
And then it hit me: if I experienced the Gods as individuals, then I should understand them as individuals and I should relate to them as individuals. That approach works very well for me, and for others.
Areas of responsibility and interest, and more
Many deities are known as the Goddess of This or the God of That. Some of that is an inference, as we discussed above: we look for a cause or a controller behind a natural phenomenon and infer that’s a God.And so we have the God of the Sun and the Goddess of the Moon and the God of This Mountain and the Goddess of This River and so on. When we see the Gods in their functions, it follows that the God of the Sun and the Goddess of the River are not the same. They have different areas of interest, different names, different personalities. Our experiences of this functionality tells us the Gods are many, not one.
But even where our ancestors understood that deities have functions, they also told stories about the Goddess of This or the God of That doing things that had nothing to do with This or That. In other words, they were behaving like whole persons.
The Gods are many, and the Gods are individuals, not simply functions.
We have relationships with persons
I get annoyed when people say things like “the universe is looking after you.” The universe is a collective noun for all that is. The universe doesn’t care about you because the universe isn’t a person who’s capable of caring about you or anything else. Pantheism may be true (I tend to think it is) but we cannot form relationships with the God of pantheism.We can form relationships with the many Gods.
I have a priestly relationship with Cernunnos and with Danu. I have a sworn relationship with the Morrigan that is not priesthood, but that often functions like it.
I have informal but regular relationships with Lugh, Brighid, Isis, Thoth, and Cerridwen. I have made no promises to them, but we seem to find ourselves working toward similar goals in similar ways, so I have their statues on my altars and I pray to them every night.
I pray, meditate, and make offerings. I listen for their calls and their instructions. Mainly, I try to incorporate their virtues and values into my life – I try to be more like them, even though I know I can’t come close to their level of wisdom and virtue.
The English word “religion” comes to us in part from the Latin word religare, meaning “to bind together.” It has the same linguistic roots as the English word “ligament.” Religion is a set of protocols for forming and maintaining relationships, especially relationships with the Gods.
Does it work?
How do we evaluate metaphysical propositions that cannot be either proven or disproven? We can’t determine if it’s true or false, or even if it’s mostly true or mostly false.We can evaluate the results of accepting or rejecting those propositions.
Does it make your life better? Not easier – good things often make your life anything but easy – but more meaningful. Does it help you deal with the challenges of life? Does it help you find your place in the world? Does it help you deal with the knowledge that you are alive but someday you will die?
For me, that answer is an unqualified yes.
Cernunnos has been with me since before I knew who he was. He helps me remember that I’m a part of Nature – neither its head nor its center, but one part among many.
Danu has been with me since early in my Pagan journey. She doesn’t say much, but what she does say is filled with wisdom.
I seem to work for the Morrigan more than for anyone else, and that’s fine. I strongly support her mission of sovereignty, and while I am not a warrior, I find great meaning in doing my part in these difficult times. The Morrigan holds my death, and I take comfort in that… particularly as I get older.
Other deities are a part of my life. Some are part of my regular practice. Some I hear from or speak to occasionally, and some manage to draft me into their service unexpectedly.
My life is better with the Gods in it, and I am thankful for them.
Polytheism is humanity’s default religious position
Religious scholar Jordan Paper said that left to themselves, people simply acknowledge and worship their Gods. “Without monotheism … polytheists would have no more reason to call themselves such than they would to call themselves ‘air breathers’ or ‘bipedal’.” Monotheism has succeeded because it demands domination and actively seeks it.And now it’s fading.
Christianity is still the most popular religion in the West, especially in the United States. But it does not have the cultural dominance – or the sheer numbers – it had 10 years ago, much less 60 years ago (church attendance peaked around 1960). Now people are free to follow the path that calls to them, that seems right to them.
For many of us, that means acknowledging, honoring, and worshipping many Gods.
