If you express disdain and condescension towards people who believe the gods are real beings with agency, you\u2019re probably not going to get invited to my circle any time soon. Conversely, if you\u2019re one of those people who believe that atheists or archetypalists can\u2019t be Pagans, you\u2019re also not likely to get invited. If you can be respectful towards people who hold different views, you are much more likely to get invited. Of course, you might not be interested, and that\u2019s fine too. As long as you can respect my relational mystical polytheist Wicca<\/a>, I will respect whatever your view is. This is the sacred ethic of hospitality: if I invite you into my space, I have certain obligations as the host, and you have obligations as a guest. The ethic of hospitality is one of mutually respectful behaviour.<\/p>\n But you know, if you go round calling people literalists, fundamentalists, flatlanders<\/a>, one-dimensional thinkers, and all the rest of it \u2013 they\u2019re probably going to get upset. People don\u2019t like being told they are doing it wrong. I much prefer Jason Mankey\u2019s approach of celebrating diversity of practice<\/a>:<\/p>\n I love the god Pan, but I do so in my own way. Upon my first meeting with a fellow Panhead I couldn\u2019t help but notice that this particular devotee did it completely differently than I did. And you know what? I was completely cool with that, because I realized that there were of course many ways to honor and worship Pan. \u2026\u00a0I\u2019ve been pretty public with my own thoughts about the nature of deity<\/a>, but I think I\u2019ve made it pretty clear that I don\u2019t care if people agree with me or not. I don\u2019t think there are right or wrong answers that apply to all of Pagandom. Certainly within specific traditions there are shared bits of theology and belief, but why anyone thinks a Devotional Polytheist and an Eclectic Wiccan have to come to some sort of consensus on deity is beyond me. Can\u2019t we all just nod politely at one another and accept each other\u2019s reality?<\/p><\/blockquote>\n Jason is welcome in my circle any day of the week \u2013 he clearly grasps the ethic of hospitality.<\/p>\n Some people are trying to say who can call themselves a polytheist, or a Wiccan, or some other label (and I agree that it makes it difficult to communicate if we radically change the meaning of a particular label; but the fact is, polytheist just means belief in many gods, and Wicca started life as\u00a0just a euphemism for witchcraft).<\/p>\n There are people who are theoretically entitled to be in my circle as duly initiated Gardnerian Wiccans who absolutely would not be welcome in my circle \u2013 yet they are entitled to call themselves Gardnerian Wiccans,\u00a0as duly initiated people. Their philosophy, theology, and values are completely different from mine, and they don\u2019t behave respectfully. So I just have to decide whether I want them in my circle or not on the basis of trust, not on what they call themselves. You can tell people not to call themselves something (whether it\u2019s polytheist or Wiccan or whatever) until you\u2019re blue in the face, but they\u2019re not going to stop.<\/p>\n Nevertheless, \u00a0identity and membership are two different things. You can identify as something, but if members of that community don\u2019t recognise you as being that thing, then it\u2019s hard to sustain that identity. It\u2019s a reciprocal process (rather like hospitality).<\/p>\n The reason why I welcome \u00a0different perspectives on deities, and reality in general, is that I think our perspective is limited by our finite and localised nature in space-time. If we have an encounter with a deity, they are often kind enough to appear in a form that we can recognise, such as a vision of a humanoid form (I say humanoid so as not to exclude Ganesh, Pan, and other theriomorphic deities). As Erin Lund Johnson said in a discussion,<\/p>\n \u201cIn my animistic understanding, engagement and relationship with, and experience of them, they are every bit as corporal as I am, and not in any anthropomorphic sense. The anthropomorphic I might encounter in meditation, sure, but not outside of it.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n I agree with her \u2013\u00a0I don\u2019t think for a moment that this humanoid form is necessarily their only form. Someone once described deities as \u201cpossibly anthropomorphic interfaces of vast cosmic forces\u201d \u2013 a description that sums it up pretty well for me.<\/p>\n This is why I think we need to approach the gods with a certain humility, and with an awareness that their nature is a mystery:<\/p>\n \u201cAs a mystic, I experience the gods as real beings with agency. As an anthropologist, I think approaching gods as archetypes has advantages, particularly in pushing us to consider how we project aspects of our needs, cognition, personality, and culture on to the Divine. I don\u2019t see these as mutually exclusive views, but rather as two different approaches to understanding my experience of the Divine. I choose to hold beliefs lightly, because our minds are limited and our capacity for projection substantial. However, I also choose to honor my experience of the Divine as real entities\u2026 I just don\u2019t think my experience is the sum total of what they are, or that the way that I make sense of that experience is helpful for everyone else. I suppose this is what makes OBOD work for me. I\u2019m far more interested in open conversations with the gods and with other humans, the combination of experience, wonder, and exploration of what *could* be, than I am wedded to the idea that I will ever know exactly what *is.* Though my practice includes (though is not limited to, nor gives primacy to) relational polytheism, I avoid strictly polytheist community because I do not personally find it helpful to limit my ideas, including skepticism. I left Christianity primarily because the emphasis on orthodoxy limited my capacity to honor the diversity of my experience and ability to learn from diverse viewpoints. I have no desire to enter what felt like a self-imposed prison again.\u201d<\/p>\n \u2014 Kimberly Kirner<\/a>,\u00a0www.wilddruid.com<\/a> (conversation on Facebook, quoted with permission)<\/p><\/blockquote>\n Whilst deities are not merely archetypes, they do include<\/em> archetypal qualities (I am not merely an archetype, but I include archetypal qualities \u2013 I am a fairly typical geek, for example; I\u2019d quite like to be a femme fatale, but sadly I failed the exam).<\/p>\n People\u2019s beliefs and hypotheses do wax and wane; after all, we live in a highly rationalist and materialist culture \u2013 it is hard to maintain a faith in conscious cosmic forces in the face of all that. There is room for honest doubt, and apophatic theology<\/a>, and mystical approaches, and in my rituals, there\u2019s room for archetypalists, too. (Your mileage may vary.)<\/p>\n To me, polytheism means belief in many gods, and doesn\u2019t include anything about defining what gods are or how we relate to them.\u00a0Devotional polytheism<\/a> means serving or being devoted to them and believing they have agency and are entities.\u00a0Relational polytheism<\/a> is forming relationships with them and believing they have agency and are entities.\u00a0If people want to define a specific tradition within polytheism as having even more requirements, good for them.\u00a0But I don\u2019t think you can define simple polytheism beyond meaning belief in many gods. Some people\u00a0view polytheism as a container for polytheist traditions such as Heathenry, Kemeticism etc.\u00a0But as a polytheist Wiccan, I don\u2019t fit within that definition \u2013 because Wicca includes people with other theological viewpoints (and the same is true for Druidry). \u00a0Why don\u2019t I join an explicitly polytheist tradition? Because they are all focused on one pantheon and culture and I\u2019m not. I\u2019m English, so I\u2019m a mixture of Saxon, Celt, and possibly even Norman \u2013 and anyway my spirituality is linked to the land on which I live, not my ethnicity. And I don\u2019t mind sharing Wicca with people of other theological viewpoints \u2013 as long as I\u2019m free to behave polytheistically in my own circle.<\/p>\n The nature of reality can be viewed from many different perspectives: on the quantum level, everything is quarks and leptons and bosons and strangeness and charm. At the level of chemistry, it\u2019s all about the chemical interactions; on the cellular biology level, cells join and divide and exchange chemical signals. On a psychological level, no-one would deny that love and hate and other emotions are real, and only the most reductionist\u00a0person would insist that they are merely biochemical signals. Then there are interpersonal relationships, social movements, discourses, historical trends, and other macro-level processes, all the way up to the movement of galaxies and the expansion of the universe. From the perspective of the universe, our little lives are pretty insignificant; from my personal\u00a0perspective, my life is very significant to me.<\/p>\n I would say that something is \u201creal\u201d if it has a real effect on existence. In this view, ideas are real because they affect people\u2019s lives. However, ideas are not things, and they are not people. That\u2019s why the \u201cgods\u00a0have agency\u201d part of contemporary polytheism is important, because gods are not just ideas or archetypes, but beings with will and agency. On the whole, though, that is a matter of faith, although there are plenty of\u00a0people experiencing the gods as beings with will and agency.<\/p>\n Most Pagans view the deities as immanent in the world, rather than existing only on some other plane of reality. If they are both immanent and many, then they must be the consciousnesses of natural phenomena:<\/p>\n In my daily interactions I engage with Brighid as sun, fire, and hearth. Also as inspiration and light, and swan and the greening of the earth. I engage with Boann as cow, river, and the Milky Way. I engage with Lugh as lightening. So, it makes no sense to me to engage in debates about whether the sun is real, for example. Maybe existentially we could debate that, I suppose, but that would not alter my engagement with or experience of the sun in its physical and spiritual aspects, or take away from them. But the corporeality, that physical body of the sun, is generally taken as evident by most, even where our spiritual relationship with it will differ depending on tradition, worldview, regionality, and\/or personal inclination, as these are all distinct spiritual ecologies with some degree of possibility for overlaps among them.<\/p>\n \u2014 \u00a0Erin Lund Johnson<\/a> (conversation on Facebook, quoted with permission)<\/p><\/blockquote>\n I have always thought that the deities of Nature are the emergent consciousness of complex phenomena, such as sacred places, mountains, trees, storms, forests, and so on. If this is the case, then any anthropomorphic appearance they choose to adopt is only one aspect or facet of their vast and complex nature. And we cannot say with any certainty that we know them fully, or that we know exactly what they are. We can only say that we do experience them as distinct beings with agency, and that when we experience the presence of a deity, we know that we are blessed by their presence.<\/p>\n When I feel the presence of a deity, I feel their unique personality and energy. Some are reassuring and comforting; others feel more remote and challenging; but all are beings of majesty and power.<\/p>\n I have always thought that the deities of Nature are the emergent consciousness of complex phenomena, such as sacred places, mountains, trees, storms, forests, and so on. If this is the case, then any anthropomorphic appearance they choose to adopt is only one aspect or facet of their vast and complex nature. And we cannot say with any certainty that we know them fully, or that we know exactly what they are. We can only say that we do experience them as distinct beings with agency, and that when we experience the presence of a deity, we know that we are blessed by their presence. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1320,"featured_media":3563,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1,4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3558","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized","category-theology"],"yoast_head":"\nWho\u2019s in my tribe?<\/h3>\n
![\"By](\"https:\/\/wp-media.patheos.com\/blogs\/sites\/311\/2016\/03\/640px-Looking_Down_Yosemite-Valley-300x199.jpg\")
<\/a>We can learn from different perspectives<\/h3>\n
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<\/a>What is real?<\/h3>\n
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