{"id":511,"date":"2017-04-06T14:53:42","date_gmt":"2017-04-06T22:53:42","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/admin.patheos.com\/blogs\/tempest\/?p=511"},"modified":"2017-04-06T14:54:47","modified_gmt":"2017-04-06T22:54:47","slug":"one-god-a-multitude-of-jerks","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/tempest\/2017\/04\/one-god-a-multitude-of-jerks.html","title":{"rendered":"One God, A Multitude of Jerks?"},"content":{"rendered":"<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC \"-\/\/W3C\/\/DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional\/\/EN\" \"http:\/\/www.w3.org\/TR\/REC-html40\/loose.dtd\">\n<html><head><meta http-equiv=\"content-type\" content=\"text\/html; charset=utf-8\"><meta http-equiv=\"content-type\" content=\"text\/html; charset=utf-8\"><\/head><body><p><figure id=\"attachment_514\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-514\" style=\"width: 400px\" class=\"wp-caption alignright\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-514\" src=\"https:\/\/wp-media.patheos.com\/blogs\/sites\/654\/2017\/04\/jerkgod2.jpg\" alt=\"Still from Monty Python &amp; The Holy Grail \" width=\"400\" height=\"300\"><figcaption id=\"caption-attachment-514\" class=\"wp-caption-text\"><em>Still from Monty Python &amp; The Holy Grail<\/em><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/p><p>A few months ago, probably in response to an onslaught of political insanity and world news, I had the thought: \u201cThere\u2019s all the proof you need that there are multiple gods in the world. \u00a0How could there be so much insanity and chaos if there was just one god, one plan?\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Of course, someone could say, \u201cor it\u2019s proof that there are no gods.\u201d \u00a0But my own experiences don\u2019t allow me to fall into that idea.<\/p>\n<p>The only thing that nagged at me about the multiple gods = state of the world thought was: most (if not all) deities found in <a href=\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/tempest\/2017\/04\/whats-in-a-pword.html\" target=\"_blank\" class=\" decorated-link\">pword<\/a> pantheons \u2013 acknowledge the other gods in not only their own \u201cfamily\u201d but that there are others out there outside of it.<\/p>\n<p>So that thought just kinda sat there, besides me mentioning it aloud to Nathan and the cats \u2013 \u00a0and that was about it.<\/p>\n<p>Then this morning I discovered\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/johnbeckett\/2017\/04\/dont-land-honor-land.html\" target=\"_blank\" class=\" decorated-link\">John Beckett was kind enough to write out my thoughts in response to a recent article for me<\/a>. How cool is that? Saved me quite a bit of time because I\u2019m technically in book jail right now for <em>Sigil Witchery<\/em>. \u00a0He says, \u201cWe carry our ancestors within us, our Gods move with us, and we can honor the land where ever we are.\u201d \u00a0 BOOM. \u00a0There you have it. \u00a0Beautiful.<\/p>\n<p>My rambling Gemini addition would be to note: gods change\/move\/evolve over time as they move with us. \u00a0It doesn\u2019t mean the gods leave their homeland \u2013 they\u2019re still there too. \u00a0But it\u2019s like a portion of them come with us, and deity evolves with us and the land. \u00a0Maybe it\u2019s not so apparent in our lifetime, but it can be observed over longer periods. \u00a0Like apple tree cuttings becoming their own trees over time.<\/p>\n<p>My personal revelation into this happened when I was visiting a friend in the UK, and happened to be sleeping in her ritual room\/guest room. \u00a0I was doing the meditation I do before I fall asleep, and I mentioned the name of one specific god. \u00a0The deity who promptly answered was NOT the same one I knew from back home. \u00a0It was the one <em>he<\/em> came from, the one from that land. \u00a0Much, much, <em>much<\/em> older.<\/p>\n<figure id=\"attachment_513\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-513\" style=\"width: 300px\" class=\"wp-caption alignleft\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"wp-image-513 size-medium\" src=\"https:\/\/wp-media.patheos.com\/blogs\/sites\/654\/2017\/04\/jerkgod-300x225.jpg\" alt=\"Michaelangelo's God\" width=\"300\" height=\"225\"><figcaption id=\"caption-attachment-513\" class=\"wp-caption-text\"><em>Michaelangelo\u2019s God looking pissy<\/em><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p>Anyway, back to this morning, after thinking about that, I had one heck of another thought that stopped me in my tracks.<\/p>\n<p>You see, it\u2019s probably natural and within our context to see these multiple gods from big pantheons, to move and change with the migration of the people and ideas. But what about religions with ONE god? \u00a0What happens when you <em>purposefully<\/em> spread the religion of a singular deity. \u00a0Especially one for knowing to be jealous and vengeful \u2013 or more specifically, clergy and governments have been using those characteristics to spread their agenda versus an initial message of love and peace? (Keeping in mind that he started off as deity tied to one specific people, who did have other concepts of the divine as well, but he was just top dog?) What if for every place Christian missionaries have gone, they\u2019ve set up essentially a version of that jerk deity?<\/p>\n<p>One who doesn\u2019t get along with other gods, so probably not even versions of himself.<\/p>\n<p>Think about it.<\/p>\n<p>It certainly explains a lot.<\/p>\n<p><em>(Welcome to the random theological processes that I have, that don\u2019t exactly have to do with witchcraft\u2026but actually do if you think about it.)<\/em><\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>A few months ago, probably in response to an onslaught of political insanity and world news, I had the thought: \u201cThere\u2019s all the proof you need that there are multiple gods in the world. \u00a0How could there be so much insanity and chaos if there was just one god, one plan?\u201d Of course, someone could [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2676,"featured_media":515,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[13],"tags":[222,20,18,19,221,162,223],"class_list":["post-511","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-myth-and-folklore","tag-christianity","tag-deities","tag-god","tag-gods","tag-pantheons","tag-pwords","tag-virusgods"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v21.1 - 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