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Is Hard Polytheism Incomplete?

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Photo by Jennuine Captures

Photo by Jennuine Captures

I think that hard polytheism is incomplete.

I think that there is an underlying unity in all things that hard polytheism — at least, the hard polytheism I see presented most often within my own tradition, ADF — does not take into account. This became clear to me when I began to read Saraswati Rain’s thesis, Spiritual Direction in Paganism.

She outlines the variety of ways that Pagans might view “‘God’ the Concept”, and for the first time aspecting made a certain kind of sense to me. It wasn’t that it made sense because I accept it in the way it’s often discussed (i.e. every God/dess is in fact just another name for THE God/dess). This new understanding felt more nuanced.

Looking at her overview, and thinking about my own personal experiences of Deity throughout my life, the idea of an underlying unity makes sense. The natural world demonstrates as much. Nothing exists in complete isolation of anything else. All things, on some level, are interconnected.

And yet when I think about how hard polytheism has been presented to me I do not find any evidence of this interconnectedness.

The Gods, I’ve been told, are unique, distinct beings. They have unique, distinct consciousnesses, and they behave in ways that are unique to themselves. In the imagination, one begins to think that the realm of the Gods is not unlike a human-made nation state. There are boundaries, there are cultural markers, and there is a clear sense of separation between that which exists in one nation and another. The Gods of one celestial nation state behave in one way, while the Gods of another behave in a different way.

The more I sit with this idea, the more it begins to feel false; like a man-made construction; a projection of our social structures onto the ethereal.

I don’t discount the possibility of a multiplicity of divine consciousnesses. I just don’t think they’re so distinct from one another as we might think. (I also don’t think that you and I, as humans, are that distinct from one another, either.)

So aspecting might be begin to reach toward a way of thinking about these distinct, divine consciousnesses that not only connects them to us and to each other, but back to something even greater than them. This earlier/larger/more foundational greatness might be what some mystics speak of when they talk about God or Spirit. Both of those words fall short, but they at least reach for a quality of expansiveness that I don’t hear spoken about in many polytheist circles.

In talking this through with my husband, he brought up the Perennial Philosophy. A brief history, according to Wikipedia:

The Perennial Philosophy (Latin: philosophia perennis), also referred to as Perennialism, is a perspective within the philosophy of religion which views each of the world’s religious traditions as sharing a single, universal truth on which foundation all religious knowledge and doctrine has grown.

The term philosophia perennis was first used by Agostino Steuco(1497–1548), drawing on the neo-Platonic philosophy of Marsilio Ficino (1433–1499) and Giovanni Pico della Mirandola (1463–94).

In the early 19th century this idea was popularised by the Transcendentalism. By the end of the 19th century it was further popularized by the Theosophical Society, under the name of “Wisdom-Religion” or “Ancient Wisdom”. In the 20th century it was popularized in the English speaking world through Aldous Huxley’s book The Perennial Philosophy as well as the strands of thought which culminated in the New Age movement.

It goes on to say that,

Although the sacred scriptures of the world religions are undeniably diverse and often superficially oppose each other, there is discernible running through each a common doctrine regarding the ultimate purpose of human life. This doctrine is mystical in as far as it views the summum bonum of human life as an experiential union with the supreme being that can only be achieved by undertaking a programme of physical and mental purification.

Aldous Huxley defines the Perennial Philosophy as:

[…] the metaphysic that recognizes a divine Reality substantial to the world of things and lives and minds; the psychology that finds in the soul something similar to, or even identical to, divine Reality; the ethic that places man’s final end in the knowledge of the immanent and transcendent Ground of all being; the thing is immemorial and universal. Rudiments of the perennial philosophy may be found among the traditional lore of primitive peoples in every region of the world, and in its fully developed forms it has a place in every one of the higher religions.

Here’s my question:

Is the Perennial Philosophy antithetical to the founding principles of ADF Druidry? What about hard polytheism, in general?

I’m uncertain as to whether I accept Perennialism whole-heartedly, but it accounts for the “the immanent and transcendent Ground of all being,” and that matters to me. This universalism allows for a broader engagement in ministry and outreach that also matters to me.

Could this be the thing that is missing from hard polytheism? Is the absence of some kind of principle of interconnected one-ness, in both a physical and metaphysical sense, a detriment to the hard polytheist?

How Do We Talk About the Workings of a Goddess?

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How do we talk about the workings of a Goddess? Sometimes we don’t. Well, not at length anyway.

This week I’ve been in the middle of intense songwriting work, all of it very rewarding. But as I wrote on my music blog, #allofthesongs, there are times when it is valuable not to speak about what we do:

“…Being in the middle of the artistic process reminds me that there is cause to be silent sometimes. There is a real value in not revealing who you’re working with. Tell the world what the process is like, and you change the process. Reveal how you feel about it, and that feeling is no longer contained in the same way.

Containment is important. Holding onto that feeling of creative anticipation and tension, and being willing to delay the gratification that comes when you let the world know what you’re doing — a world of people who in that one instant of reading your status update or tweet cannot begin to understand the gravity of your life, the complexities of your situation, who cannot savor in the pleasures of what it is to be a living, breathing, creative person in the exact body that you inhabit — makes possible some really transformative writing.”

What is true in the creative process is also true in the transformative work done to me/through me by the Morrígan.

I recognize that this kind of language — me being affected by the work of a divine being — may come across as a kind of certainty about the gods; a clear knowing about their nature, or a tangible recognition on what or who they are.

Don’t mistake me. I am not that bold, or that foolish.

I do not know what the Morrígan is. I do know, however, that the devotional ritual at PantheaCon, the one I wrote about last week, initiated a chain of events that have led me into a greater state of embodiment, a deeper connection with my own Will, and a “no bullshit” approach to my daily encounters.

I feel more willing now to speak with conviction about my perspectives, my doubts, my desires — oh, my desires! — and all of the things that I might otherwise tuck away inside of me for fear of what power they might hold over me or over my life.

And what is happening does not feel like the introduction of recklessness into my life. It isn’t that I am out of control, or that I’m becoming completely overtaken by the parts of me that have been ignored. It is rather that the parts of me that have been hidden (either out of fear or because of ignorance) are thrusting their way forward, jutting out of me with precision and sharpness. The inside of me projects outward and shouts —

“I AM HERE! DO NOT IGNORE WHAT IS HAPPENING INSIDE OF YOU!”

This I can speak about. This is how I talk about the workings of a Goddess. I do not presume to describe Her, but rather the way that She has initiated a transformation in me.

Photo by Sarah Gould

Photo by Sarah Gould

This theism, this religiosity, is motivated by the visceral feeling of this skin, this flesh, these parts that are filled with the blood we all share. In this blood is iron — iron!! 

Do you hear me?

In our blood is iron. Within us is flowing something so firm, so strong, something so raw and ready for the forge.

“I have a warrior heart,” I wrote in a song a few weeks before Pantheacon. I had no idea at the time how much a great, Goddess Warrior would wield influence over my body and my mind.

And yet here I am. Taken by Her. Inspired into a fuller life, a more honest life. In every moment.

How do we talk about the workings of a Goddess?

With a fierceness. That’s how.

I Spotted Thor Down at the Quik Mart

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In a recent discussion with a group of Pagans about the development of an American pantheon for use in ADF ritual, someone said this:

“When we look at historical evidence to find the ancient deities, we look at what was left behind and what survived for long periods of time, such as the stories that remained popular … These and many other things help us to form a picture of the beliefs of an ancient culture. I’m using the same types of techniques to examine our modern culture … Elvis is a good example.”

I don’t want to be mistaken for a god.

What if in some distant future, one populated by a new batch of revisionist or reconstructionist Pagans, there is an idea that the celebrities we follow in the present day, the politicians we support, the cultural figures we align ourselves with, were deities?

What if between now and a thousand years from now all of the precious archiving we do of our daily lives, through our blogs, through Twitter, or through the old-fashioned paper medium is lost, and as people are looking back to uncover what we were like they make a profound mistake when they stumble across a tiny piece of information about my life (or yours), and misperceive me (or you) to have been, not a person, but a god of some sort?

Perhaps you wouldn’t mind. Perhaps it would not be such a bad thing for some future Pagan (who I’m sure would be called something other than “Pagan”) looked back at the trace evidence of you and decided to make statues of your likeness, chant your name before pouring oil onto a fire, tattoo your mug onto their shoulder to let everyone know just who their god is. Would you be into that? Does that idea sit well with you?

Let me repeat that I do not want to be mistaken for a god.

At the very least, it would seem terribly inaccurate to me, because I know who I am. I am rooted in my humanity. I am also someone who has been in close proximity to a great deal of celebrity in his life, and I can guarantee you that celebrities are also rooted in their humanity. I get wigged out when modern celebrities are elevated to near deific status in the eyes of the public, and I’m even more troubled by the thought that they might one day, in that far off future, be completely mistaken for gods.

None of this seems like a problem if we’re willing to conceive of the gods as archetypes or ideas that affirm something about ourselves. The stories about humans can morph into stories about gods, and those gods can inform future humans about their own humanity. Through learning about our true, albeit fictional selves, the future Pagans learn something valuable about their own identities.

I’m down with that.

But hard polytheism makes it tricky.

If you or I become a god one day, and people worship us at their shrines and make prayers to us in their moments of need, hard polytheism says that you and I will be cognizant of that. We may even respond by granting their request. If the future reconstructionists do their homework, they’ll know that I like tortillas, coffee, hard cider and pineapple cake with cream cheese icing, and they will prepare such offerings when they want me to — what? — help them with a creative project, guide them on their travels, or — me forbid — change the weather. We will fall into their correspondence charts, and people will write songs about how amazing we were. Tuesday might even become Teo’sday…. or they may suggest that it was always Teo’sday.

I joke a little here, but mainly because I feel uncomfortable by the problems this introduces. I don’t know how to reconcile these ideas, and I worry that if they’re allowed to play themselves out all the way they will eventually call into question much of my current conception of deity.

So, I present them to you in the hopes that you might be able to offer up some fresh perspective.

Do you find any of this troubling? Would you mind much if people in the future venerated you as a deity, or does that idea lead you to reexamine the way you conceive of deity?