This post was inspired by Question #4 on this list.

In my early years of trying to find my way in Paganism, I became a member of Ar nDraiocht Fein/A Druid Fellowship. At the time (and presumably today), that organization’s Dedicant Program strongly pushed seeking out and finding a patron deity or a pair of them. I didn’t find or connect with Freyja until after I dropped my membership, but that push for finding a patron deity or two stuck with me and has shaped my path since then.

A while back, I found a Patheos post by Ian Corrigan in which he talked about some of the motivations behind the inclusion of patronage as a central part of the ADF Dedicant program as well as some criticisms of it. I also found some of his views on the topic and how he tended to instruct newcomers at the time of that post’s writing worthy of consideration.

I especially like how Ian focuses on the idea of emphasis without exclusivity. While I have a tight relationship with Freyja, which I have talked about elsewhere, I am not forbidden from speaking with or establishing relationships with other deities. It’s as though she and I have a simple relationship: I am to keep my commitments to her and am then free to do as I please.

One of the other things that I personally find is that my relationship with Freyja can shape my relationships with other Norse deities and can provide context and even a starting point for them. For example, if I need the aid of Thor, I feel that being strongly connected with a goddess who has helped him out with a sticky situation or two (see: lending out her falcon cloak so Loki could find Thor’s hammer when it was stolen) gives me a certain standing to call on him.

Of course, at the same time, i was building a relationship with Freyja, I also thought about building a relationship with Thor on its own merits. This was at a time when “gender balance” was more important to me in my divine interactions. Alas, my attempts to build something with Thor was quickly demolished when I found myself ushered into the presence of Odin who informed me that I needed to work with him and his energies instead.

Of course, at this point, I don’t really consider even Odin to be a patron deity. This is partly because he is not ever-present int he same way Freyja is. In fact, it’s probably been a couple years in which I’ve really felt his presence at all. For a while, I’d feel him only at those times — often in the spring — when it seemed he felt I had become too comfortable and needed to undergo yet another change or transformative process. Nowadays, he seems to be content to let me be. Which leaves me wondering if the patronage of a deity may not be as permanent as I once thought.