Tag Archives: deities

Paganism, Religion

Polytheology: Deities I believe (might) exist vs. deities I worship

1 Comment

I think something that initially confuses many non-polytheists is that when I say I believe a given deity exists, that doesn’t necessarily mean I worship that deity. In reality, there are many deities that I think exists (or am at least open to the possibility that they exist) that I have no interest in worshiping. This includes Egyptian deities, indigenous deities or spirits, most of the Greek deities,1 and even a majority of the deities mentioned in the Norse and other Germanic mythologies. This can be for a variety of reasons, though the most too common are that they are part of a culture that I’m not drawn to2 and their worship tends to focus on aspects of life and/or spirituality that I’m not particularly interested in.

And for many modern polytheists,3 that’s perfectly okay. As a rule, we have no rule saying that other people must honor our particular deities. We say “go worship other deities if you wish, or no deity at all. Just be decent people.”

This is also why I don’t see the need to comment on whether other people’s gods are “real.” Maybe? Probably. The only thing I question is the claims that some other theists make about their deities. For example, I’m never going to accept monotheists’ claims that their deity is the “only game in town.” But does that mean that I don’t think that deity exists? Or do I just think they misunderstand the nature of their own deity?4 In the end, I don’t think it matters. As long as they’re willing to live and let live, I’m happy to follow suit.

This kind of attitude makes it fairly easy for me as a polytheist to embrace a pluralistic society.

Post History: I drafted this post on 9 February 2025. I proofread, revised, and finalized it on 10 February 2025.

Footnotes

  1. The only exception seems to be Pan. i keep feeling drawn to him from time to time for some reason. ↩︎
  2. And in the case of culturally bound closed traditions, I have no business messing with their gods as someone outside that culture/tradition. ↩︎
  3. A year or two ago, I made the mistake of not making that clarification on BlueSky. I made a similar statement about “polytheists” in general and a Jewish man rightfully called me out on it. He pointed out that while ancient Romans were okay with people praying to other gods in addition to the Roman ones, praying and making sacrifices to the Roman gods was absolutely mandatory. This was a cause of much conflict between them and the Jews of the time, especially since the Romans insisted that getting everyone to honor their gods was essential to the health of their empire. Fortunately, I think most polytheists are less inclined to fuse their religion with such nationalism. But it’s also important not to erase our history, even unintentionally. ↩︎
  4. I suppose that if I were to accept that the deity themselves were claiming to be the only deity in existence, I’d have to conclude that said deity is being untruthful. However, I have no verifiable evidence that any such deity is making that claim for themselves. i just have their followers making that claim on their behalf and claiming it’s from the deity. ↩︎
Paganism, Religion

Polytheology: The nature of deities

2 Comments

NOTE: This series is an exploration of my personal theology, which I tend to hold lightly. It is subject to change as I gain new insights. Also, no one should interpret anything I say as the “one true doctrine.”

Happy Monday, dear readers! After last week’s brief detour into a book review, I thought it’d be good to get back into my polytheology series. With that in mind, I wanted to write something about my views on deities and their nature. This topic is near and dear to my heart because I think that, thanks to living in a society that is soaking in Christian hegemony, most people have very Christian and/or monotheistic views about this topic. As a polytheist, I’d like to take a moment to push back against the assumptions this leads many people to hold and offer a different perspective (or more than one).

The first one that I want to tackle is the “omni” attributes of God espoused by Christianity and other monotheistic religions. As an evangelical Christian, I grew up being taught that God was omnipotent (all powerful), omniscient (all knowing), and omnipresent (all present). I’ve seen some people more recently talking about God being omnibenevolent (all good or all loving). While omnibenevolence was certainly something my church ascribed to God, we never used that word.

But in a polytheistic theology, I’m not sure attributing these traits to our deities makes much sense. After all, can you have more than one omnipotent deity? What if they disagree with one another? Who would win the argument? And why would omniscient deities disagree with one another? Wouldn’t they have the same infinite knowledge and therefore come to the same conclusions?

If you look at the Norse myths,1 you start to notice that they don’t really bear out these traits either. After all, the Aesir begin to age and grow weak when the Jotun Thjazi has Loki steal Idun and her life-sustaining apples.2 Apparently, without these magical fruits, even the Aesir are powerless against aging and death. And while one might argue that Odin may have eventually become all-knowing and all-wise,3 he had to gain that knowledge and wisdom through processes that involved things like learning seid-magic from Freyja, hanging himself on Yggdrasil in order to acquire knowledge of the runes, and sacrificing an eye in exchange for a single drink from Mimir’s well. As for omnibenevolence, I think that Loki’s mechanations to bring about Baldr’s death demonstrates that attribute to be not applicable to at least some of the Aesir.

Similarly, our deities are not necessarily uncreated, nor have they always existed. Indeed, the Norse myths talk regularly about the parents of the various Aesir, suggesting they were born into existence just like most living things. In fact, some polytheistic theologians suggest that deities may not have even started out as being deities at first. Many deities may have been a nature spirit or human ancestor that over time became deified.4 This idea draws me back to something I said in my post about the One Eternal Reality:

Of course, I’ll note that the One Eternal Reality goes beyond deities and encompasses humans as well.

This draws attention to the fact that while we and the deities are different, we are not quite as separate and unlike one another as other theologies might suggest. I hope to explore that thought more when I discuss the nature of relationships between humans and deities in my next post in this series.

Post History: I wrote the first draft of this post on October 6, 2024.

Footnotes

  1. I suspect this is true in myths from all around the world, but I’ll focus on those myths I’m most familiar with and which speak most directly to my own spiritual tradition. ↩︎
  2. It’s interesting to note that in the telling of this myth over at Norse Mythology for Smart People, the author notes that the original tale most likely involved not apples, but some other form of fruit or nut. ↩︎
  3. I’m not sure I’m counted among those people. While I believe the Allfather is extremely wise and knowledgeable, I’m not convinced he’s omnipotent even now. ↩︎
  4. Indeed, this is a question i keep coming back to and bringing up to others. What makes a deity a deity? What distinguishes them from an ancestral spirit, a nature spirit, or some other being? ↩︎
Paganism, Witchcraft

Witchy questions: Do you work with a Pantheon?

2 Comments

This post is inspired by Question #5 from this list.

I touched on this briefly in my last post, in which I talked about my relationship with Freyja and other Norse deities. By and large, I like to keep my emphasis on focus on the Norse deities, as it allows me to keep things within the context of a single system of myths and lore. While I admire others who seem to have no problem working with and relating to deities from diverse cultural sources, it’s just not generally something that appeals to me, nor do I feel it would work well for me. Partly, I think this goes back to the idea that my ability to call on and relate to other Norse deities stems from the relationship they and I both have to Freyja. If I were to try to reach out to a Celtic deity, it would require extra work and would feel like more of a “cold call” to me.

The one exception is the Greek god Pan, who I occasionally feel drawn to. I think that has to do with the sexual energies he represents from a more masculine point of view, something I don’t quite feel with Freyja. What’s interesting to me is that I don’t have that same feeling toward Freyja’s own brother, Freyr, despite the fact that he is a deity of fertility and sexuality. But to me at least — and I’d be curious to hear the thoughts of other people with experience with Freyr — his sexual energy feels much more tame and civilized than his sister’s energy. I tend to attribute this to the fact that his fertility is linked tot he fertility of the land, often described as the king married to the land. It feels to me as if that crown and his obligations calms and constrains his own sexual energy. Pan, on the other hand, has that wild and even chaotic sexual energy that I am so familiar with through Freyja, and that appeals to me.