In response to the post wherein I declared my newly developed polytheism, some people understandably asked something along the lines of “Okay, you say you believe in gods. But what do you mean by that? How literally do you believe that?” And it’s a fair question–one I intended to write about anyway. To what extend to I believe in these gods, and to what extent to I believe that they are separate, distinct individual gods?
I don’t believe that Dionysus, Aphrodite, and other hypothetical gods actually live bodily on the top of Mount Olympus in Greece from whence they literally created the universe and currently control natural phenomena. I am not an idiot. I want to talk about other possibilities.
I am open to the possibility that these gods no not exist at all outside my head. I’m not eager to believe that it is flat-out mental illness, but I am definitely open to the possibility that I am talking about psychological archetypes–either universal ones that transcend my individual experience or personal ones that are completely local to my own psyche. Human beings think and reason in symbol and metaphor anyway, and I have no problem with the possibility that I am encountering symbolic representations of aspects of my own psyche or aspects of a universal human psyche if such a thing exists.
I am also open to the possibility–in fact, I actually believe–that these gods are actual spiritual beings that have independent existence beyond the borders of the individual human mind. Nevertheless, I would still insist that the gods’ involvement in the natural world is largely metaphorical, but that such an arrangement is only natural since humans make sense of the world primarily in metaphor. If I say “I believe that Odin made the world out of the broken parts of dead Ymir,” I think that is not necessarily inconsistent with the scientific explanation for the origin of the universe. Again, I am talking about metaphor and the way we make meaning out of what we perceive. And I also feel like there is more than one way to understand “the world”–it doesn’t have to be the natural world at all. We inhabit a “world” that is composed by our own psychology, perception, and experience. While I do not think that Odin carved out the natural world out of Ymir’s bones, I am interested in the possibility that Odin carved out a psychic, psychological, and/or mythic landscape in exactly that way. It is still the creation of the world, just not meaning the planet.
If this seems vague and ill-defined, that’s because it probably is ill-defined. Like I said, my understanding of the gods is still in the early stages of development.
In the end, I think that when dealing with religion it is important, on the one hand, to remember that your gods might all be completely fictional, but on the other hand, that they might in fact be real. The former keeps you from being a fundamentalist (and a good self-check: are your religious convictions overriding your basic human compassion? because if they are, then you’ve gone too far over the edge, buddy), and the latter keeps you from being a secular humanist. Not that being a secular humanist is the end of the world, but that there’s just no point in bothering with religion in the first place if you’re going to be certain that it’s all messed up.
The thing is, I believe in the existence of divinity. I think that the divine is real, and I hunger for it. I acknowledge the possibility that it’s all in my head, but because I am not a fundamentalist, whether there is in fact an ultimate reality to Divinity or it is all in my head is actually irrelevant, because I am going to act the same way with regard to it either way. But for the record, I believe that there is a divine reality that transcends individual human experience.
In terms of hard polytheism (i.e., the gods, whatever they are, exist independently and in a fully distinct fashion from each other) versus soft polytheism (i.e., the gods are different facets or manifestations of a greater divine reality), my answer is that I genuinely think that the latter is more likely, as ultimately my cosmological picture is formed by the conception of Maya and Brahman in the Baghavad Gita. However, that requires some more elaboration, because I am definitely not saying that the gods are simply masks of one true god (although since I have only personally experienced one male and one female god, I might actually be dealing with a Wiccan-style fertility dualism, but more about that later). If this model of godhood holds, then I am only claiming that the gods are parts of the same divine whole to the same extent that human beings are all also part of that same divine whole. And with gods as with humans, the compelling illusion of Maya–the deceptive illusion of separateness that enables us to function in the world of sense objects while also blinding us to our essential oneness–applies to the gods as well as to humans. And that means that, like us, although they are facets of a greater whole, they act for the most part as if they are separate and distinct, if interrelated.
Sailing to Byzantium 
Seems pretty reasonable to me, if only because I mostly agree. I think our instincts regarding the gods differ chiefly in that I would rather the gods stay purely metaphorical.
It seems to me that this matters a lot less than the actual relationship with your gods. I have a friend who is a very hard polytheist in Ásatrú, (I got grammatically twisted there) he says that even though he accepts the possibility of something other than hard polytheism, he acts as if hard polytheism is undoubtedly true. Not to avoid thinking about the topic, (he does a lot of that) but as a tool for his relationships with the gods.
I know in my own religion over obsession with ontological distinctions and technicalities can become a barrier for my personal devotional life. The irony of this is that studying theology with a particular emphasis on the Station of Baha’u’llah is a large part of my devotional life.
Very nice, I really like the way that you expounded upon your earlier posts and clarified your earlier thoughts. You eloquently explained some of the most basic human philosophic motivations.
I fully regard the myriad of religious beliefs to be our attempts to describe that which is not sensed physically, but spiritually. Just as a room of observers will describe an object placed in their midst differently, so it is with description of spiritual perception. People will describe things in relation to who they are: their ethnicity, culture, sex, upbringing, personality, and, their chronological placement in time. Since their is a nearly infinite number of personalities, there would be a correspondingly nearly infinite number of descriptions of a singular spiritual event, feeling, impression, etc. This is especially evident when records are kept for hundreds and thousands of years. We attempt to interpret spiritual things that were recorded by people so different from us that they are essentially completely alien. It is amazing that we claim to know the exact meaning of things written so long ago when we don’t know enough about their culture to tell if they used toilet paper or not.
So, basically, the question arises, “Who were the gods when they were written about in the context of the writer, and, who are they now?” Is the god who was called Zeus now called something else such as Allah, God, or Heavenly Father? Not that Zeus was described the same as any of those, but they do share characteristics; the ability to create for example. Are the gods or characteristics and impressions of the gods just facets of true divinity that we all just catch glimpses of and try to put into some understandable quantification.
I don’t know.
Jon
The Olympians didn’t actually create the Kosmos, of course, at least not according to the mythology – They arose within it just as did all things. In my view, this is part of what allows Them to have relevance to my life, where a wholly-other Godhead simply can’t. As to Their “true nature”, I have no idea. 🙂 They might well be manifestations of an all-pervading Unity, or not – but I *experience* Them as individuals, and that’s a good enough reason to consider Them as such.
Well, notice I used Odin as an example instead of the Olympians. 😉
Basically, I am in agreement with you, Erik. I actually do think that they are part of an all-pervading unity (like I said, I am persuaded and touched by a Vedantic interpretation of the Bagavad Gita), but in practice, I perceive the gods as individuals, so I treat them as such. The background belief of the ultimate unity is more something to generally keep in mind and be influenced by broadly rather than something that directly dictates my immediate actions.
Another important difference that I want to point out between our beliefs is that I don’t recognize the distinction between spiritual and physical. I don’t know how to begin to define the difference. Does spirit have an influence on physical things (i.e. things bound by the laws of physics)? If so, then spirit is also a causal part of the physical system. Off topic, but…
I definitely think that the spiritual and the physical are probably part of the same system, although they may appear to be different (Maya again). However, i don’t necessarily think that the spiritual is a subset of, and thus subject to, the physical as we understand it. I am more inclined to intuit that they are both aspects or facets of a greater system about which we know very little because of our inability to perceive it very well–it defies objective analysis because we are unable to properly experience it in terms of the senses which is how we define things objectively (but I believe that the world of sense objects is not the ultimate reality), and it defies spiritual/subjective analysis because there is usually too much “noise” going on (by which I mean imagination, wishful thinking, bad theories, all the inherent weaknesses of non-empirical analysis).
It’s all part of the Matrix. 🙂
Going by my own experience and understanding… I don’t sense that there is a clear distinction between the physical, psychological, and spiritual; nor between the personal, interpersonal, and impersonal. We seem to be forced to make distinctions in order to function normally in society, but I don’t intuit any fundamental distinctions. There is just consciousness which gets rather fuzzy at the edges blending into that which can neither be perceived nor conceived.
All in all, I’d say that one’s god(s) may not be ultimately real, but probably as real as we are. I tend to embrace cognitive dissonance. The world is a mystery… whether we like it or not.
I’ve run into a number of Christian apologists who believe that their God is rationally justified, but this seems self-delusional to me. I understand having a sense of conviction about one’s spiritual experience. However, rationality by itself can’t bridge the gap to that spiritual experience… rather that spiritual experience must bridge the gap between one’s rationality and one’s beliefs.
That is EXACTLY my view. I think we are all separate, but I think we are all one. Thanks for articulating so well what I have in my head. 😉
@Benjamin,
I understand having a sense of conviction about one’s spiritual experience. However, rationality by itself can’t bridge the gap to that spiritual experience… rather that spiritual experience must bridge the gap between one’s rationality and one’s beliefs.
Well said!