I am meeting more and more that were raised pagan, but they probably are not interested in articles for new neo-pagans anyway. So I am addressing this article to those of us that came from a Judeo-Christian upbringing where monotheism was the norm.
Do you feel guilt from even considering there may be more than one god? Do you feel faithless and unloyal for thinking about the possibility? I used to. We still remember our Sunday school teacher drilling us with the 10 Commandments, the first was the one we remember "THOU SHALT HAVE NO OTHER GODS BEFORE ME". Or else! It goes on to say "I am a jealous God". As I pondered this commandment ( I was a curious child and always questioned even if only to myself. There were some things I knew not to question out loud), it came to me that if there were no other gods then what did this god Jehovah (or Yahweh) have to be jealous about? It doesn't say there aren't any other gods, it just says not to go worshiping them before you worship Yahweh because he is jealous. Enough now of literal interpretations, and don't get me started on what I think of jealousy.
I have always felt that what is common among the world religions and spiritual paths is closer to the truth than what is unique about them. If truth is Truth then it will be discovered by many at many times, just like mathematics it just IS. I never thought that a sudden awakening in spiritual knowledge that took a sharp turn made sense. Religion has developed along with the human race for thousands and thousands of years, the roots are older than our language and our culture. Religion is seeped into our psyches, our spirituality is as deep as our instincts.
Most all believe in doing good, for whatever reason, this is a world wide common belief. Your actions come back to you or what goes around comes around, is also a consensus. There is a common belief in some form of afterlife, and some form of power source that created and maintains this universe. Some form of prayer, magic or petitioning for special requests is also common in religions. Except for the people that came from the desert of Judea, who developed Judaism, Christianity and Islam, most cultures acknowledge polytheism, or at the least a belief in the spirit world with the many spirits influencing the lives of humans. The vast majority of the people in this world believe there is more than one personified power source, or god.
But are there really very many that are truly monotheistic? From the time of Constantine the Christian churches were changing and mingling with the local religions as they made new converts. In the recent millenium in Europe we find that taking away the Celtic and Germanic people's gods forced them to create saints and angels empowered like and even named like the old gods. The people kidnapped from Africa and forced to convert accepted the new saints and placed them among their old Orishas forming a magic amalgam we call Voudoun or Santeria. In South America the missionaries also used convenience to merge the Native American religions with Catholicism. The people of India luckily escaped mass conversion from Europeans and have kept their polytheistic ancestral religions intact. Even in the Bible belt of the USA there are dual gods; the belief of the power of the Devil rivals the power of the Christian god. It seems that any god of absolute goodness must have an opposite power of absolute evil.
Having acknowledged polytheism as a possibility, I pondered on what gods are. Some say there is a higher power that runs this universe, it is so omnipotent and omniscient that the human mind can not understand it all at once. We split the power into pieces we can comprehend. Some say that all gods are really one god. Others say, no, they really are entities separate from eachother. Some believe there are male and female, others think they are androgynous. Others accept some of each category. Maybe everyone is right. Perhaps there are female goddesses, male gods, some gods with qualities of both sexes, and maybe there is one central power source. Aren't we all part of that universal god? Isn't our soul part of the divine, our divinity a spark of the flame?
Did the gods create us or do we create the gods? Are they formed from our thoughts when we need them? Do we endow them with the qualities we need to meditate on and examine so we can better understand ourselves? Are they myths of super people that lead lives we can use to pattern our lives after, are they really heroes? Are they like saints that once were human and have reached godhood by heroic deeds? Or are they like angels, entities with a more spiritual energy than humans but can sometimes take on human form to communicate with us? Or do they really dwell within the deepest corner of our own mind?
I don't know the answers, I'm still forming the questions. I'm putting my feet up and thinking some more.
Blessed Be
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