Jeff Russell

Sorry to be a bit slow on getting back to you on this, thank you very much for sharing your thoughts.

1) I very much agree with you that much (most? all?) of the anthropomorphism and other astral material we use to understand and interact with the Gods is culturally determined, and likely much of that (mostly) arbitrarily. I put those qualifiers in, though, because I have an inkling (but not much to go on, other than vague impressions from my own experiences) that the "personhood" of the Gods, and to a lesser degree, the feelings, symbolism, and so forth associated with Them are not entirely arbitrary, as I tried to get at in the essay with the silly example of a wholly unsuited image for Thor. Is that image only unsuited because of culturally-determined methods of interaction with that piece of divinity? Possibly, but as I said, I suspect that in some sense that might be beyond our capacity to understand, Thor is a "person" in some way importantly similar to how you and I are each a person, but not exactly the same way. If I'm right on that, our personhood is a lower, murkier reflection of what Gods and other spirits have/experience. Which neatly leads us to your second point.

2) As for non-dualism, I still feel like I don't really understand the term well enough to say firmly whether I agree with it or not. Related to the personhood thing above, so far, my experience is of the Gods as distinct enough for that distinction to seem meaningful, but the occult philosophy I'm learning teaches an underlying unity, which seems reasonable, but of which I don't have direct experience, so I am going on what I've read. One metaphor for possibly reconciling distinctness and unity that's come to mind is that of bodies of water in a hydrosystem. Lake Erie (one of the North American Great Lakes) drains into the Saint Lawrence river, flows over Niagra Falls, and continues on into the Gulf of Saint Lawrence, which is a part of the Atlantic ocean, which is part of the world ocean. In one sense, these are all made of the same thing (water) and are all connected enough to be considered "the same thing," but in another, they are distinct enough to be worth naming, and the experience of each is different in ways that aren't wholly determined by the experiencer (I can't will my experience of going over Niagra Falls to be identical to floating placidly in Lake Erie, no matter how hard I focus on their underlying unity!). Is the unity more true than their distinctness? That seems really hard to answer in an absolute, non-subjective way.

But as I said, this is largely the product of reading and speculation, not direct experience, so take with appropriate seasoning of salt!

Cheers,
Jeff