[Main Blog Post] What Are the Gods and How Do We Come to Know Them?

[jprussell]

For this week, I thought I'd just dip my toe into a little bit of light theology, attempting to take the model of the planes we discussed a few weeks back and applying it to understanding what's going on in religious experiences. I'd love to know what y'all think, as always.

Comments

[k_a_nitz]

Hmm. "Through our art, stories, songs, and so forth, we come up with particular, perceivable, understandable shapes to represent the Gods". This resonates with me. The way I see it, God(s) is(are) on a plane beyond our understanding, and all we get are glimpses of aspects which we then have to make sense of. The anthropomorphism of God(s) is a product of this trying to make sense of these experiences. And any two people presented with the same aspect may come up with similar but not exact understandings, and the more distant their cultures are from each other the more distant their understandings will be. Whether there is one or many is not something we can determine. We may see many aspects that seem distinct, but that is just a product of our limited ability to comprehend our experiences of the God(s). As you highlight, the important thing is how we experience and respond to that experience of the God(s). Kierkegaard had it right in emphasising that faith is something beyond reason.

I'm very much in the non-dualist camp of Meister Eckhart - there is no us and him(them), rather he(they) are a part of us (though this does not mean they are subordinate to us or made up by us, instead quite the opposite) and we are a part of him(them). You could kind of think of this like being a member of a race - you are a part of the race, but the race is also within you whether you like it or not, and you have a choice of how you interact with that part within you and how you experience it within the bounds it sets - note that describing what it is and trying to delineate it run into problems (just like with traditions and most emergent phenomena) which can be traced to our own limited abilities to comprehend such a higher concept.

[jprussell]

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

[k_a_nitz]

Ooh, I like that water metaphor!

[thinking_turtle]

Thanks for your blog! To me, it seems that monotheism and polytheism are both human models. Models cannot be true, they can only approach truth.

If you pray to Jupiter, and he doesn't respond, perhaps being a leader isn't for you, or Jupiter is testing you to see if you really want to be a leader.

I don't think the gods are a catalogue of followers and we get to choose one of them to help us. I think the gods are in the lead, and we are the followers, and even our choice of whom to follow is limited by their acceptance.

[jprussell]

Thank you for your kind words, and you're most welcome.

I think your point about the agency of the Gods, in fact, Their greater agency in religious interactions, is an excellent one, and a "catalog" is a great critique of some flavors of "eclectic" religiosity. Also, always helpful to be reminded that "the map is not the territory."

Cheers,
Jeff