Worship of Gods

Red Hand

Hi, I think this is the right place for this.

I'm just curious and want to find out about people on this forum who may worship a number of Gods as part of their belief system. I was brought up a Catholic, but I'm an athiest now. As part of Christianity/Judaoism/Islam faith system, we were brought up to believe that there was only one God-one. You couldn't even recognise another God, cause there were no others according to that system of belief.

What about people that worship Gods as part of particular belief system? Say, those that worship the Aesir? (Oden, Fryia, Baldur, if I remember my Viking fixation from when I was 9:))-do they regard, say, the Celtic Gods in the same light as Christians do with every other belief systems? They know the names of the Gods perhaps, but ultimately believe that they don't exist?

(I've probably gotten many of the terms wrong, but forgive me for that.)

hairyheretic

I expect you're going to get as many different answers as people that respond My own perspective I can at least give you.

I'm asatruar, and do my best to honour the Aesir and Vanir.

For others ... I believe that the Gods and Goddesses others follow may well exist. I don't know for definite one way or the other. I have no issues in believing that they may well exist, but unless they give me a tap on the shoulder, I'm probably not going to know for sure

That help any?

Nevyn

I acknowledge many Gods, interact with a good few but those who I worship is a smaller ammount again.

My Gods are not jealous Gods.

I acknowledge the Christain got when ever I happen to be in a chruch
but greeting is not worshiping.

18AD

I find it interesting to view the Gods as archetypal beings, constructs of your subconscious mind. Especially the mythic ones, which seem to mirror eachother.

Worship of these Gods provides a sense that you can create change in your self/environment in the style of the God you have chosen. Believing that they exist seperate from yourself strengthens the notions that they are real as for some reason it is thought these days that if it's in your head it's not real. I find that this isn't the case.
Your mind undoubtably has the power to create external beings unbeknownst to the conscious mind.

The notion that they are all aspects of the one God is another take on it. Possibly the one God in many forms or seperate Gods of the one, like multiple personalities only they exist seperately.

I don't like the idea that some Gods exist and others do not. Maybe approaching this from a pragmatic point of view is best.

Nevyn

That certainly is one point of view but really I would not think of standing before or working with any of the Gods what I do and telling them that they are all the same and mere creations of my mind.

18AD

Thaedydal wrote:

That certainly is one point of view but really I would not think of standing before or working with any of the Gods what I do and telling them that they are all the same and mere creations of my mind.

Why 'mere' creations?

I didn't mean that they were the same, but multiple aspects of the one God. A schizophrenic person is different people, but from the same foundation.
Or maybe in the way that a God would appear in different forms to different people so that it could integrate better into that persons worldview.

I understand that they may also be seperate entities entirely. Interdimensional, ethereal, spirits, purely psychic entity...

Nevyn

Isn't that the same as saying they are the same ?

18AD

Thaedydal wrote:

Isn't that the same as saying they are the same ?

That the different things are the same?

Is anger the same as happiness? I'd interact with these two emotions in completely different ways, yet they'll spring from the same source, ie. me.

Is a clone the same or is it different, or aspects of the same thing, namely DNA.

This could be likened to lesser Gods under the one God.

I'm pretty sure that in Hinduism the Gods are seen to be aspects of the one supreme reality or God or Tao or What-have-you.

Or maybe I have utterly confused myself beyond repair...

scorplett

As a person who is devoted to following a fertility based spiritual path. I personally find that soft polytheism is inappropriate in the fertility model.

As much as I am in no way the same as a sibling, although both of us sprang from a union of the same two people and the joining of the same genetic material, we are entirely different beings. We are not archetypes of our parents, in fact we can have as many unique physiological features as we can have in common with our parents. And that is before we approach psychological features. And possibly the greatest marker of individuality is our environmental similarities and differances.

I would see deity as being similar.

Even if the many deities that I recognize, commune with, worship and serve did spring from a single creative force (although i do not see creative force as being personified let alone singular), they are each distinct individuals with individual personalities and opinions etc.
As much as it may be offensive for me to tell any other human that they are an aspect of me because they are constructed of such similar matter and descendants of the same race of humanoid, to another human it is unimportant and trivial. I believe it to be quite similar to recognizing deity's. Some of them would not like being referred to as 'aspects' of another deity and others wouldn't mind at all. So tiz best to air on the side of caution until an understanding is achieved.

For me, I am and will remain a hard polytheist as that is the only correct conclusion I can arrive at considering my own personal gnosis.
Others may arrive at differing conclusions and thats fine if it fulfills their spiritual needs.

Red Hand

Interesting responses so far.:)

I guess I was expecting a few responses from people that would have insisted that their pantheon is the one that, say, created the unverse, the world, us...that there could be no other Gods other than them. Yes-I was expecting jealous Gods, Gods that had a monopoly on creation, on power.

Maybe I'm too used to the Islamic/Judaism/Christian desert God?:) If one acknowledges, for eg, the Christian God as just another God, and yet you believe in other Gods and indeed worship them...how does one justify in acknowledging that Christian God, a God wants people to believe that he is the one and only and created everything?

Does such a person think that Yahwah is a liar or a trickster or a misguided God in saying He created everyone and everything?

Nevyn

He didn't create everyone.
In fact he directs his people those he created at several times not to do as other people did.

http://www.caw.org/articles/otherpeople.html

As for desert tribal gods who ended up being such a big noise really all I can say it that Set missed out there.

Red Hand

There is the Genisis story though, which implies that he did the work of creating-metaphorically or not, this God is portrayed as being the creater. Yes, he does say not to do as others do several times to his chosen people, but it is my understanding from what I've read that humanity was created by him alone (or at least that would be as his worshpers would say).

Creation/afterlife is an important part of many religions-how does one justify that different systems give different mythologies for creation/afterlife, and yet the followers of one particular system still recognise the Gods of a different system?

Nevyn

His worshipers say a lot of thing but that does not mean it applies to me

Talliesin

Despite being a Pagan the view of creation I hold to was actually postulated by a Jesuit priest.

It's the belief that the universe started from a tremendously dense and hot state, and has been expanding ever since.

That's only one sense of "creation myth" though. Many creation myths address the question "how did we get here" without giving a toss about how any other tribes got there. It is possible that the creation myth you mention started as that, it actually does mention other tribes, and developped a larger cosmological impact later.

The story of Aradia is a creation myth, it talks about how a particular group of witches started in the 14th century CE. It doesn't bother with anything prior to 1313CE because that isn't the creation it's addressing.

Jeremiah 16:1 wrote:

If one acknowledges, for eg, the Christian God as just another God, and yet you believe in other Gods and indeed worship them...how does one justify in acknowledging that Christian God, a God wants people to believe that he is the one and only and created everything?

There's a lot of complexity in this in one way because viewing יהוה as another existing god raises a lot of different questions on the one hand and is of minimal interest to most hard polytheists on the other hand because his worship has a no-moonlighting clause.

The core issue is rather simpler because a hard polytheists don't belief that any god is omnipotent, infallible, and all-good. Someone saying a particular god is omnipotent, infallible and all-good is interpretted by hard polytheism much as it would be if you claimed to be omnipotent, infallible and all-good.