Deep Polytheism: On the Agency and Sovereignty of the Gods

Keynote | Many Gods West 2015

Good evening. Thanks for that welcome.

What I want to talk with you about tonight is the agency and sovereignty of the Gods.

This begins in understanding what Gods are, and how They are distinct from forms such as archetypes. Now, this may sound to you like I will be beating a dead horse here, or preaching to the choir; and it’s true that the differences between Gods and archetypes have been much discussed in our communities. But here’s the thing: we are going to keep returning to this issue because it is crucial for us. Polytheism is relationship to Gods, and we can’t form relationship to beings while we are misconstruing their identities. So this is foundational for us as polytheists, and what I want to share with you are some tools for how to think about this question, so that we can move into a deeper level of engagement with the Gods.

The key, in my mind, to understanding the nature of the Gods and what makes Them distinct from archetypes, is agency. And this is a theme I am going to emphasize a lot here.

One of the reasons I think people do conflate the Gods with archetypes is that in our experiences, they are often coupled together. Archetypes, we know, are images arising from the collective consciousness of human beings which are reflective of essential human experiences or responses, and which may or may not be enspirited with consciousness of some kind. It’s my feeling that if archetypes are enspirited, it is the Gods who animate them, and because of this intimacy between them, it can be hard for some of us to see where one ends and the other begins.

Now, this gets confusing on a number of levels. First, to experience the reality of the Gods requires that we trust our sense experiences, including those of our subtle senses – something that many people in our culture find very challenging to do and which most of us are trained not to do. At the same time, while it is important for us to trust the evidence of our senses, it is also important to recognize the limits of our sensory frame of reference.

What I mean by that is that our sensory experiences of the Gods are not the Gods themselves, because They are inherently grander than our capacity to experience Them. Thus, the Gods as we know Them are something more like processes of encounter, rather than fixed forms. That is to say, the presence we experience is always a mask or manifestation of that God, shaped in such a way as to translate into our more limited consciousness and frame of reference.

So people often find it difficult to separate the psychological experience of an archetypal form from a spiritual experience of a God, because the knowledge of how to recognize the difference is a matter of not just subtle awareness, but also trained awareness.

And because they don’t show up for us neatly separated. These masks or forms that the Gods adopt in order to connect with us can be archetypes, and they do exist as images within the human collective consciousness. The crucial distinction to make here is that from the polytheist standpoint, those forces taking form as Gods are real, They exist independently of our experience, and They can act upon us up to and including physical effects, whether or not we believe that They are real.

Here’s a model I’ve used to illuminate this: Imagine being inside a church, and here is a stained glass window. The window contains an image in colored glass, and that image is lit and brought to life by sunlight pouring through the window.

Here, the image in glass is the archetype – it is an image, a symbol, and as we experience it, it can be alive with light and power. But, in truth, it is not in itself alive or exerting force in the world; it is a kind of passive vessel which is being enlivened by the agency of a greater force. That force, the sun that is generating the light enlivening the image, is the Gods. The church, in this model, is the human mind.

Thus, the experience we have as a consciousness trapped inside the walls of the body is that of an image which comes to life within our experience. It is taking on the form and shape of this picture in glass which, like an archetype, was conceived and made by the human mind and hand. But – and this part is important – its life is real and comes from beyond us; we can feel its warmth on our skin if we stand in the beam. That sun was not made by our hands or minds, and it will rise and set in its own courses regardless of our awareness of it.

This makes intuitive sense and I think we can see how easy it is to conflate the presence and the image, the God and the archetype, because we are experiencing them together.

Now, let’s go deeper into this. Let’s try another model: What if I suggested thinking of archetypes as clothing that the Gods wear?

Let’s take The Smith. As an archetype, this image occurs throughout many cultures, recognizable by emblems such as the hammer, the forge, the primal elements of fire and metal. To access its meaning, all we need to see are the accoutrements of hammer and leather apron and we recognize this archetype: The Smith. The archetype is understood to represent concepts such as transformation through forging; skill and creative power; the capacity to create material culture or express oneself through art. In the psychological dimension, Jungians speak of the Smith as representing “motivation to manifest the extraordinary”; and of “bringing the creative principle to the earthly realm.”

But notice. All of this speaks to the psychological and cultural functions of smithcraft. The archetype, you see, does not tell us the story of the being who occupies it. To know this, we have to look deeper than the image – deeper than the clothing. We have to ask the being’s identity, their name, their story.

For the Gods have stories and identities like all living beings do. Let me introduce you to Goibniu, one of the Gods who carries smithcraft among the Irish; His identity and His story are different from Brighid, from Wayland, from Hephaestos, from any other smithing God we might name. This archetype that each of these Gods may embody – the apron, if you will, that a smithing God may wear – it only tells us something about Their job. It doesn’t tell us who They are.

This is not to say that you can’t have a relationship with an archetype – you can! But it is inherently a functional relationship, not a personal one. To delve into full devotional relationship, we have to get beyond the blacksmith’s apron. Engaging with Gods as archetypes is something like dealing with your local blacksmith as a customer. You go to him for horse-shoeing, or to get a tool made, or to get a quote on a custom ornamental gate. Because that’s what he is to you: he is the hammer and the apron. There can be reciprocity – you pay him for his work, and this sustains him. You offer attention to the archetype, and this sustains it. But at this level of engagement, what matters is his function: how well he does the job of smith for you.

This relationship doesn’t go deeper until you step outside the realm of function. What is your local blacksmith’s name? How did he come to be here? What does he do after work? Would he like to have a beer with you some evening? Oh, he likes beer? Now we’re starting to connect to him as a real being.

His name is Goibniu, and He likes beer; in fact, it turns out He has a brewing operation out back and sidelines making kickass homebrew for His family and friends. Sure, He’ll shoe your horse, but His passion is really fine embossed spearheads that never rust. He nearly died a while back in a violent forge incident involving a poorly-vetted red-haired apprentice; but He’s doing fine now. In fact, He’s mysteriously resilient; if you ask Him what He does to stay healthy, He’ll just tell you that a good soak in the hot tub can cure anything. He has relatives all over the place and He speaks Irish, Welsh, and Latin, too. He doesn’t talk about it much, but if you stick around and He decides He trusts you, He can teach you some clever charms and spells, too.

These elements of his history and personality weave together to make up who He is; His identity. But notice how much of this is incidental to His role as a blacksmith. If you are only engaging Him as an archetype – The Smith – it doesn’t really matter what kind of beer He likes or His favorite language to recite arcane poetry in. And He probably won’t bother telling you. You don’t have a friendship until those personal details begin to matter to you – and when they do, when He becomes Goibniu to you instead of The Smith, those things will come to matter at least as much, if not far more than His skill at the forge. Because Goibniu has become a person to you rather than a function.

And I’ll offer you another example that illustrates something else about why this matters. It matters because archetypes can lead us astray.

Here is a crone Goddess. She looks like an old lady sorceress, with long, tangled gray hair and a dark robe. She arrives at the threshold of your house at nightfall, leans against the doorway, and peers at you with a piercing eye, and She asks to be welcomed in. She might have a weaver’s beam about Her person.

So this is The Crone, right? You know, the archetype of the wise woman? Jungian teachings say that The Crone represents “the ripening of natural insight and the acceptance of what is, allowing one to pass that wisdom on to others.” That’s definitely who this is, right? She’s old, gray-haired, wearing black; she’s associating herself with night and weaving and stuff. Definitely the archetypa Crone, right?

Well, it turns out that this isn’t your wise grandmotherly sage woman archetype. It’s actually the Badb, and when She adopts this crone form and comes skulking at your doorstep, peering at you through one eye, She’s not there to offer you lessons on the karmic wisdom of the ages. She’s there to curse you into quivering shards until not a bit of you will leave the house except what birds can carry in their claws. Oops. Now what?

So there’s a wrong way to deal with archetypes. And it’s the essentializing that is problematic.

What we did there was to look only at what we think are the essential features – the ones that match an archetypal pattern – and overlook the crucial details that make Her who She actually is. We needed to pay attention to the fact that She was standing on one leg and looking through one eye. We needed to pay attention to the names She gave when She introduced Herself – you know, names like “Stormy”, and “Wasteland”, and “Curse”, and “Bitch.” You see, when we are looking for an archetype – when we are looking for what we think can be essentialized instead of dealing with them as a person, we are going to run into problems.

And notice something else. When we do this to people – when we assume that we know someone’s essential character based on certain identified features, it’s called profiling.

Centering the archetype – that is to say, assuming an essential character based on looking only at the Smith’s apron and hammer, or the Crone’s hair and robe, is actually a lot like profiling. It is treating the clothing and accoutrements as if they are determinants of a person’s identity, motivation, and impact.

And we’ve seen the results of this thinking applied to our fellow humans: this is not that far removed from someone who looks at a person wearing a hoody and makes assumptions about their habits or motivations or behavior. Profiling erases a person’s humanity, their individual character, and their agency. To honor their personhood, we have to be willing to look deeper.

I opened by saying that we can’t form relationship to beings while we are misconstruing their identities. We understand this when faced with human-to-human relationships. When we profile, stereotype, misgender, or in other ways mirepresent or dismiss someone’s personhood and identity, we are refusing relationship with them as a person in favor of relating to them as a symbol.

People with visible disabilities will probably recognize what I’m getting at. If you’ve ever spent any part of your life navigating the world in a wheelchair, people probably related to you as Disability; you’ve been archetyped. If you’re a person of color, especially one who favors urban youth culture in your dress habits, people may have related to you as Thug or some other racially essentialized archetype; that’s being profiled. These are examples where a person’s identity is subordinated to what someone thinks they represent. In other words, the reduction of person to the status of symbol.

We know this is dehumanizing. The denial of personhood. It inherently flattens relationships. You cannot form authentic relationship to a someone you cannot see for who they are.

Now, I know this parallel I’m drawing might seem like a stretch to some of you. And arguably, the impacts of things like racial profiling are more manifestly harmful and cause more suffering than the archetyping that I’m comparing it to. But I think the underlying dynamic is very similar and it’s something we need to look at.

We hear this kind of language with reference to the Gods all the time. It’s everyewhere – in books, in blogs, in conversations: people talk about what the Gods “represent”. The Morrígan represents violence. Badb represents death. Goibniu represents skill. You can see how a person’s – in this case a God’s – identity and personhood is reduced to serving as a symbol for a functional category. If we recognize this thinking as dehumanizing to people, why do we feel like it is appropriate for the Gods?

I’m suggesting that if we treat the archetype as primary then we have written the Gods out as agents of their own stories. They become reflections of an image; we have erased their agency. And this brings me to my central message tonight, something which I think is foundational to Polytheism: the agency and therefore the sovereignty of spirits and of Gods.

Now, because the Internet is a place where anything you can imagine is already there, there exists a Tumblr feed called Incorrect Sylvia Plath Quotes where, as the title suggests, people post sayings and falsely attribute them as having been written by Sylvia Plath. So that’s fun. I’m glad we have an Internet, aren’t you?

Anyway, one of the quotes posted there is this one: “Girls are not machines that you put kindness coins into until sex falls out.”

The lovely irony is that this has been shared around on social media absent its original not-a-Sylvia-Plath-quote context, and therefore has now come to be popularly attributed to Sylvia Plath. Because the Internet is also an infinite perpetual-motion bullshit generator.

But that is neither here nor there. My point is, the quote expresses something true and important about gender and sexism: our culture treats women as beings without agency and without sovereignty over their own bodies. It treats women as machines which you can “put kindness coins into until sex falls out.”

Well, you can probably see where I’m going with this. We’re talking about the agency and sovereignty of spirits and Gods. And I’m saying: now that we’re talking about agency, let’s consider the idea that the Gods aren’t divine vending machines that you put devotion coins into until blessings fall out.

Let’s consider the idea that the Gods are persons. Divine, greater-than-human persons, but persons still; who have identities that matter and are not reducible to symbolic status. Persons who do not exist as an extension of us, or for our benefit, but as sovereign agents in their own stories. Persons whose consent, interest and willingness to participate in relationship with us not only matters, but is primary to that relationship.

It is when we recognize these truths about our fellow human beings that we begin to be able to cultivate real relationships. When we care for someone as a person, rather than as a function or a symbol, we seek relationship not for the benefits that we might get, but because we find that person worthy.

So with the Gods: devotional intimacy begins where we step beyond the archetyping, beyond relating to Them as symbols, beyond asking what They “represent”. It begins where we move beyond treating Them as blessing vending machines and begin offering the coin of devotion because of Their inherent worth. It begins where we step beyond commanding and demanding and into celebration of Their sovereign magnficience. Whatever that brings.

Agency is key. To enter into genuine relationship as one being speaking with another is to recognize that that being has its own history, context, and agenda, independent of our own. Polytheism, as a religious practice of relationship, can only begin when we recognize and honor the agency and sovereignty of spiritual beings. Their lives and life force are not ours to command; Their homes, landscapes, gateways, contexts, and histories are not there for our pleasure or even for our teaching. They live in the world as we do, existing for Their own purposes, pursuing Their own destinies, in sovereign relationship to Their landscapes and contexts.

And that bit about relationship to landscape brings me to my next point. You see, I think the 20th century had it backwards in the prevailing view of Gods and archetypes.

In the Jungian school of thinking, we typically see archetypes presented as images animated within the collective consciousness of humankind, reflecting fundamental human experiences. Archetypes are presented in this model as a sort of perennial image or Platonic pure form, which expresses itself through distinct characters in different cultures. So the archetypal Smith exists first as an archetype in the human soul, and is then expressed in the form of different smithing Gods. Because this is a psychological model, it makes the human psyche the origin of the Gods, painting them as images refracted from these perennial archetypes into distinct cultural forms.

But I think it’s the other way round. I think we got it backwards because the 20th century had already forgotten that the Gods are alive.

I think archetypes are better understood as shadows the Gods leave on the landscape of our collective imagination. Something like the way human life leaves an imprint on the physical landscape, the Gods leave imprints in our interior landscape. Both are shadows which record only functions.

Think of it this way: archaeologists might uncover the remnants of a settlement, showing where people slept, where they worked, what they made. Here we can see there was a defensive fortification, the imprint of a ditch and bank. Here, the postholes from an ancient roundhouse. Deposits of animal bone from feasting. Metal scraps and tools from a workshop. Votive treasures sunk beneath the waters of a lake. Grave mounds with their decorated urns and burnt bone.

These are impersonal; they convey functions: protection, social cohesion, food sharing, skill and craft, engagement with the unseen, funerary honoring. But the names, identities and stories of those who walked and lived there are unrecorded. We can’t see who built the rath, who presided in the roundhouse, who cut the boar at the feast, who swung the hammer, who poured the offering, who wept over the grave mound. Those personal story elements are lost.

If sites like these are the physical remnants of human life imprinted in the landscape, archetypes may be the imaginal imprints left by the Gods in our interior psychic landscape. They are the shadows left on the screen, the imprint of memory showing where the Gods have passed, how the psychic landscape of our species was shaped by Their presence.

There’s a delightful episode from Irish myth that I can’t resist sharing here – speaking of the Gods leaving their marks on our landscapes.

So now I’m going to introduce you to the Dagda. He is a chieftain among Gods, huge, and mighty in both form and appetites, a God who practices druidic magic, and hospitality, and warfare. We see Him wearing a short, hooded cape that extends to the hollow of His two elbows. And a brown tunic is on Him underneath that, which is never long enough to cover His manhood. That is to say, the tunic is of ordinary length. The Dagda… Well, He is extraordinary.

And among His extraordinary possessions is this very mighty club. The stories tell that it is as thick and as long as a tree trunk, and it trails behind Him on the ground. It was said that this mighty club of His is so heavy that it was the work of eight men to move it. So, well, we aren’t surprised when His little tunic fails to cover it, are we? The ancient Irish were not shy about bodies, I’ll just say that.

When He drags this club along the ground, it carves a track that is deep enough to make the boundary ditch that marks the border of a province. And a boundary ditch like that is called “The Track of the Dagda’s Club” for that reason.

And so in this story our mighty Dagda is traveling, and dragging His great heavy club. As He goes along He sees a girl in front of Him, a good-looking young woman with an excellent figure, her hair in beautiful tresses. The Dagda desires her.

Now He’s just come from the camp of His enemies, who have tried to trick Him into violating the protocols of hospitality by making Him eat an entire house-sized cauldron of porridge. Did I mention His appetites are mighty? Of course He ate it all. But now, because of His huge, full belly, He is impotent. And so the girl is mocking Him for His impotence, and they get into a fight. And a very bawdy scene unfolds, and she’s beating Him about, and she throws Him so hard He sinks deep into the earth and makes a furrow, and she’s jumping up and down on Him, until His belly finally unloads all that porridge. I’m telling you, the ancient Irish were not shy.

So, well, He has His potency back, and He climbs up out of the furrow, and He picks her up, and now we come to the sexy part. I’m just going to say it one more time – it’s not demure.

He produces three great stones from his pouch. He sets each stone into the ground before her and says, “These are for my penis and testicles.”… Then the story tells “He bared her pubic hair to his vision. Then the Dagda pierced fiercely against his mistress and they made love after that, repeatedly.”

And there resulted from that a great mark in the land at Beltraw Strand where they made love, and a great pool of His semen from this bulling, and it is said that the place is called the Mark of the Axe of the Dagda from this, or the Pool of Semen of the Dagda, depending how you translate the name.

And after this, she asks Him not to go to battle, and of course He insists that he will.

“You will not go,” she says, “because I will become a stone at the mouth of every ford you will cross.”

And the Dagda says “Yes, but you will not keep me from the battle. I will tread heavily on every stone, and the marks of my heel will be carved on those stones forever.”

And she says, “But I will be a giant oak in every ford and blocking every pass that you need to cross.”

And he says, “But I will pass, and the mark of my axe will remain in every oak of every place forever.”

And people have ever since seen the mark of the Dagda’s axe in every oak, and of His footprints on every stone, and the track of His mighty club that carved the landscape. And the furrow where He fell when she threw Him down, and the place where they made love, are forever marked in the landscape.

This story is about a lot of things, but what we’re looking at here is how it’s a story about the landscape being shaped by the Gods. Even when we think the Gods are gone, Their marks on us remain. We ourselves are a map shaped and carved by Their memory.

But, of course, the Gods are not gone. Modernity has just been ignoring Them, or at best reducing Them to symbols representing functions, to archetypes in the human interior landscape. It has been, to return to an earlier metaphor, talking to the blacksmith’s apron and forgetting to ask His name.

But the Gods are still with us. And what I think is most important to grasp is the difference between the static nature of a symbol or an archetpye, and the dynamic, living nature of a God. And the key to this is story. Living beings don’t just exist, they have stories. They have an origin, they come from somewhere in particular, and they experience an arc of change.

Now, when I speak of the Gods having stories, I’m not just talking about Their mythological stories, like the story of the Dagda I just shared. I’m speaking also of Their journeys through history. That is to say, the Gods have multiple levels of story that are interwoven. Because of course, for some Gods, Their mythological stories do include births, life arcs, struggles, and even deaths. For other Gods, Their mythological stories may tell that They have no arc – Their story may be that They are eternal and unchanging.

But all Gods have a historical story. Meaning, Their engagement with humanity – without which we would have no awareness of Them as Gods at all – that engagement with humanity has a story arc. It began somewhere, in a particular place on this planet, in a particular cultural framework, at a particular time in history.

Gods and spirit beings may not be bound in bodies or even in time, but Their stories still emerge from a place and time, and not vaguely from everywhere. They emerge from landscapes, or landscape features in a particular place; or They emerge from beings or populations of beings who lived and died, in a particular ecology or culture. They emerge from cultural flowerings that took place in a particular region at a particular period in history, shaped by the land and the people who named and worshiped Them. This becomes part of who They are, just as the family, landscape, place, and culture that we each grow in is part of who we are.

So: story as an element of the character of the Gods. This is an expansive concept. We begin to recognize that there is so much more to know about the Gods than what They “symbolize” or “represent”. Yes, we can learn Their mythological stories, but we can also come to know Them from Their journeys through history. Where They first came to be known, where They have traveled, who brought Them, where They stayed and found root. How They have been worshiped, what has fed Them in this place and that place. What languages They have heard and learned. Who They have become through these journeys and movements. What relationships with other Gods They have participated in – and how those relationships have shifted within Their stories and in the long arc of history.

It is an expansive concept. You know that feeling where you’re starting to get to know someone, and you realize how much there is to know about them? Like you could sit and talk and listen for weeks and never get enough? When you want to know where they’ve been and what they’ve seen and what they think and feel about this, and that, and everything else?

It happens when we fall in love, and when we discover a new friendship or kinship, and when we get a chance to talk to someone we admire. You know what that is? That’s what happens when we discover someone’s humanity – when their personhood suddenly becomes deeply real to us. Everything about them, every little detail of their being and history begins to matter.

So there’s something else important here. When we recognize the Gods as beings with identities rather than as symbols, expansion happens. When we recognize Them as agents within their own stories, expansion happens. Greater vistas for learning, and greater opportunities for connection and relationship are opening up. New and deeper questions come up faster than we can learn answers. That expansion, that deepening, is an indicator that we are on the track of something important. I often say that if you’re doing your religion right, it should feel like a bottomless well – the deeper you go, the deeper you discover that you can go. That is what happens when we start to recognize the agency and sovereignty of the Gods.

It’s expansive. It goes even deeper. We can look at the story arcs of the Gods engaging with history, but we can simultaneously recognize that They Themselves may not be bound by time – may exist in a non-linear relationship to these historical journeys we are looking at. Thus, it is conceivable that every form and habit and identity that a God may have undergone throughout history could be simultaneously reachable within devotional relationships.

Imagine if you could contact and talk to and get to know someone you love at every age of their life, in every one of the identities they have occupied. Once we recognize evolution and change as possibilities within the stories of the Gods, it becomes possible for us to engage with any part of Them along that story arc.

So this leads to some fascinating questions. We can recognize the Gaulish Gobanno and the Welsh Gofannon and the Irish Goibniu as having interconnected stories – perhaps representing a journey from an origin hearth into new lands along with the movements of Celtic peoples; or perhaps representing a refraction into distinct personalities from an earlier parent divinity, some ancient proto-Celtic smithing God. Similar questions arise in relation to many deities; for example Cathubodua of Gaul and Her cognate, Badb Catha of Ireland.

Now, when faced with these questions and complexities, our temptation may be to essentialize and begin speaking of an archetypal Smith or an archetypal Crow. But the Polytheist’s response is to recognize that whoever that ancestral deity was, They too were a living God with agency within Their own story. And what we are finding is that we can engage with any part of this evolving complex of divinities from ancient past to present day because all of Them exist simultaneously.

So, for example, I can connect devotionally with Cathubodua from Gaul, with Badb Catha from Ireland, and with the ancient proto-Celtic progenitor within whom these distinct identities dissolve in deep time and whose name would have been something like Bodua – She Who Warns. And I can do this without essentializing any of Them to a flat archetype – I can do this while still honoring and engaging with Them as sovereign beings.

We begin to see how deep it can go, and how expansive it can become, when we recognize the Gods as living beings within their own stories. When we recognize their sovereignty.

And there’s something more that arises from that orientation. Because the Gods are alive within Their stories, we ourselves participate in the unfolding of those stories. We participate in the stories of the Gods in our studies of Them. In our asking and our researching where They came from and where They have been, we add to what is known of Them, and we help to shape those narratives. In our devotional cultus, in the knowledge of the Gods that comes through oracular and revelatory work, we contribute to Their stories. In being another of the peoples that have worshiped, fed and sung songs to Them, we become part of Their stories.

This is what comes from engaging with the Gods on this level. This is true relationship. When someone begins to matter to us as a real person within Their own story, we move beyond seeking what we can get from Them. They cease to be a symbol for something or a source of something and instead They become part of our story. We begin seeking to create a story together, a shared future.

Just so, we know we have begun to engage in deep polytheism when we stop asking “What are you here to give me?” and we start asking “How can I serve you?” We stop asking “What lessons are you here to teach me?” and we start asking “What can we do together?”

We need this expansiveness, this depth. Polytheism is experiencing a resurgance, coming back into its own after centuries of erasure. The Gods are alive and inviting us to step forward into relationship, to enter into the creation of shared history. We are being asked to step into deep relationship, into service, as the Gods draw us toward rebuilding devotional cultus.

But this resurgence is taking place surrounded by and embedded in a culture that constantly seeks to deny the Gods can even exist, let alone have agency and impact in the world. To create devotional cultus that serves the Gods and that is built in collaboration with the Gods, we have to have the courage to meet Them eye to eye and say “Yes. I am with you. What can we do together?”

“What can we do together?” This work is itself expansive, and it will depend upon our courage and willingness to go deeper. We need to be willing not only to explore our own visions of what is possible, but bold enough to ask the Gods what Their visions are, what They wish to build and to create, what paths They want to see forged before us. To go beyond the contemplation of symbol and engage with Their personhood. To go beyond transactional devotion and enter into service. To greet the Gods as sovereign beings, and enter into collaboration with Them. To go beyond seeking experiences and attend to building cultus and traditions that support Their presence in our world.

That is what we are here this weekend to do, is it not? We are here to explore that question – what can we do together with the Gods? So let’s go out there and see how deep we can go.

About the Author:

Morpheus Ravenna is a spiritual worker, artist, and writer, residing in the San Francisco Bay area. An initiate of the Anderson Feri tradition of witchcraft, she has studied and practiced devotional polytheism and the magical arts for about twenty years. Her primary spiritual practice is her devotion and dedication to the Morrigan, within the framework of Celtic heroic spirituality. She co-founded the Coru Cathubodua Priesthood, a Pagan devotional priesthood dedicated to the Morrígan, and she authors the Shieldmaiden Blog. Her earlier work at Stone City Pagan Sanctuary helped provide a space for land-based Pagan community in northern California, shown in the 2010 documentary “American Mystic.”

Morpheus makes her living as a tattoo artist, with a passion for ritual tattoos, folk magic, and tattoo design inspired by historical art and ancient civilizations. She recognizes tattooing as an initiatory art. An accomplished artist, she continues to create devotional artworks in a variety of media including oil and watercolor, ink, metalwork, and more. She also practices medieval armored combat in the Society for Creative Anachronism.

Morpheus can be reached through her website at www.bansheearts.com. The Coru Cathubodua Priesthood can be reached at www.corupriesthood.com.

Matters of faith and practice

Hélio in Fleet-Footed

The first words are yours, Janus, burnt on a virtual altar. This column is named in your honor, Mercury, and opened on this first Wednesday of the month. A golden blessing to everyone on this site, residents and visitors. And thank you!

I wanted these to be my first words as a contributor. An opening moment calls for a religious gesture, as do so many instances in life. So here’s to Janus, Mercury, the golden Vanir gods and to Theanos, who invited me to join the many excellent contributors on this site and for which I am grateful and truly honored.

The author

For those of you who don’t know me – and I reckon there’s a lot of you – I am a cultor deorum or Roman polytheist, the kind whose practices are rooted in the past, but not limited to it. This means that while I worship traditional Roman deities in days and ways prescribed by historical tradition, I do not wear a toga, have not chosen a Latin name, don’t even use more than a couple of Latin words in religious ceremonies, my practices are not entirely focused on those of Rome proper and I’m not a member of any modern organization that seeks to reproduce ancient Roman life. And that’s because there’s more than one way to cover your head, your birth name is good enough, I’m native to a language that evolved directly from Latin, there’s more to Roman polytheism than what was done in just one city and you honestly don’t need to live in a replica of the ancient world in order to practice an ancient religion. Otherwise, you might as well claim that in order to be genuine Shintoists, the Japanese must live as their ancestors did in the 8th century, uphold the moral and social codes of the time and do away with modern institutions. Or that a person is only a true Catholic if he/she eats, speaks and dresses like a medieval European and is faithful to an equality medieval Holy See. I know religion, society and politics were deeply intertwined in the ancient world, but society and politics are not static. And neither is religion.

Then and now

It can certainly be traditional and one needs only to turn on the TV or read the newspapers to quickly realize how religious groups are commonly bulwarks of traditionalism. The same is true for Roman polytheism, but in a different way. Back in the old days, it had no moral doctrine, no sacred scriptures full of dos and donts of everyday life or revealed truths to be universally accepted. What values it transmitted were those of society at large, what rules it had referred generally to ritual actions or taboos applicable to the sacred. Philosophy did offer everyday codes of conduct and meanings of life, but while some schools were very popular and even had powerful proponents, none was actually official. Simply put, Roman polytheism lacked a doctrine or a regulated faith on things like the nature of the Gods or the afterlife. This doesn’t mean that it was a religion without belief: on the contrary, it was full of it! So full that there were different schools of thought, interpretations of ritual gestures and various cults to choose from. It was, quite simply, a religion where belief was unregulated and therefore freely agreed with or rejected. There were limits, yes, but generally concerned with civil authority and stability, not religious dogma. You could basically believe in whatever you wanted so as long as you didn’t upset the political and social status quo – which could indeed be highly problematic in some cases. And that’s because what brought this diversity together into one large community were basically two things: what we would call “nationality”, in that you were a Roman polytheist by virtue of being a member of a political, social or family group; and orthopraxy, correct ritual performance as prescribed by tradition. Or as the Romans would put it, as dictated by the mos maiorum, the way of the elders.

As a Roman polytheist, I try to revive this religious system in the modern world. It remains without an orthodoxy, moral doctrine or sacred scriptures, open to people of different philosophical schools or none. As its ancient version, it can acknowledge divine plurality, both within and outside the Roman pantheon, syncretically or not. It is non-exclusive and non-initiatory, an exoteric religion that can be practiced together with other traditions and esoteric cults. And it retains a basic orthopraxy: among other things, I mark the Calends, Nones and Ides of every month with prayers and offerings to deities traditionally assigned to those days; I cover my head when performing a ceremony in Roman rite, offering Janus the first tribute and one of the last to Vesta; celestial and terrestrial deities or divine aspects are generally worshipped during the day, infernal ones during the night; I present traditional offerings, such as salted flour, wine, milk and incense; altars to gods from above are square or rectangular, those to gods from around us are circular, the powers from below receive their offerings in pits.

Of course, today’s world is different from the ancient one, in many ways dramatically so, which produces changes in religious practices. For instance, modern urban housing is normally fire-free, so we have to find creative ways of lighting a properly vented ritual fire or dispose of offerings in a different manner. Animal sacrifice requires skills many of us don’t have and is often subject to modern regulations. Things that were morally acceptable in the past are rejected today and vice-versa, leading to mutations in issues like women’s role in religion, what animals can be sacrificed or the structure of family life and hence domestic worship. Also, there are types of food that weren’t available in the ancient world, but which are common today and may be offered to the Gods, if one can figure out which deity likes what. While tradition is conservative, it is not static and will change in a greater or lesser degree as everything else around it changes.

Another thing that sets today’s world apart from the ancient one is the absence of a direct link between one “national identity” and Roman polytheism. It is no longer tied to a political authority, what was once the Roman empire are now several European, African and Middle Eastern countries, Latin evolved into multiple romance languages and Roman culture morphed into a part of several national cultures as well as the wider western one. There’s no point in pretending this isn’t so or try to turn back the clock. Instead, I embrace those changes and accept that they make Roman polytheism more open, universal, more about free choice and less prone to speeches on racial or ethnic purity (though not entirely free from them). And rather than trying to recreate an anachronic city-State, I simply acknowledge that I’m already native to a land, language and culture that was once a part of the Roman world or descends from it. As do so many others in Europe and beyond. Why should I seek to relive the past if the present is its direct heir and religion is not static? Must Hindus restore ancient Indian kingdoms and societies in order to be actual Hindus? Must the emperor of Japan wield absolute power, the country be ruled by a shogun, Shinto be once more a State religion or samurais regain feudal rights if today’s Shintoists are to be real and genuine? Because if not, then why on earth should you need to use Latin names, elect consuls or organize people according to social strata and tribes of old in order to be a proper Roman polytheist? And how far that’s more of an exercise in re-enactment than actually practicing an old religion in the modern world with all the natural changes that entails?

Mind you, I’m not saying there’s anything wrong with dabbling in a bit of historical re-enactment once in a while. It’s good entertainment, a way to reconnect with your distant roots and even an important work tool – for artists, scholars and experimental archaeologists. But anything beyond that is verging on anachronism, to say the least. You’re not less of an American if you don’t wear 18th century clothing or less of an Icelander if you don’t hold parliament on the rocky grounds of Thingvellir. Similarly, you’re not less of a cultor deorum if you don’t pretend to live in the ancient world. Things change and that includes religion, so rather than trying to be a Roman polytheist in the past, be one in the present! Work with the fact that multiple languages descend directly from Latin, that many countries are predominantly western in culture and that the Roman Republic is one of the distant historical roots of modern democracy. It’s not as if today is totally unrelated with yesterday. And while the world is definitely not the same as it was in past, neither is Japan or India in particular. If Shintoists and Hindus are able to deal with that, why should Roman polytheists need to live in a time capsule?

The many changes that occurred since the 4th century CE, namely the loss of a direct connection with one political institution and national identity, do however have a notorious consequence: they leave orthopraxy as the sole thing that binds cultores deorum together. Which is one of the reasons why I say Roman polytheism is not a “faith”. Allow me to explain.

The issue of faith

I know the word is commonly used as a synonym of religion in the modern English language – e.g. people of all faiths, interfaith, the Christian or Muslim or Buddhist faith – but as I wrote elsewhere several times, that´s the result of over a millennium of monotheistic predominance in religious discourse. It’s something we normally use by default, because everyone else does it and we hear it all the time. And often we don’t realize how nonsensical it is when applied to an orthopraxic, non-orthodox and non-exclusivist polytheistic religion. To the point, Oxford Dictionary, of which I admissibly have an old edition from the 90s but will assume it’s not entirely outdated, defines faith as follows:

1) trust, complete confidence;
2) strong religious belief;
3) a religion.

Regarding the second meaning, understand that I’m not saying that Roman polytheism is an atheistic religion. The fact that it’s no longer tied to a political identity means that its practice is not a mandatory extension of your nationality and therefore, if you’re a cultor or cultrix deorum, it presupposes you have some form of belief in multiple gods. As such, when I say Roman polytheism is not a faith, it isn’t because I don’t have a strong religious belief: I do! But how I see the afterlife and the Gods, what I believe their nature and roles to be, isn’t necessarily shared by fellow Roman polytheists. Again, it’s a religion without orthodoxy, which means faith is unregulated, freely constructed by the individual and therefore diverse. A Platonist, a Stoic, an Epicurean, a Rationalist, a Transcendentalist and a Madhyamika walk into a bar and are asked about the Gods, their nature, identities and how they influence our lives. Their answers won’t be identical and in some cases they’ll even be radically different, yet all of them can be Roman polytheists. Yes, even those who follow eastern or post-classical philosophies. I’m talking about a revived and thus living religion, not a fossilized one. You don’t have to limit yourself to what was available around the Mediterranean up until the 4th century CE.

So it’s not that we, cultores deorum, don’t have a faith – we have many faiths or beliefs inside Roman polytheism. But a group can only be defined as such by those things that are common to all its members. What defines a US citizen? It is not the place of birth or residence, political ideology, religious affiliation or lack of it, native language, ethnicity, clothing or even diet. Those things will characterize different Americans differently, so the only thing that’s common to all and thus defines US nationality is the very status of citizenship. It’s what speaks for the entire group, not just a part of it, and the same applies to religion: Christians have a common credo, a shared faith, as do Muslims; Roman polytheists do not since they have no orthodoxy and therefore no common set of beliefs that can speak for the entire religion. Even do ut des, despite being highly popular, was not and is not a dogma. Epicureans, for instance, would have rejected it while still practicing traditional religion. And yes, Romans believed in Lares, Penates, genii and gods beyond count. But what or who are, for instance, the Lares? Are they local gods, ancestors, spirits of the land, a celestial part of the dead, elevated dead after several reincarnations, the dead intermediate by a celestial Lar? Why is Janus a god of beginnings? Why is Vesta a goddess of the ritual fire? Religious tradition prescribes practices involving certain divine beings, but why and what is the meaning of ritual functions and gestures is up to you. Build your doxa using a philosophy of your choosing, personal experience, UPG or a combination of all three. And because of that freedom, one cultor’s beliefs won’t be identical to another’s.

Now, some of you might ask why can’t Roman polytheism be defined as the faith in the Roman gods, much like Asatru means “faith in the Æsir”? The answer is simple: this is not a zero-sum game! Yes, we believe in the Roman gods and that would do if Roman polytheism, as well as every religious group in the world, was an exclusivist faith with a dogmatic claim to a divine monopoly. A case where only our gods would be true and every other religion rejected their existence, thereby defining us by our exclusive and unique belief in the Roman gods. But, again, Roman polytheism is non-dogmatic, it has no mandatory belief in the sole existence of Latin gods in the likes of the Islamic Shahada. Quite on the contrary, it is a polytheist religion and therefore accepts divine plurality. It also has a very strong tradition of acknowledging the existence of gods from other pantheons, which doesn’t mean every cultor accepts that – unregulated faith has that caveat – but it does mean that a lot of us are universal believers: we believe in all gods, even if only passively so. Furthermore, that’s something we have in common with other polytheists from other traditions: many Hellenic, Celtic, Kemetic, Canaanite or Norse polytheists also believe in each other’s gods or at least do not reject their existence outright. It doesn’t mean they worship all of them, but unlike Christians and Muslims, they make no claim to a divine monopoly. So we’re not alone in our belief in Jupiter or Mars, which means that it fails to be an exclusive and therefore defining feature of the religion.

‘How’ is the answer

Worship provides a better criterion, for despite being universal believers, Roman polytheists are naturally more focused on Roman gods. But while this is a necessary condition, it is not sufficient, because the same deities can be worshipped in different traditions. Consider the following: are wiccans whose practices focus on the Roman gods cultores deorum? Or heathens or Asatruars if their practices focus on Norse gods? No, they’re not. They’re wiccans because they do it the wiccan way. And just to be clear, I’m not saying that’s wrong! The same gods can be worshipped in different fashions and there are plenty of historical examples of that: for instance, Canaanite deities were honored in ancient Egypt, while Epona was given a Roman cult. We’re not all the same and that’s okay. But practice nonetheless distinguishes us, just as it helps distinguishing a Buddhist, a Jain and a Hindu who worship Saraswati – and yes, She has worshippers in all three of those religions. So a wiccan who focuses on Diana and Mars or Freyr and Freya is not a Roman or Norse polytheist. He or she is a wiccan!

If you’re not entirely convinced, you’re probably not alone. We’re used to the idea of religious identity being defined by which gods are believed in or worshipped, because that’s how it goes in monotheistic traditions. It’s a zero-sum game where believing in one deity amounts to rejecting of all others, thus making worship a statement of faith and vice-versa. And because monotheism has been dominant in western religious landscape for over a millennium, it naturally shaped the terminology. But polytheism isn’t monotheism with more gods and divine plurality generates different dynamics. The fact that you worship god Y doesn’t mean you can’t worship goddess X or reject her existence; the fact that one or both of them are honored in a given way doesn’t mean they can’t be worshipped differently by others. So if Roman polytheism isn’t defined by a common and regulated faith, nor solely by which gods are believed in and worshipped, what does make a cultor deorum?

The answer is basic orthopraxy. It’s not just who you worship, but how! What calendar governs your religious practices? What are your monthly and yearly festivities or at least most of them? What ritual frameworks and rules do you use? This is the sort of questions that define a Roman and, I reckon, other types of polytheist. Not faith, which is diverse and non-exclusivist, nor solely which gods make at least most of your usual pantheon. It’s how you do it, it’s practice that defines you. Because in a religion with no zero-sum orthodoxy, no moral doctrine and no longer tied to one state, language or national culture, the only thing that can be common and uniquely characteristic is basic ritual practice as prescribed by historical tradition. Which is why I say Roman polytheism is not “a faith”. Not because it has none, but because it has many! Unregulated, diverse, freely chosen or rejected. And because it is orthopraxy, ritual practice and not belief, that has the potential to speak for the entire religion and thus be a synonym of it.

Now, there are two objections to this, one of which pertains to the first meaning listed above, that of faith as trust and complete confidence. You could argue that while you believe in all the gods, you do not trust, i.e. do not hold bonds of faith with all. But even then, the issue is defined by practice, for if the same gods can be honored in different traditions – as noted above – then the mere existence of confidence is not enough to distinguish a cultor deorum from a wiccan who focuses on Roman deities. Faith as trust is possible in both, yet they’re not the same (and that’s okay!). Again, it is how you do it that distinguishes the two: one marks the Calends, Nones and Ides, honors Janus at the start and Vesta at the end of a ceremony, head covered; the other casts a circle, calls the quarters and celebrates eight yearly festivals. A wiccan, like a cultrix, can trust Diana. It doesn’t mean they follow the same religion.

Freedom

Finally, some may argue that while orthodoxy was not a part of ancient Roman religion, it should be so today. If “nationality” is no longer a defining feature, it should be replaced by basic common beliefs, thereby reinforcing the bond of orthopraxy. And while there’s some sense in that, it’s an opinion I cannot agree with for one simple reason: a person’s consciousnesses is his/her own and no one else’s! This is a lesson Humanity has learned the hard way, as testified by how often history books mention words like “heretic” or “schism” and tell of conflicts that sprang from competing views on matters of faith. Even today, we witness them through the daily news coming out of places like the Middle East. And rather than going down the thorny path of regulating people’s minds and beliefs, I’d argue that we should limit ourselves to regulating a more palpable, physical, visual thing that can work as a low common denominator. Because whatever your religious beliefs are, they’re not hard facts! They’re personal and subjective views, UPG that becomes collective gnosis only when freely experienced, shared or believed in by other individuals. And by the same token, they can also be freely rejected or abandoned. Ultimately, faith relies on one form or another of theological speculation and speculative matters are best left for the individual to decide.

Let me be clear: this doesn’t make yours or anyone else’s beliefs are any less worthy. They’re yours, truly and honestly held by virtue of experiences whose importance in your life I do not reject. But rid yourself of the notion that your ideas are only valid if everyone else agrees with them. Be able to coexist and freely debate theology while resisting the temptation to turn your doxa into an orthodoxy. Be free to build your own beliefs, but award others that same freedom. And let there be union not on speculative matters, but on a set of palpable, physical gestures that are simultaneously common to all members of a given tradition and unique to it.

And no, this doesn’t mean every Roman polytheist worships in the exact same way the exact same gods. Basic orthopraxy is really just that: basic! It’s the shared foundations on which we build our individual, family, local or regional traditions, which can be focused on the city of Rome or on other areas where the pantheon is comprised of other gods besides the ones we normally think of as Roman. And it’s the universal pillars on which we build our communities, groups and cults, which can be more oriented towards this group of deities, that particular philosophical school or those specific traditions. It’s basic ritual unity in multifaceted diversity. And that’s a good thing – rich and inclusive. It emulates and honors to the Gods’ own diversity.

Nantosueltâ

Segomâros Widugeni in Nemeton Segomâros

1. Meaning of Name: Green suggests “Winding River” or “Mandering Brook”.¹ Olmsted suggests “Sun Warmed Valley” or “Who Makes the Valley Bloom”.²
2. Pronunciation: Nun-TAW-swel-taa, with the first “u” sound like in “Gus”.
3. Other Names and Epithets: None.
4. Interpretatio Romana: None.
5. Irish Equivalent: None known.
6. Indo-European Equivalent: None known.
7. Realm: Andernadâ/Underworld Goddess
8. Iconography: Green sees her iconography in terms of a patera, a house on a pole, a raven or other bird, a pot, a cornucopia, and wine barrels.³ Olmsted sees her iconography in similar terms, olla, purse and bird, a house on a pole, raven, and cornucopia
9. Significance: Olmsted sees Nantosueltâ as a Goddess of the Underworld, particularly in its role as a Celtic Elysium, the Otherworld Paradise. My own work with her suggests this role, as well, but also patronage of fertility, wealth, wine, and the kind of wisdom that comes from the Underworld.⁴ Morpheus Ravenna, in The Book of the Great Queen, sees her as a river Goddess associated with fertility, land, wisdom, and funerary qualities, associated with a tribal father-God whose attributes include warlike and sustaining elements.⁵

Year 23 Oracle of Aset, spoken at Aset Luminous, July 2015

Rev. Tamara L. Siuda in Kemet Today

Arise; you have been awakened. Arise; you have been prepared.

You have passed the place of judgment. You have passed the place of ignorance.
You have passed.

The flood rises. The sun rises. A year passes, and a new year is born.

The throne is established. Your foundation is established. This is as I provided for it to be. Do not lament your building, nor long for the joy of that building. That year is not now. That year is placed at the foot of the throne, under the feet of He Who is crowned with the flood and the sun.

His Majesty, Himself, uniter and avenger, shines from the Two Crowns.
His Majesty, Herself, defender and helper, shines from the Two Crowns.
I, Aset, Great of Heka, Mother of God, have established My Son upon His Throne.
His Majesty Who places Ma’at on Her Throne, is placed once more on His throne.
Heru of the Living; Heru, Avenger of His Father;
Heru, the son of Wesir and Aset.

After disorder, there is order. After sadness, there is joy. After violence, there is peace. After work, there is rest. After the year of beginning, there is the year of continuing what you have begun. My Son offers strength and power to those who accept the task.

Zep Tepi sits on the foundation of what was built before. It attains its place in Ma’at, guided by Two Crowns. Strength and power are yours, but you must be worthy of them both. Be worthy, and be given His protection. Dare you attain that which is permitted for you to attain? Or will you sit in your fear and let it pass you? Dare you speak Ma’at where it is needed? Or will you close your mouth and make Her wait?

I say to you that this is the year where you need to be strong, not only for yourselves, but also for those who cannot be strong. Your strength is not only for yourselves. Your weakness is everyone’s weakness. Will you be strong together or will you be weak together? Will you lift each other up or push each other aside? My Son comes with Zep Tepi. He comes to bring you strength and to bring you help, but you will have to use these gifts for them to have any worth at all.

May you use your gifts wisely.

Camulus

Segomâros Widugeni in Nemeton Segomâros

1. Meaning of Name: Olmstead gives us “of conflicts”, and “the warrior”. Green has no suggestions. Mackillop says, “powerful”. None are remotely certain of their etymologies.¹
2. Pronuncation: Kam-UL-us, with the “a” like the “u” in “but”, and the “u” like in “put”.
3. Other Names and Epithets: Very many. Olmstead and Green between then give: Armogios, Cocidios, Caturix, Latobios, Magenios, Marmogius, Medocios, Meduriris, Mogetious, Mogios, Mullo, Nabelcus, Neto, Riocaletis, Rigonemetis, Rudianus, Rudiobus, Segomo, and Sinatis.²
4. Interpretatio Romana: Mars and Mercury.³
5. Irish Equivalent: There are suggestions in obsolete works that Cumhail, the father of Fionn, has a name derived from him. No scholar accepts that today. I personally tend to think that the deeds of warrior heroes such as Cuchulainn might also have some relation, but this is UPG.
6. Indo-European Equivalent: None.
7. Realm: Ueronados/Upper World God
8. Iconography: Green shows that horses, horsemen, and infantry, sometimes with shields, sometimes with severed heads, are associated with several by-names of this God. Mackillop mentions that He is ram-horned.⁴
9. Significance: Kondratiev says of an equivalent of him that “he is the God who sets the boundaries of the civilized world and protects them by force of arms”. Thus he is a God of defense of the tribe, or war, and of warriors. He is also a God of boundaries and borders, and, by this as well as his association with Mars, can be linked to fields, and to agriculture.⁵

Principles of Mythological Hermeneutics (I)

Edward P. Butler in Noēseis

Myths are a vital source of information for us about the attributes and activities of our Gods. We can hardly say that they are mere stories, even if we think that they have something less than the status accorded to the sacred texts of the Abrahamic traditions, for instance. But our traditions are very diverse indeed, and there are texts among some of our traditions that have a status scarcely less than this, at any rate. We, too, are ‘people of the book’—only we have many, many books, as well as oral traditions, and rituals, which are another way of encoding information. Nor do these exhaust the ways in which our traditions are embodied.

Even if we do not accord a status to myths equivalent to that of revealed texts, however, we must recognize that insofar as they are authorless, as is said of the sacred texts of the Hindu tradition (the Sanskrit term is apauruṣeya, literally, ‘impersonal’), they cannot merely be grasped in the same fashion as the work of a single discrete human author, that is, they cannot be approached as mere literature. At a minimum, they are works embodying a collective spirit of devotion to our Gods, a product of generation upon generation of experience of Them, and the infrastructure around which entire civilizations formed themselves. Just by virtue of this infrastructural status, a myth cannot be reduced to a single authoritative interpretation, because it is in the very acts of interpreting and applying myths that these civilizations formed themselves, and every formation, every institution, incorporates such interpretations. So the purpose of such interpretation could never be to reach closure, even if our approach to myth was wholly mundane, for even such a mundane approach would have to recognize the generative nature of interpretation.

A fortiori, then, if as some polytheistic thinkers have affirmed, the myths are the eternal and continuous action of the Gods Themselves forming, not merely culture, civilization, but the very cosmos itself, not once upon a time, but forever now, there could be no question of arriving at a final, authoritative interpretation of a myth because our intellectual and devotional engagement with myths is itself part of the life of the cosmos. In our effort to understand a myth, we close a circuit of divine action, a circuit in which the Gods have sown meaning into the cosmos which fructifies through us, through our recognition and understanding of it, and our application of it to our lives on every plane, devotional, intellectual, ethical, corporeal.

Insofar as myth is not only a token of the Gods’ action constitutive of the cosmos, but also an active and effective instrument in that very process, there not only can be, but must be interpretations of a myth corresponding to every plane of formation of the cosmos. And so the most important principle of mythological hermeneutics is not to use interpretation to foreclose other interpretations, but to stimulate and to foster them, as the best interpretations nourish the possibility of others.

The poorest interpretation, therefore, is not one which reads a myth within a narrow scope, for example, as being the charter for a specific, concrete ritual action, but one which shuts down other interpretations by a harmful literalism. This is particularly harmful when it directly impinges upon the agency of the Gods Themselves, either by reducing them to mere types, on the one hand, or to beings subject to weaknesses that we would regard as flaws even in our fellow mortals. Our fellow mortals suffer from every sort of burden and handicap that excuse to varying degrees their vices, and that make their virtues shine all the brighter in consideration. How strange, indeed, if the Gods, without these handicaps, could not overcome these same vices, and how much worse than ourselves it would render Them. This is why none of our ancient traditions would have accepted the characterization of their Gods as ‘imperfect’ or ‘flawed’.

Where the myths appear to depict the Gods as flawed, therefore, we must understand that there are ways of interpreting these myths that restore to the Gods Their freedom of action. And this, indeed, is how we must see it, because in making the Gods slaves to petty emotions, ¹ we limit Their agency every bit as much as if we regarded Them as mere types or mechanisms. In interpreting Them thus, of course, we do not harm Them, but only ourselves, and those we might persuade to see Them likewise, introducing obstacles into the path of devotion. There is a place for anthropomorphizing the Gods, that is, for seeing Them in our own image, but only insofar as it facilitates Their action on behalf of the cosmos, because otherwise, what is the point of even engaging with Them? Similarly, there is a place for speaking about a God’s ‘role’ or ‘function’, in order to facilitate engagement with Her, especially at its inception, but we must discard these notions to the degree that they would restrict that engagement.

With this primary principle in mind, therefore, that the interpretation of myth has its excellence in facilitating the cosmogonic activity of the Gods Themselves, I would like to briefly present three concrete techniques for mythological exegesis, drawn from the works of the ancient Platonists (notably Olympiodorus) which I intend to follow up in future columns with examples of their application to actual myths. ²

Eternalizing process
The sequence of the mythic narrative is from an apparent ‘earlier’ to an apparent ‘later’ moment in time. In order to free the Gods to be the agents constituting time, rather than subordinating Them to it, we interpret the myth as a static index, not in time or horizontally, as it were, but vertically, between simultaneous states of being.

Equalizing relations
Mythic narrative involves many relations in which one God is active and another is passive. To free the Gods to be the agents constituting these relations, rather than subordinate to them as a preexisting nature, and to be equally constituting agents of those relations, rather than the ‘active’ God being more constitutive than the ‘passive’ God in the mythic conjunction, we interpret every event in the myth as the product of the will of every God.

Conflict as Conflicting Goods
To free the maximum cosmogonic potential of each God, we interpret conflicts between Gods not privatively, as conflicts of good and evil, or between goodness and its lack or absence, but as conflicts between goods which are divergent within the cosmos or for us.

The purpose of these hermeneutic principles is in each case not to deny the reality of the corresponding forms of limitation—limitation by temporal sequence, limitation by relation, limitation by conflict—but precisely to secure the reality of these phenomena by granting them constitution by the Gods Themselves, whereas if we were merely to subject the Gods to these limitations, these limiting factors would themselves lack any clear existential foundation; and it would be this condition that would most likely induce us to regard these phenomena as illusory.