The Trouble With Talking About "Gods"
“If you don't know the kind of person I am
and I don't know the kind of person you are
a pattern that others made may prevail in the world
and following the wrong god home we may miss our star.”
- William Stafford, “A Ritual to Read to Each Other”
“What does your god smell like?”
They are in the wind, and in the scents of woodsmoke and Cottonwood that it carries.
She is in the still waters where, when I gaze long enough, the reflections of the Alders become her green eyes.
He is in the lightning that bridges earth and sky, and his traces are in the ozone that lingers in the air.
Sometimes they are in the chambers of my heart.
Some of them have lived entire lifetimes, or dozens of them, as humans or Cedars or Oaks or Wolves or Whales or Ravens or rivers or stars. Some never have. All of them are shapeshifters, but their essence finds true expression in every form they take.
Some of them are called forests. Some of them are called galaxies. Some are called ancestors or saints.
I call them “gods” and “goddesses” because English does not have better common words for them, nor does the Irish language as we know it now (or in any form it has known since missionaries brought the culture of writing and of to Ireland and Scotland and Mann.) But these words have been strangled and tangled by theologies and ideologies for millennia – and it would take more than one human lifetime to extricate them fully. Nevertheless, there are things that feel worth saying:
- The gods and goddesses I know are not archetypes — they are living intelligences that weave through the fabric of reality.
- The realms these gods and goddesses inhabit — the places some call the Otherworld or the spirit world or the mythic realm — are no less real than the places we call home and are part of the same reality we inhabit. They are no more abstract than the depths of the oceans or the tops of high mountains or the surface of the moon. The fact that most people do not see these places with their own eyes does not make them purely imaginary.
- Whether or not we have ever believed in the God of the Abrahamic religions, few of us are untouched but the assumptions mainline Christian theology has about that being. And the word “god” has a way of activating the assumptions we have passively and unconsciously absorbed from that theology. Almost none of those assumptions apply to the gods and goddesses I know. They are not omnipotent, and except for she whose body is the cosmos and whose mind is the web of filaments of consciousness and sensation that runs through everything, none are omniscient or omnipresent.
- I don’t trust any being who demands that others bow down to them or obey them or believe in them. The gods and goddess I am woven into relation with will not brook disrespect – but the devotion they call forth flows freely and organically.
- We are conditioned by our modern understanding of classical Greek culture to assume that a god or a goddess is the “god of” something — that they preside over a particular aspect of existence, or oversee all who practice a particular art or craft. I have only an intellectual familiarity with the “classical” gods, save for Pan and Artemis and Dionysus whose natures are wilder than those of their kin, so it is not for me to say whether Ares is truly a “God of War” or Aphrodite is truly a “Goddess of Love.” But I can say the gods and goddesses I am in relation with resist this kind of categorization, and so does the living world they and I inhabit. Yes, they each have their own qualities and their own gifts, and many have been called on people (and other beings) for particular kinds of help and guidance and insight for a long time. But I the roles they play in our world are more akin to ecological niches they inhabit than to rulership over certain fiefdoms in some strange cosmic feudal hierarchy.
- Some gods and goddesses are rooted in particular soil, move through particular water, shine through particular stars. Some have long relationships with communities or family lines and an affinity for their customs and rites and languages. But none of them “belong to” anyone. They connect with who they connect with on their own terms.
- I come to know gods and goddesses in the same way that I come to know plants: while the experiences of other people in other times and places guide and inform me in how to approach them with respect and caution. But it is only through what they waken in my body and whisper to my heart that I truly know them.
In the weeks and months to come I hope to share some of my own experiences and understandings of a few of these great beings — revealing just enough to convey a sense of their nature to those who might find kinship with them while keeping certain mysteries and intimate details private. Even this feels like something to allow to emerge gradually and cautiously — so all but the opening paragraphs of these particular writings will be visible on Substack to paid subscribers only, but I will also make each available to those who cannot pay but approach with sincerity by writing to me otherworldwell@gmail.com .
Yes, indeed! we need to talk about the reality of the divinities. I am currently writing about this on my Substack, and the problems that arise when a sense of fantasy enters into our relationship with them - when hubris and New Age assumption try to diminish them.
Another beautiful read from you a chara. I don't know how do you do it, but you always manage to bring up a topic just when my mind is preoccupied with similar thoughts! I feel what you've written here goes together nicely with that quote of yours I've used in my essay on Brigid. The Nature cares little for our brandings and definitions that include words like gods and goddess, with all their linguistic and cultural constraints and limitations... The Nature simply IS.