There are two core ways of approaching the divine from our level of reality.
The first is as a distinct entity or entities that are each unique and embody different types of energy. It is in this understanding of the divine mysteries that we find Ra, Zeus, Odin, the pagan concepts of the Goddess and the God, as well as the Christian God. When we consider the divine as something beyond the everyday or mundane, it doesn't matter which labels or archetypes that we use to understand the deity or deities of our choice. These definitions are simply varying degrees of the same concept - that the divine is embodied by an entity or entities that we can define or describe with varying degrees of success.
Think about that for just a moment. We're not saying that Artemis is the perfect embodiment of goddess energy or that Hermes is the definitive god. What we're saying is that, from our limited perspective and understanding, we can see how these traits are reflective of the larger concept of the divine, even if it's but a single aspect of that divine energy.
Defining the divine in the form of deities is incredibly useful from numerous perspectives. For starters, it personalizes the divine. It allows us to draw strength and comfort from the gods, almost as if they were a pseudo parent. By using their own strengths, weaknesses, talents, experiences as a mirror, we can understand our own processes and accelerate our personal growth. Understanding the divine in this manner also gives us a touchstone when exploring our own personal paths, using the ethics and expectations presented by a particular deity as a guide when developing our own practice.
Let's use the pagan concept of the Goddess as an example. We typically consider her as a threefold deity, as Maiden, Mother, and Crone. Most of us who call upon her typically feel most connected to a particular aspect of her threefold persona, usually the persona we're becoming or the phase that we're currently in. The Mother calls to the mother in us all; the Crone speaks to us as we begin to age or become an elder in our particular Tradition; the Maiden when we're young or when the path is new to us.
Finding Your Own Path
Paganism, especially the way that I teach it, is a very symbolic path. The number three is sacred to the Goddess as she has three faces or phases. The moon, which is also sacred to the Goddess on most pagan paths, has phases that mirror her faces, the new to waxing moon being sacred to the Maiden as life is new and growing in richness, the three days before and after the full moon being sacred to the Mother as they are pregnant and fertile with fullness and light, and the waning moon to new being sacred to the Crone as the energy is mature and fading, reaching the end of its cycle but containing all that it has seen from the beginning of the lunar month.
And this is the key behind this approach to understanding deity. To understand the sacred better, we divide it into male and female, into the God and the Goddess, as that definition reflects the world around us. We don't do this arbitrarily; we choose masculine and feminine deities because that is how we see life reflected in nature and have chosen to use nature as our guide to the divine. And in this approach to deity, it's just that simple. In that single statement, "To understand the sacred better, we divide it into male and female, into the God and the Goddess, as that definition reflects the world around us," we have our theology. Our path becomes one where our statement of belief is, "We see the Divine reflected in Nature and Nature as a reflection of the Divine."
Suddenly a path is born - our path. We decide that the Goddess should represent the stages of life, so she becomes Maiden, Mother, and Crone. She will be feminine energy, an approach Lao Tzu, the author the Tao Te Ching, referred to as "non struggle action." Feminine energy is not inaction, but your personal will in harmony with the flow of Nature. It is action without struggle, without disharmony. And, in our newly framed beliefs, the God represents the remainder of reality. Where she is life, he is death. Where she is harmonious flow, he is the conflict of duality, becoming both Oak King and Holly King. She knows no titles; he wears a crown. He is penetrating action. Her symbol becomes the womb; his the phallus.
And once more, out path deepens. Circular objects, be they drawn in the earth or form by a cup or chalice, become sacred to the Goddess as they remind us of the womb, while phallic shaped objects - the wand, the staff, the athame - become sacred to the God. Her energy is the shield, his is the sword. She is the cauldron, he is the antlers of the stag.
At some point, this process reaches critical mass and reverses back upon itself. Instead of defining what deity is, we use deity to define ourselves. When we first begin to explore paganism, we look to the Maiden to guide us as her energy reflects the newness of our chosen path. As we pass our child-bearing years, we call upon the Crone to guide us, to help us understand the chapters of our life that wait ahead, to give meaning and direction to our latter years. And as we raise children of our own, we call upon the Mother, using her both as an example and as a source of strength, muttering a prayer of, "Goddess help me," under our breath as our child plucks our last remaining nerve. What we once used to understand the divine as it is reflected around us, we now use to understand ourselves.
This approach to deity is extraordinarily useful in approaching our spiritual growth and seeking direction on our paths. We can either choose to explore the concept of deity and create our own definitions of the divine (something I encourage students to do) or we can choose a deity we connect with, study the traits and ethical standards that others have assigned to that god or goddess, and use those parameters as a guide when setting out on our path.
To explore the deities on your own, all you need to do is follow the template established above. Take out a pen and a sheet of paper and write on the first line, "I see the Divine reflected in Nature and Nature as a reflection of the Divine."
On the next line, write, "Nature is..." and finish the question on your own. For instance, you may write, "Nature is all living things." Then you would write finish it by writing, "All living things are Divine."
On the next line you would write, "All living things are animals, birds, trees, and flowers." And then you would write that the divine is all of those things. Suddenly you're creating a path and an understanding of the deities that is all your own. If the divine is all living things, then you’re going to be working with deities that can be found in animals and trees, in birds and in flowers.
All of a sudden, you find yourself needing a notebook. Because the next line is, "Animals are wolves and deer and squirrels" which is complimented by "The Divine is wolves and deer and squirrels." This becomes, "Wolves are..." and you consider the characteristics that you associated not with just wolves, but with Wolf, because the concept is now divine. You'll find yourself with a pantheon of animal teachers, mirrors to use in exploring the patterns of your own psyche and the framework of your spiritual path. In your magick you'll be calling upon the spirit of Hawk to carry your words to the spirit world and Eagle to guard and guide it on its flight. You'll be asking for Deer to give you patience and grace and Bear to give you quiet strength and confidence.
This process can unfold in almost any imaginable way. Perhaps you answered the first question by writing, "Nature is Energy. Energy is Divine." And suddenly you have a pantheon filled with fire gods and goddess, with watery mer and airy sprites and fairies.
If you reach a point where you find yourself stuck, there are two paths to follow. One is to step backwards on your sheet of paper, considering each statement that you wrote until you find the one that rings true and continue on from there. And if you can't continue on, perhaps that is where you should stop for now. The second is to ask yourself, "Is there something above or beyond this concept?" Perhaps you have a Lord and Lady of the Forest that watches over the animals and that you follow as the head of your pantheon. Perhaps there is a sacred flame that embodies all of the energy and your elementals are merely manifestations that have leapt from that flame.
At its very core, paganism is a pantheistic approach to spirituality, embracing many paths and interpretations of deity. What's important is that your understanding of deity is a reflection of your own path, of your own unique expression of the sacred. There is no surer way of doing that than allowing yourself to follow your own heart from the very beginning, either by finding a deity that you strongly connect with or by defining deity as you instinctively understand it to be.
A Second Approach
The second way of approaching the divine is, not as an entity, but as an all encompassing, indefinable something that is, simply, the embodiment of the biggest series of contradictions that we can embrace on this level of reality. It is both empty and full, darkness and light, death and light, movement and stillness. One of my favorite spiritual texts, The Tao Te Ching, describes this concept as follows:
There was something formless and perfect
before the universe was born.
It is serene. Empty.
Solitary. Unchanging.
Infinite. Eternally present.
It is the mother of the universe.
For lack of a better name, I call it the Tao.
It flows through all things,
inside and outside, and returns
to the origin of all things.
The issue with this approach to the divine is that we're incapable of fully embracing the concept on this level of reality. It's extraordinarily challenging to even explain the concept to students. Almost without exception, this is a lesson that you have to grow into, not one that you can read and simply understand without a corresponding epiphany. Offering someone a glimpse of the divine is like explaining music to someone who has been deaf from birth or explaining what really good chocolate tastes like when the person you're describing it to has only tasted bitter foods. Before you can begin to see, even before you can open your eyes, you need to come to the understanding that your eyes are closed. Only then can you open them and begin to explore the landscape around you.
For instance, the divine surpasses all boundaries, meaning that all sorts of things - including the concept of time - are rendered irrelevant when considering divinity. Let's consider things from just that perspective for a moment. We here in the physical realm perceive time as a linear process flowing from one moment to the next, each instant building upon the one that came before. At our fingertips is a great deal of supporting evidence that linear time truly exists. We can point to our parents, our grandparents, and our entire family tree, each generation giving birth to the one before. Surely, with the voices of generations that came before us joining our chorus, we can sing that time is real, that it is a truth we can build our foundation on. After all, mountains rise from the folds of the earth and erode into hills and plains. Acorns sprout and grow first into saplings, then into mighty oak trees. There is a clear, linear process that we can see with our own eyes, one that we can use as a mirror for our own spiritual evolution. Just like the acorn that grows into a mighty oak, so we too, grow and develop. We move first from Maiden to Mother and then from Mother to Crone, the phases of our life mirroring the faces of the Goddess. What could be more divine that honoring the divine by celebrate our connection to Spirit, by honoring each moment in which She has given us breath and He has given us focus and desire?
What we have to understand is that when we chose to incarnate into this lifetime, we accepted certain limitations to how we perceive reality. Without them, it's very difficult to become rooted on this plane. For instance, we chose to accept that there is this concept called linear time that allows us to only live one moment before moving onto the next, each moment of time coming in a precise and understood order. But the Goddess isn't a deity we wait upon while she progresses through her different faces, until everything is aligned just right and we're in the moment where she is presenting the face to us that we need. She is not Maiden one moment and Mother the next and only then becomes Crone. The Goddess is Maiden/Mother/Crone. It's not that she's all of these things simultaneously. She is all of these things, period.
Think about it this way:
Imagine that you find yourself standing in a large chamber, the darkness pushed back by the feeble light of a single small candle. As you stand before its flame, a woman suddenly approaches from out of the shadows, emerging into your pool of illumination. Part of your mind sees her shuffling up with the weight and wisdom of the ages on her shoulders. Part of your mind sees her appear with a bounce in her step, her stride pregnant with the vitality of youth. Part of you sees her walk up, her presence nurturing and strong. It isn't that she is one of these things and then the next - she is all of these and nothing. She is every incarnation of womanhood in every moment. It's in that moment that you realize that not only did you perceive her three faces simultaneously, but you saw millions, if not billions, of permutations of her in the same moment. She was every race of woman that ever lived - and some you aren't sure if they are earlier evolutions of the homo line or if they have yet to exist. She is both human and animal, the protective mother watching over her toddler and the protective mother bear watching over her cub. In that instant, she is everything and nothing, she is complex and incredibly simple, a thousand faces and only one. And rather than being overwhelming, seeing Her gives you an amazing, humbling understanding of who She is. Not who She is and who She was and who She will become, but all of that, wrapped in a single entity.
As pagans, many of are capable of picturing our beloved face of the feminine divine in such a manner. After all, to us the Goddess is the embodiment of feminine energy in all its forms, without limitation or measure. And for those of us who are capable of understanding that concept, that the Goddess is all things feminine, we can also see our boundaries, even if we have yet to learn to see beyond them. After all, She is only the Goddess. She is not also the God. Even when we're capable of grasping all of Her aspects in a single entity, we have still placed limitations on the divine, boundaries that help us understand the wholeness of the Goddess, but do very little to help us understand the God or the fullness of reality.
Tearing Down Boundaries
The first step in approaching those boundaries is fairly simple. Choose a loved one, the first person to enter into your mind. Now imagine that you're standing in that darkened space once more, your entire world illuminated only by the light of a single candle. Imagine that it is your loved one that steps into the candle flame and in that moment, you see them with as many permutations as you saw the Goddess. They are not only young and old and middle-aged, they are not only the embodiment of joy of anger of love of laughter, but they are also all of the men and women in their family tree and all of the men and women who will continue their bloodline.
If you're capable of doing this, you're ready for the next step.
But I'll warn you, you're going to lose most, if not all, of your preconceived ideas if you undertake the next portion of embracing this concept.
Take out a sheet of paper. Make two columns. At the top of the first column, write "God is..." and make a list of everything that you associated with the divine.
When you're done with your list, go to the top of the second column and write, "God is..." and list the opposites to everything that you wrote in the first column.
By its very definition, the divine has to be all-encompassing. Anything that it doesn't embrace is outside of what it is and therefore, by that single defining trait, your definition of the divine isn't big enough. If the divine is light, then it's also dark. If it's joy, then it's also sorrow. If it's "good," then it's also "evil." How can it be all of these things? Finding those answers is the very core of the next portion of your path. There are countless lessons wrapped in simply coming to terms with that single defining trait.
Be prepared, however, for your pantheon and personal beliefs to come crashing down around your ears. One of the tools that I use when introducing this concept to students is to take another religion, one that they're familiar with but have outgrown, and begin to deconstruct it's belief system using the criteria that the divine is all encompassing. Why choose a system of belief that they've already outgrown? For starters, they've already considered it and set it aside as one that isn't right for them, so challenging it's structure is the least vulnerable approach to take when applying this concept. In a sense, you've already both agreed that the religion isn't a good fit for either of you, so you can deconstruct it without stepping on anyone's religious toes. Second, applying this to your current spiritual framework, especially at first, can be tremendously challenging when you do it on your own. When someone else presents those concepts to you before you're ready to explore them on your own, it can trigger a number of subconscious defenses and make the lesson incredibly counterproductive.
Most of the students that I work with, considering that I live in a predominantly Christian country, have been exposed to Christianity at some point, so we often use that as an example. I have nothing but respect for Jesus as a spiritual teacher and I'm very careful to point that out before we wade in.
Right off the bat, by applying the concept of the all encompassing divine, we can completely invalidate the entire framework of modern Christianity, saving souls from Hell. Because, using our two column approach, if we've written that God is "in Heaven" then we immediately have to consider that God is also "in Hell." For Hell to be outside of God's presence means that whoever is in charge of Hell, is equal to God. This isn't a role-playing game where "God" is a Level 20 Deity and "Satan" is only Level 12. This is the fabric of reality. And if God is everything, absolutely everything, we have to embrace the concept that the divine is also things we aren't too fond of.
And typically, the reason why we aren't fond of these things is because they reflect portions of ourselves that we aren't too fond of either.
In our example of God being in Heaven and Hell, there are three possibilities. The first is that if God isn't found in Hell then Satan and Hell are on the same level of divinity as God and Heaven. After all, that would indicate that Satan has complete dominion over an entire plane of reality. (Things get very theologically complicated if you begin to suggest that God created Hell as sort of eternal torture chamber as that really begins to weaken the concept that God is "good.") Second, if God isn't found in Hell then there is no Hell. But if Hell is the reflection of Heaven, then either it exists or our concept of the afterlife as embodied by the concept of Heaven is flawed in the first place. (Perhaps Heaven is a little more intricate than we considered.) Finally there is concept that God actually is found in Hell and that Hell isn't a place of eternal damnation as someone can find God there, meaning that it would be possible to find a spiritual path in the midst of Hell, and the only reason for a spiritual path is to lead one closer to the divine. And if the concept of Christianity is to save souls from Hell, that would imply that even after you're damned, there's still a way out.
I promise that we're not picking on Christianity. I have nothing but respect for any spiritual path that speaks to the needs of its adherents. But this is an example that we can all quickly and easily understand. It should also be apparent how restrictive our understanding of spiritual reality is when we apply the concept of all-encompassing divinity as our guide.
Not needing to assign a personality to deity through this approach allows us to consider that the divine is truly everything. That means that divine is also magick. We can use our two column technique to magick as well. If magick is ceremonial, then it's also freeform. If it requires ritual, then it also can be done without ritual. Each line on our chart gives us a new concept to explore and provides lessons and avenues lost to the rest of the Craft. But what's more is that by applying this concept, we begin to understand how magick works. We can ask ourselves why it works when it's ceremonial and why it works when it's freeform and what each approach brings to the table. By freeing ourselves from the shackles of our preconceptions, we can begin to understand how things really are and greatly enhance the work we do and the growth we experience on our spiritual paths.
This is why I so strongly encourage each student to find their own path, to follow their hearts and find their own way. Each of us is a reflection of Spirit. Each of us represents a valid approach and a valid manifestation of a spiritual path. I honestly feel that I've learned as much from each student that I've worked with and their unique perspective as they have from me. This is also the key difference between a pantheistic religion and a monotheistic religion. To truly embrace a monotheistic perspective, you must believe that your way is right, by definition to the exclusion of all other paths. To truly embrace a pantheistic religion, you must accept that there is validity to every path, even monotheism. This is why I'll state again and again that I have nothing but respect for other spiritual paths, even those that would challenge the validity of my own path. After all, if we use our two column approach to all encompassing divinity, then "God is..." found on a path that believes that all ways are right as well as a path that believes that only their way is right.
What if We're Truly Divine?
A valid argument can be made that by simply embracing a position where the divine encompasses everything, that we would quickly devolve into a chaos of spiritual inactivity. I couldn't agree more. If the divine is truly everything, then anything and everything we do is sacred as it's also a reflection of that same embracing divinity. So why do anything? Or why take responsibility for our actions?
Using the two column approach, if we write down, "God is everything" then we also need to write "God is nothing." If we write "God is not me" then we must also write, "I am God."
And that's where true spirituality comes streaming through. Because if we are truly divine, if we are all God, then two things become immediately apparent.
First of all, to understand God, we need to understand our true nature. We need to delve deep within ourselves and learn to accept all of the parts of our soul, of our history, of our responses, of our darkness and light. To truly accept something, we must learn to forgive and love those things. If we're a recovering drug addict, we don't learn to love the addiction, but we learn to love the addict, the flawed human being that had the need that drove them to that point. Love breeds forgiveness. Forgiveness leads to compassion. compassion turns to love. What we learn and apply to our own inner landscape is what we reflect to the world around us. When we see another person who reflects traits of our own that we had to learn to love, our first response isn't anger or fearfulness, it's love and compassion. When we begin to reflect that love and compassion, we find that others do the same. That is an effective spiritual path.
Second, if we are truly divine, then nothing is outside of the realm of possibility. Magick works. Miracles happen. Our path can take us anywhere we can imagine and will frequently lead us places that surprise us as we didn't realize that the world could be that mystical. It's at this point where we finally begin to open our eyes and truly see. It's a little mind-blowing at first but, trust me, it's some pretty exciting stuff.
That is the reality we live in.
Only it's infinitely more complex than we are capable of grasping.
You begin to see why we chose to accept certain limitations when we came into this lifetime. It suddenly makes sense why we would hold onto a concept as simple as linear time, experiencing one moment as it flows into the next, choosing to perceive life as a sequence of events that lead one from another.
But to really begin to work magick, to really approach the face of the divine, we need to begin a process of letting go of the very limitations we chose to accept.
And you're already taking the steps to do exactly that.