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What is deity and how do we relate to it? How do we work with and approach it? As I've written my system, I've been charmed to discover/imagine layers and underlayers which echo and mimick the complexity of real world deities - so I want to write about this.
Deities can be metaphors.
Deities can be story characters.
Deities can be gods who are worshipped
Deities can be mystery figures
Deities can be technical symbolic tools
Deities can be re appropriated
Deties can be reinterpreted
Deities can be sentimental characters
Deities can be mythic figures
Deities can be ancient and wordless
Deities can be local
Deities can be syncretised
Deities can be hidden behind other figures
Deities are influenced by weather, time, tide, and events
Most deities spend some time as all of the above. There are probably categories I forgot.
When we begin Pagan things, we usually find a list saying so and so is the god of X, whereas in reality they're usually far fuzzier, immense, fathom less and powerful, and spiral out of focus the more you look at them. So each of my deities ive invented/discovered have gradually gone through these phases and richened my understanding.
Myths are stories created in the context of religion: they are educational, moral, part of liturgy, holy books, prayer books, and so forth. We don't have many genuine myths - too few were written down. However, we might take the Hesiodic Hymns or the Voluspa etc as genuinely sacred, divine texts. Myths are allegorical - we are supposed to meditate on them. They are frequently dense with allusion and imagery, gaining their power through repetition, or hearing it once a year as part of a mythic cycle or mystery play. Myths are ancient. Myths are as close as we get to hearing the voice of god.
---An example of a story is Ovid's Metamorphoses. It always surprised me as a classics kid that Ovid would just make up stories about the gods. Isn't that kinda hieretical? It surprised me to learn that Ovid could write about the gods as stock characters, and that was *separate* from sacred texts, prayers, Bible stories, and so forth.
A story is also different from a mythic retelling - the former is for entertainment, skill, the pleasure of reading or writing; the latter is mystical, a spiritual act maybe divinely inspired, or intended to inspire the listener. Gods in stories are slightly askew from their divine manifestation: they can be mocked, or made to look ridiculous, while still having their traditional characteristics. I don't expect Ovid was an atheist, but nor do I think he expected to be struck down by the mighty ones for his retellings. Ovid bases his stories off real myths - but he introduces his own touch - and the objective is for us to enjoy his delightful poetry, rather than getting ourselves to church.
All deities travel both forwards and backwards from this point.
Demeter is a key figure in the Eleusinian Mysteries: she is a mystery figure. All gods are. When you've done deity work for long enough, you'll realise the core god is a sort of invitation, door, or knocking process through which you can approach the divine. The divine is...not human. It is not a mother who was sad when her daughter was abducted. It's a GOD. It's profoundly Other. The myth of Zeus and Semele is instructive here, in which Zeus put on a safe face to approach Semele with - when she demanded he remove it, she was burnt to a crisp.
Deity work is multi-stage, and multi-faceted. It's ok to move forwards and backwards through this door, because true intense deity work is tiring and terrifying and not something you want to do every day - just light your candle, say a prayer, and imagine a comforting woman with wheat-gold hair. As a new worshipper, don't expect the insane stuff, because that comes with time and personal reflection - one finds ones own way back.
Deities are very old, rather like language. Linguists imagine a language called Indo-European, an unrecorded language which we have found our way back to because we know how languages later developed. These are the ancient gods. These are further back, both in time and distance from man's perception, yet again. In Neopaganism, here is where you get things like "the primal mother goddess" or "most ancient lord of the hunt". When you first become a Pagan, these seem a little wanky. When you do enough deity work, however, it's like reaching upwards to something indifinable - or plunging the depths but always being yanked awake when it's at the touch of your fingertips.
Fencraft is super influenced by Lovecraft, incidentally, and the notion of the Great Old Ones. The most ancient form of the gods is wordless, unable to speak any language we know, occasionally telepathic, more like an experience than a person; they are profoundly alien and strange. The great bear goddess of our ancestors is immense. She is land and sky. She cannot be reduced. The further back we look at the gods, the larger and more diffuse they come: they exist in tongues we cannot speak, and embody concepts we cannot understand, and a profundity of awe and terror we ought not touch.
Notice how we travel back in time, from written texts to the wordless ones; and we travel from the respectable state manifestations of the divine, to the primal, ecstatic, directly experiential ones; from recorded to unrecorded; from benign and straightforwardly defined entities, to things profoundly beyond our understanding or capacity.
(Incidentally, in Fencraft, Core Gods are Solar: associated with state religion, moderately safe, a friend to man. Mystery figures are Lunar: requiring private, interior work, reflection, secret processes and passwords. Old Ones are stellar: experiential, wordless, terrifiying, awesome, alien)
The god of the old religion is the devil of the new. Deities are reappropriated by new cultures as they travel. Sometimes, this is a blending or beneficial process - for example, Athena as Sulis of Bath, or Isis-Athena-Aphrodite-Innana-Ishtar, the great engulfer of identities. Sometimes, this process is negative - for example, the Sumerian gods becomeing the villains of Christianity.
Deities are often metaphors or explanations. This is rather cold, but we see it a lot in Renaissance works and later Victorian uses of the divine: using the ancient gods of Victory or the scientist Hermes in their artwork, statues, writing, and philosophy, even though these people did not literally believe in or worship these gods. At Kew, there is a Georgian temple to Belonna to celebrate the end of war. It was built by a Christian, who felt safe to use Belonna as a kind of signifier without any heretical implications.
The final stage of the process is turning the divine into a kind of technical tool. You see this a lot in Ceremonial Magic - for example, if Thoth guards a gate, or the first degree is about meditating on Isis, Osiris and Horus. These figures are certainly informed by their traditional role, and their symbols, lore and offerings are usually drawn from the myths. Still, there's usually something clever clever about it, and they are not worshipped - they might be invoked, compelled, imagined, used as a kind of hat, used in a single ritual, but not treated like an important and essential part of the spiritual cosmos. On Tumblr, when you see a Valentine's day spell with [insert random Goddess], used as a one-and-done correspondence for ritual, this is the technical tool approach.
A lot of conflict about Paganism exists right here. Polytheists, who typically revere Core Gods and Mystery Gods, get wound up by people using them as Technical Tools. A lot of people aspire to worshipping Mystery and Old Gods, without really knowing how to get there: I think a lot of cultural appropriation of African Diaspora and Native American traditions is driven by the way these paths seem to be more mystery-exstatic-strange out of the box, compared to how bloody dull and flattened Core Gods have been by countless drab children's retellings. I think it helps to think about Core Gods as a starting point, a door through which Mystery comes, instead of a fully explored and mapped end-point.
This map is also super helpful for mapping out new gods you don't know much about, or who seem somehow unfinished. I have a deep love for the Lightbringer, who primarily exists as technical tool and reappropriation: he is hermetic, Luciferian, gnosis, enlightenment. I know where he exists in his most modern forms - the way he is a metaphor for certain kinds of curiousity and rebellion, the way he is used in ceremonial paths as the embodiment of questioning and doubt. I also know where he exists in as reappropriations: the modern positive image of a humanitarian, secular, anti-orthodoxy icon, and then the older figure of Lucifer the evil angel, the devil, the figure of sin. What I didn't at first have access to was an older god. Who was he before Christianity? What role did he play in State Religion as a Core God? What is his Mystery form? And what, as far as I can tell, is his most ancient form? He's clearly a trickster, chaos, or tipsy turvy god. Perhaps he participates in myths with the Sun King, supporting or rebelling against him in circles and cycles. Older than that, the lord of the craft and the forge. Older than that, perhaps the sun, perhaps pure chaos, perhaps pure creation? NOW I have a god.
Whether you're inventing someone new, or using an existant deity figure, this map can help figure out what you're "missing", and develop something more layered.
The Gods through Place and Culture
The era of Core Gods is echoed by the concept of State gods. This is the most popular, essential, and officially sanctioned form of the divine - usually celebrated in the main city, by the king or priesthood, by most of the people, in pretty much the same way. The opposite is Local gods - a weird, ideosyncratic variant of the deity that retains some of its State functions, but which has been adapted to local needs, and has developed its own lore and traditions in a little area. A cult, or a group of particular devotees, can usually be understood as local variants. In Fencraft, it has helped a lot for each of the divines to ask "and how was this god worshipped by the common folk, of the fields of the fens?" - because some change entirely, and others increase or diminish in importance. I also have a coastal variant - the young king is, in fact, a young sailor, who woos the fairy of the sea (not the rivers) to show him not agriculture but how to fish. This offers you other images to play with and to approach the divine through.
Most religions include personal gods: familiars, guardian angels, the Lares of the family, the ancestors etc. In this category, we can also celebrate the extremely ideosyncratic personal interpretations of the divine, like Aradia mistress of the inter-web.
Pagans use the term syncretism a lot, to describe two gods who have "blended" at some point in their history - like Isis-Athene-Inanna, or many Kemetic gods. I was both maddened and delighted to discover this happen in Fencraft, as it's messy. But I increasingly appreciate it, because the peculiarity makes a faith feel alive. Use syncretism: keep your gods open, not fixed. Mars was god of war, and also? Agriculture. Approaching each face, or trying to keep both in mind, is a form of Mystery work. It prevents gods becoming static, dead, unsurprising things.
Hidden gods are related to both syncretism and localism. These are non-religious stories which, you gradually surmise, are in fact faces of the divine. The welsh pantheon is built on this desperately hopeful desire that the Mabinogion can somehow be unlocked, to rediscover our lost gods. Hidden gods are also inherent in pop-culture paganism: my religious work includes both Robin Hood, and little Red Riding Hood, and Labyrinth.
Similarly, use Epithets. Give your deities ritual titles based on their diverse attributes: Mars Bringer of War is a different aspect to Mars Lord of the Plough, so develop these as if they were two different images, with diffierent ritual days, forms and so on.
One of my first steps in Fencraft was to start using the (unwise) terms Greater and Lesser to try and pin down the distinction between, say, the mighty wordless god of the fog, with the anthropomorphic flower fairy at the end of my street. The terms tried to gesture towards a similar thing as the gap between an Old God and a Technical God, how one could appear exactly like a person (albeit one with great power), and another like a kind of alien entity. This is another scale single gods can travel up and down - for example, a tree nymph who appears somewhat like a person, who you can date or make deals with or dance with, is in some way an lesser aspect of the Forest, and of the Eternal Spirit Of All Trees. It's a bit like if you wrote to the Queen, and received a reply from her secretary. Now pay attention: this is not the same as slowly piercing the Mystery behind a Core god. This is more like appreciating the whole through its smaller parts. It's also about the way we worship. We would relate to the Hunter God of the Woodlands in a different way to the Fairy Prince of the Woodland Hunt. The former is Greater - a bit more shapeless, a bit more essential - and the latter is Lesser - a bit more specific, embodied, physical.
I also use the related term In Retinue, to describe gods - especially lesser gods - turning up as part of a gaggle. For example, the Queen of the Witches is accompanied by a spirit coven. The Queen of the Fairies is followed by her court. I once read an article called "there are no starter demons"; but working with a retinue allows you to do something similar. Imagining and approaching an entity's underlings is a way to work with a tiny aspect of them, something less scary and immense, something more anthropomorphic and easy to get your head around; something of a similar power level to you, and which might be more inclinded to ally with you. Even as an imaginative exercise, working with the Fairy Librarian or Fairy Gatekeeper are ways to practice and attune what you're doing to create opportnities for genuine connection.
Another one underpinning Fencraft is fairies, ancestors, dead, demons, or gods. Most of our spirits have been all five. It's another way to telescope your view of the divine backwards and forwards, approaching the same concept-figure-entity down different roads and by different paragdims - perhaps discovering something new about them. This is a particularly British approach to divinity, as we have lost our gods - and thus, they've been half-remembered as all sorts of things. You may have to adjust this to your local context. I also find this is an easy way to start working with Powers if you're leery about the implications of "god". A mighty ancestor, or a fairy prince, are far more comforting aspects of divinity if you have bad associations with the divine. They also carry their own flavour: gods tend to embody what they are, whereas an ancestor has a kind of vested interest in their decendents, and fairies exist for their own delight (as should we all)
Finally, we have influenced gods. This one is also essential to Fencraft, but implicit in many other traditions too. Our divinities are different at different times of day and year, changed by events or as locations are made and unmade, and even by the weather. If you revere Poseidon, consider there may be one aspect of Poseidon of the deep black sea, and another of the waves; one for the storm, one for the calm; one of rockpools; one of whales; one who is a friend to sailors, another of sea-birds. Each of these concepts sparks different mental images and associations, each of which you can fold back into practice. A divinity of the local area is going to be impacted by pollution, building, the people there, the seasons passing, and could even be destroyed. i have a very strong sense that there is, in fact, but one fairy court - the Seelie and the Unseelie are each others' strange mirrors, slowly changing as the seasons and phases influence them.
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OK, So what is the point?
Thanks for reading so far.
Deity work is a kind of walking; you're trying to find ways to think about them, do things for them, and fold them into your understanding of the world so that as you exist and look around, you see their fingerprints and motions laid above it.
I always sucked at doing religion, and never thought I'd be doing god work. lo! Now I have like 14 of them. These are all the techniques I've used to keep them fresh and alive, never something static, firm or fixed.
It's also a kind of active playfulness. A way to keep them in mind. Imagining a god as a fairy variant, or as a coastal version, or wondering what a more ancient image of them would be like; freeing yourself to write story (not myth), or explore your reinterpretation (knowing your true gods are safely stored within myth) means more time spent meditating on their qualities and virtues, and inviting them into your space, and making openings where something profound may spill through. "I worship Ameratsu - let's reimagine her as a contemporary pop star" is a daft creative act, but also one which you spend contemplating her.
This kind of thing is essential to Fencraft, because our core maxim is "England has forgotten its gods" - our work is to rediscover them, so this kind of playful creative meandering is core to our work. We can't just pick up a holy book - we must write it. But this is true for a LOT of ancient traditions, and solitary workers, who do not immediately have expertise to tap into or traditions to follow. Traditional organised religions, you can just pick up and go: you don't need to generate your own depth because like frickin Michaelangelo and Handel are doing that for you. I think one of the big failings of Paganism as a new Pagan is how shallow and empty it is, without there being any real maps or guidelines to how you take these dry and dusty "Odin: god of war and magic and the hanged" and transform it into genuine experiences with the divine.
I also find that breaking stuff down allows me to experience and imagine far more vividly. Like, Poseidon Lord of the Deep Dark is different from Poseidon Lord of the Seagulls - you'd draw them differently as character art, you'd create different songs and sonic landscapes for him, you'd consider different offerings and altar symbols, you'd approach them for different purposes. This leads to more active, vivid, vital ritual work than trying to invoke just "Poseidon", who's a bit of an empty lump conceptually. Poseidon is like, the sea. Sea shanties? Wave sounds? Whereas the Deep Dark is - then you're onto mechanical ambient, pings, ink, fairylights in the black, algies, floruescence, etc etc etc. Whereas the Seagull is soaring, wave-crests, horses, feathers, probably a younger man, maybe a chariot, the colours white and black and blues, maybe some kind of horn or call, a soggy paper packet of chips on the altar table...
Deities can be metaphors.
Deities can be story characters.
Deities can be gods who are worshipped
Deities can be mystery figures
Deities can be technical symbolic tools
Deities can be re appropriated
Deties can be reinterpreted
Deities can be sentimental characters
Deities can be mythic figures
Deities can be ancient and wordless
Deities can be local
Deities can be syncretised
Deities can be hidden behind other figures
Deities are influenced by weather, time, tide, and events
Most deities spend some time as all of the above. There are probably categories I forgot.
When we begin Pagan things, we usually find a list saying so and so is the god of X, whereas in reality they're usually far fuzzier, immense, fathom less and powerful, and spiral out of focus the more you look at them. So each of my deities ive invented/discovered have gradually gone through these phases and richened my understanding.
Stories We Tell
Mythic, story characters, sentimental characters, reinterpretions
Mythic, story characters, sentimental characters, reinterpretions
Myths are stories created in the context of religion: they are educational, moral, part of liturgy, holy books, prayer books, and so forth. We don't have many genuine myths - too few were written down. However, we might take the Hesiodic Hymns or the Voluspa etc as genuinely sacred, divine texts. Myths are allegorical - we are supposed to meditate on them. They are frequently dense with allusion and imagery, gaining their power through repetition, or hearing it once a year as part of a mythic cycle or mystery play. Myths are ancient. Myths are as close as we get to hearing the voice of god.
---
A story is also different from a mythic retelling - the former is for entertainment, skill, the pleasure of reading or writing; the latter is mystical, a spiritual act maybe divinely inspired, or intended to inspire the listener. Gods in stories are slightly askew from their divine manifestation: they can be mocked, or made to look ridiculous, while still having their traditional characteristics. I don't expect Ovid was an atheist, but nor do I think he expected to be struck down by the mighty ones for his retellings. Ovid bases his stories off real myths - but he introduces his own touch - and the objective is for us to enjoy his delightful poetry, rather than getting ourselves to church.
---------
I have started using the term sentimental to describe much later stories about a deity. For example, a lot of stories about the devil being tricked - and tearing his beard and vanishing up the chimney - are Victorian and clearly distinct from Bible stories about the Devil, or devil-lore from the era where the whiff devil worship would get you killed.
Sentimental stories feel historic - but are not. They are old, but not old enough. There is a heavy degree of separation between the author and the subject, often a rather patronising one. Sentimental characterisation is often folded into our cultural understanding of a thing, because it's so old, and thus we can use it if we're OK with pop culture - but it's still not actually a thing. Anything the Victorians wrote about pretty flower fairies, for example. Sentimental is shameless about inventing stuff, and also shameless about supplanting or hiding the original historic texts: Ovid's cleverness is, in part, because his audience know the original tales and appreciate his wry twists on them.
Margaret Murray and Robert Graves may both be included in the sentimental category: their imaginary versions of an all-powerful goddess or an international witch cult are bollocks, but appealing bollocks; and as they were writing 100 years ago, and were super influential on our culture, they have developed their own weight and importance. It's different from something genuinely old, and yet we can't discount it either.
In Fencraft, we have a myth of a Young King in the spring wooing a fairy bride to pacify the weather so that crops might grow. After a while, I developed a paralell myth of the older Holly King meeting the Witch of Winter. The former feels ancient to me; the latter feels like a sentimental variant, which would have looked lovely in an Arthur Rackham illustration, but probably not something the ancient Britons would have revered. But it's still cool so I use it.
Sentimental stories feel historic - but are not. They are old, but not old enough. There is a heavy degree of separation between the author and the subject, often a rather patronising one. Sentimental characterisation is often folded into our cultural understanding of a thing, because it's so old, and thus we can use it if we're OK with pop culture - but it's still not actually a thing. Anything the Victorians wrote about pretty flower fairies, for example. Sentimental is shameless about inventing stuff, and also shameless about supplanting or hiding the original historic texts: Ovid's cleverness is, in part, because his audience know the original tales and appreciate his wry twists on them.
Margaret Murray and Robert Graves may both be included in the sentimental category: their imaginary versions of an all-powerful goddess or an international witch cult are bollocks, but appealing bollocks; and as they were writing 100 years ago, and were super influential on our culture, they have developed their own weight and importance. It's different from something genuinely old, and yet we can't discount it either.
In Fencraft, we have a myth of a Young King in the spring wooing a fairy bride to pacify the weather so that crops might grow. After a while, I developed a paralell myth of the older Holly King meeting the Witch of Winter. The former feels ancient to me; the latter feels like a sentimental variant, which would have looked lovely in an Arthur Rackham illustration, but probably not something the ancient Britons would have revered. But it's still cool so I use it.
----
The third category is the most modern: the reinterpretation. This is best personified by Persephone. Is she a rape survivor? Can we tell her story to be somehow About Women? How can we revere any of the ancient Greek gods, seeing as they're all goddamn rapists?
Reinterpretations start with us: our needs, our viewpoint. We then project that onto the gods, and find it pleasing. Reinterpretations can be purely literary or political. They can also be spiritual, for example, the enduring appeal of Diana as an asexual or lesbian goddess. Reinterpretation is primarily rooted in what we need from a deity, rather than what that deity originally was - and this is OK. Kieron Gillen's Wicked + the Divine, which depicts the gods reincarnating as teenage pop stars, is epic and informs my practice - but it is a reinterpretation.
Reinterpretations start with us: our needs, our viewpoint. We then project that onto the gods, and find it pleasing. Reinterpretations can be purely literary or political. They can also be spiritual, for example, the enduring appeal of Diana as an asexual or lesbian goddess. Reinterpretation is primarily rooted in what we need from a deity, rather than what that deity originally was - and this is OK. Kieron Gillen's Wicked + the Divine, which depicts the gods reincarnating as teenage pop stars, is epic and informs my practice - but it is a reinterpretation.
----
It goes without saying that all four are rich sources for working with deity through. They're angles, lenses, paths. None are straight ways. And I think they carry different weight - true myth is deep, but also difficult; reinterpretation is shallow, but often fiercely held and essential to the individual.
I've found this map essential for developing my deities. For example, a figure like the Sun King is so patriachal - it helps to view this as the "reinterpretation" stage, the response I'm having as a modern person to this state-father-unity figure. I can then work my way backwards imagining "what if this was a layer, and something else was beneath it?" towards how he might have originally been concieved by the ancients.
I've found this map essential for developing my deities. For example, a figure like the Sun King is so patriachal - it helps to view this as the "reinterpretation" stage, the response I'm having as a modern person to this state-father-unity figure. I can then work my way backwards imagining "what if this was a layer, and something else was beneath it?" towards how he might have originally been concieved by the ancients.
The Gods Through Time
- Deities can be ancient and wordless
- Deities can be mystery figures
- Deities can be gods who are worshipped
- Deities can be re appropriated
- Deities can be technical symbolic tools
- Deities can be metaphors.
All deities travel both forwards and backwards from this point.
---
Demeter is a key figure in the Eleusinian Mysteries: she is a mystery figure. All gods are. When you've done deity work for long enough, you'll realise the core god is a sort of invitation, door, or knocking process through which you can approach the divine. The divine is...not human. It is not a mother who was sad when her daughter was abducted. It's a GOD. It's profoundly Other. The myth of Zeus and Semele is instructive here, in which Zeus put on a safe face to approach Semele with - when she demanded he remove it, she was burnt to a crisp.
Deity work is multi-stage, and multi-faceted. It's ok to move forwards and backwards through this door, because true intense deity work is tiring and terrifying and not something you want to do every day - just light your candle, say a prayer, and imagine a comforting woman with wheat-gold hair. As a new worshipper, don't expect the insane stuff, because that comes with time and personal reflection - one finds ones own way back.
---
Deities are very old, rather like language. Linguists imagine a language called Indo-European, an unrecorded language which we have found our way back to because we know how languages later developed. These are the ancient gods. These are further back, both in time and distance from man's perception, yet again. In Neopaganism, here is where you get things like "the primal mother goddess" or "most ancient lord of the hunt". When you first become a Pagan, these seem a little wanky. When you do enough deity work, however, it's like reaching upwards to something indifinable - or plunging the depths but always being yanked awake when it's at the touch of your fingertips.
Fencraft is super influenced by Lovecraft, incidentally, and the notion of the Great Old Ones. The most ancient form of the gods is wordless, unable to speak any language we know, occasionally telepathic, more like an experience than a person; they are profoundly alien and strange. The great bear goddess of our ancestors is immense. She is land and sky. She cannot be reduced. The further back we look at the gods, the larger and more diffuse they come: they exist in tongues we cannot speak, and embody concepts we cannot understand, and a profundity of awe and terror we ought not touch.
Notice how we travel back in time, from written texts to the wordless ones; and we travel from the respectable state manifestations of the divine, to the primal, ecstatic, directly experiential ones; from recorded to unrecorded; from benign and straightforwardly defined entities, to things profoundly beyond our understanding or capacity.
(Incidentally, in Fencraft, Core Gods are Solar: associated with state religion, moderately safe, a friend to man. Mystery figures are Lunar: requiring private, interior work, reflection, secret processes and passwords. Old Ones are stellar: experiential, wordless, terrifiying, awesome, alien)
---
Let us now move forward in time.The god of the old religion is the devil of the new. Deities are reappropriated by new cultures as they travel. Sometimes, this is a blending or beneficial process - for example, Athena as Sulis of Bath, or Isis-Athena-Aphrodite-Innana-Ishtar, the great engulfer of identities. Sometimes, this process is negative - for example, the Sumerian gods becomeing the villains of Christianity.
Deities are often metaphors or explanations. This is rather cold, but we see it a lot in Renaissance works and later Victorian uses of the divine: using the ancient gods of Victory or the scientist Hermes in their artwork, statues, writing, and philosophy, even though these people did not literally believe in or worship these gods. At Kew, there is a Georgian temple to Belonna to celebrate the end of war. It was built by a Christian, who felt safe to use Belonna as a kind of signifier without any heretical implications.
The final stage of the process is turning the divine into a kind of technical tool. You see this a lot in Ceremonial Magic - for example, if Thoth guards a gate, or the first degree is about meditating on Isis, Osiris and Horus. These figures are certainly informed by their traditional role, and their symbols, lore and offerings are usually drawn from the myths. Still, there's usually something clever clever about it, and they are not worshipped - they might be invoked, compelled, imagined, used as a kind of hat, used in a single ritual, but not treated like an important and essential part of the spiritual cosmos. On Tumblr, when you see a Valentine's day spell with [insert random Goddess], used as a one-and-done correspondence for ritual, this is the technical tool approach.
---
A lot of conflict about Paganism exists right here. Polytheists, who typically revere Core Gods and Mystery Gods, get wound up by people using them as Technical Tools. A lot of people aspire to worshipping Mystery and Old Gods, without really knowing how to get there: I think a lot of cultural appropriation of African Diaspora and Native American traditions is driven by the way these paths seem to be more mystery-exstatic-strange out of the box, compared to how bloody dull and flattened Core Gods have been by countless drab children's retellings. I think it helps to think about Core Gods as a starting point, a door through which Mystery comes, instead of a fully explored and mapped end-point.
This map is also super helpful for mapping out new gods you don't know much about, or who seem somehow unfinished. I have a deep love for the Lightbringer, who primarily exists as technical tool and reappropriation: he is hermetic, Luciferian, gnosis, enlightenment. I know where he exists in his most modern forms - the way he is a metaphor for certain kinds of curiousity and rebellion, the way he is used in ceremonial paths as the embodiment of questioning and doubt. I also know where he exists in as reappropriations: the modern positive image of a humanitarian, secular, anti-orthodoxy icon, and then the older figure of Lucifer the evil angel, the devil, the figure of sin. What I didn't at first have access to was an older god. Who was he before Christianity? What role did he play in State Religion as a Core God? What is his Mystery form? And what, as far as I can tell, is his most ancient form? He's clearly a trickster, chaos, or tipsy turvy god. Perhaps he participates in myths with the Sun King, supporting or rebelling against him in circles and cycles. Older than that, the lord of the craft and the forge. Older than that, perhaps the sun, perhaps pure chaos, perhaps pure creation? NOW I have a god.
Whether you're inventing someone new, or using an existant deity figure, this map can help figure out what you're "missing", and develop something more layered.
The Gods through Place and Culture
- Deities can be state
- Deities can be unique or personal
- Deities can be local
- Deities can be syncretised
- Deities can be hidden behind other figures
- Deities can be fairies, ancestors, demons, or gods
- Deities can be greater or lesser
- Deities can have epithets
- Deities can appear in retinue
- Deities can be influenced by time, weather, events etc
The era of Core Gods is echoed by the concept of State gods. This is the most popular, essential, and officially sanctioned form of the divine - usually celebrated in the main city, by the king or priesthood, by most of the people, in pretty much the same way. The opposite is Local gods - a weird, ideosyncratic variant of the deity that retains some of its State functions, but which has been adapted to local needs, and has developed its own lore and traditions in a little area. A cult, or a group of particular devotees, can usually be understood as local variants. In Fencraft, it has helped a lot for each of the divines to ask "and how was this god worshipped by the common folk, of the fields of the fens?" - because some change entirely, and others increase or diminish in importance. I also have a coastal variant - the young king is, in fact, a young sailor, who woos the fairy of the sea (not the rivers) to show him not agriculture but how to fish. This offers you other images to play with and to approach the divine through.
Most religions include personal gods: familiars, guardian angels, the Lares of the family, the ancestors etc. In this category, we can also celebrate the extremely ideosyncratic personal interpretations of the divine, like Aradia mistress of the inter-web.
Pagans use the term syncretism a lot, to describe two gods who have "blended" at some point in their history - like Isis-Athene-Inanna, or many Kemetic gods. I was both maddened and delighted to discover this happen in Fencraft, as it's messy. But I increasingly appreciate it, because the peculiarity makes a faith feel alive. Use syncretism: keep your gods open, not fixed. Mars was god of war, and also? Agriculture. Approaching each face, or trying to keep both in mind, is a form of Mystery work. It prevents gods becoming static, dead, unsurprising things.
Hidden gods are related to both syncretism and localism. These are non-religious stories which, you gradually surmise, are in fact faces of the divine. The welsh pantheon is built on this desperately hopeful desire that the Mabinogion can somehow be unlocked, to rediscover our lost gods. Hidden gods are also inherent in pop-culture paganism: my religious work includes both Robin Hood, and little Red Riding Hood, and Labyrinth.
Similarly, use Epithets. Give your deities ritual titles based on their diverse attributes: Mars Bringer of War is a different aspect to Mars Lord of the Plough, so develop these as if they were two different images, with diffierent ritual days, forms and so on.
One of my first steps in Fencraft was to start using the (unwise) terms Greater and Lesser to try and pin down the distinction between, say, the mighty wordless god of the fog, with the anthropomorphic flower fairy at the end of my street. The terms tried to gesture towards a similar thing as the gap between an Old God and a Technical God, how one could appear exactly like a person (albeit one with great power), and another like a kind of alien entity. This is another scale single gods can travel up and down - for example, a tree nymph who appears somewhat like a person, who you can date or make deals with or dance with, is in some way an lesser aspect of the Forest, and of the Eternal Spirit Of All Trees. It's a bit like if you wrote to the Queen, and received a reply from her secretary. Now pay attention: this is not the same as slowly piercing the Mystery behind a Core god. This is more like appreciating the whole through its smaller parts. It's also about the way we worship. We would relate to the Hunter God of the Woodlands in a different way to the Fairy Prince of the Woodland Hunt. The former is Greater - a bit more shapeless, a bit more essential - and the latter is Lesser - a bit more specific, embodied, physical.
I also use the related term In Retinue, to describe gods - especially lesser gods - turning up as part of a gaggle. For example, the Queen of the Witches is accompanied by a spirit coven. The Queen of the Fairies is followed by her court. I once read an article called "there are no starter demons"; but working with a retinue allows you to do something similar. Imagining and approaching an entity's underlings is a way to work with a tiny aspect of them, something less scary and immense, something more anthropomorphic and easy to get your head around; something of a similar power level to you, and which might be more inclinded to ally with you. Even as an imaginative exercise, working with the Fairy Librarian or Fairy Gatekeeper are ways to practice and attune what you're doing to create opportnities for genuine connection.
Another one underpinning Fencraft is fairies, ancestors, dead, demons, or gods. Most of our spirits have been all five. It's another way to telescope your view of the divine backwards and forwards, approaching the same concept-figure-entity down different roads and by different paragdims - perhaps discovering something new about them. This is a particularly British approach to divinity, as we have lost our gods - and thus, they've been half-remembered as all sorts of things. You may have to adjust this to your local context. I also find this is an easy way to start working with Powers if you're leery about the implications of "god". A mighty ancestor, or a fairy prince, are far more comforting aspects of divinity if you have bad associations with the divine. They also carry their own flavour: gods tend to embody what they are, whereas an ancestor has a kind of vested interest in their decendents, and fairies exist for their own delight (as should we all)
Finally, we have influenced gods. This one is also essential to Fencraft, but implicit in many other traditions too. Our divinities are different at different times of day and year, changed by events or as locations are made and unmade, and even by the weather. If you revere Poseidon, consider there may be one aspect of Poseidon of the deep black sea, and another of the waves; one for the storm, one for the calm; one of rockpools; one of whales; one who is a friend to sailors, another of sea-birds. Each of these concepts sparks different mental images and associations, each of which you can fold back into practice. A divinity of the local area is going to be impacted by pollution, building, the people there, the seasons passing, and could even be destroyed. i have a very strong sense that there is, in fact, but one fairy court - the Seelie and the Unseelie are each others' strange mirrors, slowly changing as the seasons and phases influence them.
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OK, So what is the point?
Deity work is a kind of walking; you're trying to find ways to think about them, do things for them, and fold them into your understanding of the world so that as you exist and look around, you see their fingerprints and motions laid above it.
I always sucked at doing religion, and never thought I'd be doing god work. lo! Now I have like 14 of them. These are all the techniques I've used to keep them fresh and alive, never something static, firm or fixed.
It's also a kind of active playfulness. A way to keep them in mind. Imagining a god as a fairy variant, or as a coastal version, or wondering what a more ancient image of them would be like; freeing yourself to write story (not myth), or explore your reinterpretation (knowing your true gods are safely stored within myth) means more time spent meditating on their qualities and virtues, and inviting them into your space, and making openings where something profound may spill through. "I worship Ameratsu - let's reimagine her as a contemporary pop star" is a daft creative act, but also one which you spend contemplating her.
This kind of thing is essential to Fencraft, because our core maxim is "England has forgotten its gods" - our work is to rediscover them, so this kind of playful creative meandering is core to our work. We can't just pick up a holy book - we must write it. But this is true for a LOT of ancient traditions, and solitary workers, who do not immediately have expertise to tap into or traditions to follow. Traditional organised religions, you can just pick up and go: you don't need to generate your own depth because like frickin Michaelangelo and Handel are doing that for you. I think one of the big failings of Paganism as a new Pagan is how shallow and empty it is, without there being any real maps or guidelines to how you take these dry and dusty "Odin: god of war and magic and the hanged" and transform it into genuine experiences with the divine.
I also find that breaking stuff down allows me to experience and imagine far more vividly. Like, Poseidon Lord of the Deep Dark is different from Poseidon Lord of the Seagulls - you'd draw them differently as character art, you'd create different songs and sonic landscapes for him, you'd consider different offerings and altar symbols, you'd approach them for different purposes. This leads to more active, vivid, vital ritual work than trying to invoke just "Poseidon", who's a bit of an empty lump conceptually. Poseidon is like, the sea. Sea shanties? Wave sounds? Whereas the Deep Dark is - then you're onto mechanical ambient, pings, ink, fairylights in the black, algies, floruescence, etc etc etc. Whereas the Seagull is soaring, wave-crests, horses, feathers, probably a younger man, maybe a chariot, the colours white and black and blues, maybe some kind of horn or call, a soggy paper packet of chips on the altar table...
