Agency and Sovereignty of the Gods

Keynote | Many Gods West 2015

by Morpheus Ravenna

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.