broomcloset ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- PaganSpeak: December 2002 Pagan Speak December 2002, Topic #1: Polytheist, Monotheist, Dualist or Other? (courtesy of Wren's Nest) ____________ Whew! Quite the question this month, huh? It's rather wordy in it's detail, but for me, the answer is a bit more simple. Maybe. I'm going to keep my submission here fairly brief. It's not because I feel this topic doesn't warrant a lengthy discussion, but because I am still trying to figure out this spiritual issue for myself, and as of yet I only have the basics down. I believe everything in the Universe ultimately has one Source, or that is to say that all things in the Universe are connected on a basic, fundamental level. Whether you see this as meaning "All things were created by One Creator" or "All things in the Universe are composed of the same fundamental particles" is a little irrelevant to me at the moment. To me those statements are different ways of expressing the same thing. If we operate under the assumption of the Universe having one Source (which I am for the purpose of this discussion) we can pretty much agree that this Source or Fundamental Level could be pretty mind-blowingly huge and therefore very nearly incomprehensible. The Universe itself is huge beyond our understanding, so the underlying "Truth" behind it would be very likely even farther beyond our understanding. So what's a lowly human to do? Do we just accept there is nothing we can do about this and forget about trying to fathom the unfathomable? Well, some people do, but Wiccans don't. And neither do any of the millions and billions of people that have followed any of the many different spiritual systems throughout time. All spiritual systems try to understand that "great unknowable." (And some even claim to understand it fully. They tend to be called "fundamentalists.") So how do we approach the Great Unknowable? The approach in which I currently find great value is through myth, story and allegory. (And poetry! LOL!) While we may not be able to comprehend the Source in it's own terms, we can do our best to understand aspects of the Source in our own terms. I believe it is from this, the attempt to understand things greater than ourselves, that the stories and the archetypes of the Gods and Goddesses arose. Each Goddess and God is an attempt to capture an aspect of the Source in a way we can understand and then work with. To me, this personal view of Diety does not make the Gods and Goddesses any less powerful or relevent. It also doesn't make them any less real to me. Perhaps it's because I find great value in the Jungian idea of "archetypes", or perhaps it is my experience in the field of Physics, but just because something is born out of a human attempt at understanding does not automatically render it mundane and therefore not sacred. So there you have it - my view on Diety, such as it is. Hmmm, not as brief as I was supposing it would be... -----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
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