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 Building Relationships with The Gods: Heterogeneous & Homogenous Pantheons When you go into deep meditation or dreaming, do you see your Gods and Goddesses? Is it a personal account or is it a party where everyone's invited? This may not be popular Pagan belief, but it has become truth to me through my experiences that the deities I've worked with have become more to me than just divine beings to work for & with. They're also beings with which personal relationships may be developed and improved upon. Hence, I regard the Gods as friends or companions. The answers to the first questions asked above are reflections of how we view the pantheon(s) in which we incorporate into our system of beliefs and our relationships with them, ourselves, and the universe. We know that the Gods & Goddesses represent aspects of things in our world, just as they remind us of aspects within ourselves. How many people ever find themselves doing mythology research comparing the qualities of multitalented muse Goddesses and their own love of poetry and inspirational prowess? And not just of one pantheon either.
Mentioned in the description of this essay topic was a line that I think summed this up nicely, "nothing if not eclectic." I began mostly with a Celtic line-up, and then specifically incorporated the Tuatha de Danaan and the Norse pantheons into my system of beliefs. It threw me into a slew of confusion for a bit, but after taking a deeper look at different qualities of differing pantheons I figured out they can work together. For instance, Brigid's abilities as a muse, and Odin's inspiration can be used to heighten moments of greatly inspiring poetry. It's easy for us to choose deities to incorporate into our personalized pantheons, however, another question arises. What if we receive messages from deities not in the pantheons we have built relationships with? A few months ago, I was riding home with a friend and as the sun set, I had a vision in the clouds of the Hindu God, Ganesh, a representation of knowledge & wisdom. I had never once made a connection to Ganesh, though it hadn't stopped him from delivering a vision to me. The point to this little anecdote is that while we're deciding which pantheons to mix or stick with in our practice, it may be wise to keep an open mind about building relationships with Gods. Visions such as that one indicate that there are possibilities of more relationships than just what has been made thus far. Down to the heart of it though, should we mix pantheons or not? I still feel it is a decision best left to the discretion of the practitioner, whether to choose just one pantheon, or a combination of many. Either way we're bound to form wonderful long-lasting relationships with the deities we incorporate into our practices.
Originally published in Project X Newsletter #74
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