I am a polytheist, but I am not exactly sure what kind of polytheist I am. I believe that the gods are individual personalities, that they are autonomous beings with their own likes, dislikes, wants, and agendas. Yet I also believe that there is an underlying Supreme Divinity—something similar to the Brahman of Vedic tradition. I believe that this Supreme Divine unifies all things, the gods included. My own beliefs, then, lie somewhere between hard polytheism and pantheism/animism. Perhaps this makes me a semi-firm polytheist?
Whatever the case, there is one thing that my semi-firm polytheism cannot stand: the treatment of individual divinities as if they were nothing more than magical correspondences. There seems to be a lot of this in the “pop-Pagan” community, wherein the gods have been devalued to faceless, divine robots. Many Pagans in this trap of “mushy” soft polytheism explain away the gods as simply manifestations of archetypal energies. While I do believe that there is some truth in this credence, I do not find it to be particularly appropriate.
Rather, I propose the Gestalt theory (of divinity): The whole (i.e. the god) is greater than the sum of its individual parts (i.e. the archetypal energies).
To begin to understand this theory of divinity, we must first look at the nature of archetypes.
The human mind loves to classify and organize things into neat little categories. Indeed, in a world and a reality that is constantly changing, the human mind has to do this! If it did not, insanity would quickly ensue. Most of the time, these categories are very beneficial. They distinguish safety from danger, mine from yours, and professional-doctor-who-is-apt-to-do-your-life-threatening-surgery from hobo. In far more arbitrary terms, these categories also distinguish green from red, plant from animal, right foot from left foot, etc. The human mind categorizes virtually everything with which it comes in contact. Archetypes are an outcome of this elaborate filing system.
An archetype is a fundamental classification of energy. In other words, it is the long-lasting imprint that results when the mind categorizes something. These imprints exist in the Collective Unconscious—an area of the psyche that is shared between all generations of a species. As the name implies, the essence of the Collective Unconscious is not consciously passed from one person to another. Rather it is an inherited and therefore an integral part of one’s nature of being—in our case, human nature. Existing here, archetypes form a sort of collective “heading,” under which people can organize their subjective experiences.
For example, a healer is an archetype. It is a fundamental role of the human experience. An individual, then, may categorize people under this archetype when they seem to exhibit healing qualities—such as Doctor Kelsey or Nurse Pat. To compare this to a filing system: the archetype becomes the folder and the individual experience becomes the paper in that folder.
The problem with understanding gods as archetypes comes into play when people forget about the “paper in the folder” and instead just equate the god with “the folder.” In other words, when people neglect the individuality of the god and instead focus on his or her likeness to other gods who may fit into the same category. In this way, people begin to equate vastly different gods with one another, reasoning that because they fit into the same group, they must be the same deity. Thus a number of modern Pagans find the Irish god Lugh and the Greek Apollo synonymous, simply because they are both gods of light! (Of course, this is far from the truth. Apollo’s development as a god of light was a relatively late addition to his mythos, and then he was understood to be a god of the sun. Lugh, on the other hand, is connected with the light of knowledge, a very different kind of illumination.) To me, this seems absolutely absurd. I would never believe that all university students are the same—the university student, of course, being an archetype. Why, then, should all gods who are connected with illumination be qualitatively identical?
What we need to remember is that our archetypes are human constructions. At its base form, energy is energy. It is not until conscious beings begin to imprint emotionality and other qualities upon it that it becomes categorized. Thus archetypes do not exist in objective nature—only in our humanely subjective nature. Going off from this, it needs to be borne in mind that the gods are not human. To confine the personalities of the gods to human constructs is simply unnatural—we are vastly different forms of beings!
Yet all of this blathering is not meant to downgrade archetypes, simply to put them in their proper place. Indeed, archetypes can be a very powerful means by which to connect with deities. It was the Greek philosopher Xenophanes who wrote: “But if oxen (and horses) and lions had hands or could draw with hands and create works of art like those made by men, horses would draw pictures of gods like horses, and oxen gods like oxen, and they would make the bodies (of their gods) in accordance with the form that each species itself possesses.”[1] In other words, all species seek to understand the Divine—as well as the world—in their own, subjective terms. Accordingly we as humans can only connect with things in human terms. Archetypes are these human terms, and while they are not divinities in and of themselves, they are certainly roads to the gods—as it is much easier to connect with Brighid, the poet (a profession that I can experience) versus Brighid, the divinity (a quality that I cannot replicate in my subjective experience).
While gods are not the same as an archetypal energy, they may at times work as embodiments or “ambassadors” of this energy. In this context, the god becomes a personal, conscious filter through which archetypal energy can funnel. Compare these two invocations:
A Dhanu, bless this new mother.
A Dhanu, Mother of the Gods, bless this new mother.
The first statement appeals to Danu as a personal divinity. The second appeals to the archetype of mother as it manifests itself in Danu. Thus in the latter Danu becomes a conduit of mothering energy. (Note, however, that Danu is not, herself, the same as the mothering energy.) While the archetypal energy of “mother” is largely undifferentiated, Danu can bend this energy so as to fit the desires of the situation. It is much the same as a Japanese ambassador. The ambassador is able to phrase his country’s policies so as to persuade foreign rulers—i.e. making Japanese principles fit the current situation. Yet, at the same time, the ambassador is not Japan.
My Gestalt theory of divinity can be confusing, and I must admit that by this point, even I am getting a little light-headed! So let’s recap the basics:
- Archetypes are human constructs, and since the gods and humans are qualitatively different, archetypes cannot be one-and-the-same with gods
- Thus the gods are greater than the sum of the individual archetypes they embody
- Archetypes can function as ways to reach the gods, but it needs to be borne in mind that they (archetypes) are human vehicles
- And although the gods can act as conduits of archetypal energy, they are not synonymous with this energy
If things are still a little fuzzy, answer this: To humans a bug with a set of colorful wings is a butterfly; but to a butterfly, what is a gigantic, two-legged mammal?
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[1] Xenophanes (570-475 BC), Fragment 15.
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