What's the Deal with Gods Anyway?
All your witch friends talk about the gods they work with, but what does that mean?
One of the questions I get a lot when I teach young witches has to do with deities. “All these people talk about deities like the Morrigan or Hermes or Thor, how do I pick a deity? Do they pick me? How do I know?” They are very confused and anxious to not fuck it up. A lot of being new to the Craft involves these emotions, I find.
And while it’s true that magic is not a safe substance, it’s also true that the Craft is meant to be a continual learning process, which means everyone (including the gods) understands that in the beginning there will be some mistakes. In fact, every time you try to grow there will be hiccups and things that don’t go the way you wanted them to, even if you have been at this awhile. That’s how you know you’re growing — it gets a little shifty and uncertain.
Being confused in the beginning can be a sign you’re in the right place.
So with that in mind, let’s dig into it — what’s up with gods? Do you need them? How do you decide which one? Do they pick you? How does that work? Once I have a deity, what do I do with them?
Individual deities and pantheons (groups of gods associated with a specific culture and time period) have been a big part of non-Christian religion in the historic sense. I say this because the first thing to realize about deities is that they do not exist in a vacuum apart from their cultural context. And just because a deity is not Christian does not automatically make it up for grabs in a pagan worship context.
Hindu gods are a good example here. Hinduism has roughly 900 million adherents across the world, and a well established set of texts and rituals and priest support around how their gods are worshipped. If you want to be in relationship with Hindu gods, be Hindu and follow that path. I suppose you could try to do some sort of DIY version of addressing a Hindu god and starting a relationship with them that ignores the existing Hindu path, but that seems more like an ego trip than a spiritual journey. You are not that special. No one is.
In neopagan pathways, we tend to focus on pantheons that come from cultures whose spiritual practices have largely been lost or are no longer in practice —- Celtic, Norse, Greek, Egyptian— because there is a need to DIY the path. The temples are in ruins and the priesthood is gone and the practices that we know of are based on historical records that are at best woefully incomplete and at worst misleading in their accounts.
But there are two dirty little secrets to always keep in mind when you undertake working with deities as a pagan. The first is this: you don’t need deity to be a witch. In fact, there are plenty of vey legit, very powerful witches who are functionally atheists, in that they don’t believe in specific gods. They might believe in an energetic idea that gets expressed as deity, but even that is optional.
In fact, this focus on pantheons and individual gods and goddesses is a more recent development in modern witchcraft. The idea that one might cultivate a deity as a patron to one’s path is something that’s grown in prevalence in the last fifteen years in a pretty dramatic way. If you talk to some of the folks who were there at the beginning of the resurgence of witchcraft in the 20th Century, they’ll tell you that they often treated gods and goddesses as being interchangeable in a way that seems way more problematic now.
Which provides a pretty good segue to the other dirty little secret: we are making this shit up as we go. That does not mean, however, that it isn’t true or real. What that means is that when I work with a specific Norse deity, for instance, I am fully aware that my practice is not authentically, historically accurate. Not even close. I am building off of work others have done to create a modern Norse practice, and even then I am very cautious and engage in some adaptation because there’s a lot of white supremacy bullshit in the origins of modern Norse practice that needs to be wholly and relentlessly stripped out.
What I do at my altar with Freya is part of my Tradition, which started back in Buffalo in the 1990s, not in 8th Century Scandinavia or even in the 1970s when a lot of modern Heathenry first emerged in the US. My Tradition’s founders drew on a range of source material, but this isn’t historical reenactment. It’s new. We do it because it works. And we don’t have to, nor should we, pretend it’s something it isn’t.
That said, while modern pagan traditions don’t have 900 million adherents or a priesthood with a thousand year lineage and history of practice, many deities in modern paganism have a path you can use to engage them. It’s often a tiny trail that is barely perceptible and you might need to bring some tools to cut your way along it, but it’s there.
Engaging deity in the modern pagan experience is reluctantly called worship. Because our gods don’t demand that we subjugate our entire will to theirs, pagans stand in power, not penitence. But it’s also important to remember that gods are not humans. They have their own agendas, their own way of being, and it is beyond our ken. As much as I love her, and as wonderful as it has been to engage with her, Freya is not my bestie. I make offerings and engage with her respectfully and take the oath I have made to her seriously. I am not her puppet, and she cannot force me to do anything I do not choose to. That said, I’ll live with my choices, and their consequences, for good or for ill.
Did I call her or did she call me first? In my case, Freya was patient. I first reached out to her, and she welcomed me gladly. But I later learned, though a conversation with another witch, that Freya had been around in my life long before I was even a pagan. I learned in that conversation that a presence that had very much guarded and guided me more than a decade before I even understood paganism, had actually been Freya, following me, waiting patiently for me to begin the journey I am on now. In the case of other deities with whom I have a relationship it has varied. Some have tugged at my consciousness, urging me to engage. Others I have chosen. Friends report very specific callings. There isn’t a blueprint here. The start of these things can take many forms.
How do I know it’s a deity and I’m not crazy? I leave the answer to that question to the inimitable and very wise John Beckett in his blog post, “Was That Really The Morrigan?” (Side note here, John’s writing is nearly always on point, and incredibly valuable. If you’re a pagan or a witch and you aren’t reading his stuff, I highly, highly recommend.) He does a great job unpacking this question in way more detail than I could do here.
Okay, so there’s a deity you are interested in and your initial encounters with the deity seem positive. What now? Consider creating some kind of shrine — a location in your workspace where you can make offerings, make contact, meditate. There are all kinds of statues for all manner of deities from all the pantheons, and some of those are pocket-sized so they can sit unobtrusively on a shelf or a table. But you don’t need to spend money on a statue if you don’t want to. Maybe you can make your own drawing or craft object. Pretty much anything you want to create if it’s done with intention can fill the bill. It can be something you hang on a wall or put on a shelf. You may be as elaborate as you want, or as simple as you want. Listen to your deity as you create as well. They will tell you what they want, too. The same goes for offerings. Many like to offer their deities a drink of some kind. It’s hard to go wrong with liquor, usually whiskey. But again, listen because deity will have opinions. (Freya will very often nudge me when I am in the liquor store restocking the offering cabinet.)
Once you have a shrine space, tend it. Make offerings on the regular. Meditate. Much of the material I’ve already written and podcasted on devotion is useful here.
What does it mean to work with a deity over time? It can mean all kinds of things, but at bottom it’s about learning and growing. Many will talk about the “the worship bargain” — we offer deity our offerings and dedication, and in return deity blesses us in ways that we like and often request. This can seem very transactional if you let it be. This is why meditation and listening are so important. All relationships are, to some extent, negotiated. But what lifts a relationship out of being a pure transaction is when there is an exchange of more than just benefits, but bits of oneself. Get to know your deity by spending time in meditative space with them, by learning who they are and using your moments in shared space with them to explore yourself.
The best advice I can give in nurturing a relationship with deity is this: bring your best and take responsibility for your experience. It can be tempting when you start working with a deity to defer to deity in a knee-jerk way. After all, they’re a god, you’re a human, and isn’t there a natural power dynamic there? Yes and no. Yes, deities can do things you can’t and know things you don’t. But your free will is inviolate. No one, not even a god, can order you about if you don’t want them to. You can say no to a god if they ask you for something, even to the very idea of being in relationship. You choose to ride the ride or not, and can get off the ride whenever you like.
In the end, you are responsible for the choices you make, including the choice to abdicate your personal sovereignty to another. Do not become the person whose explanation for every action is to talk about what their deity wants for them or has told them to do. When I see that, I don’t see someone who’s devout. I see someone who’s projecting because they want to avoid taking responsibility for their choices.
Don’t get me wrong — deities will ask for things, tell you things that you don’t want to hear, challenge your assumptions. They will also encourage you, provide wisdom when you most need it, empower you to do more and be more. The time and energy you put into devotion work, into making or keeping oaths, into everything you learn from your engagement with deity, will pay off. That doesn’t mean it will be easy. There are times when you will be confused, when you will make mistakes, and when you will question yourself. It will all feel a little shifty and uncertain.
But as we’ve already established, that’s when you hold on, and keep going. Because it’s how you know you’re growing.