Hawk’s Cry

Do You Believe in Gods?

You probably have been asked if you believe in God at least a couple times in your life. The person asking normally expects a simple “Yes” or “No” answer, to which they generally have a canned response to convert you to their God.

The question is a valid one, however, that many of us in the Craft fail to ask ourselves. Do you believe in the Gods? If so, what exactly do you believe in? If not, why not?

An interesting article by Margarian Bridger and Stephen Hergest, entitled Pagan Deism: Three Views, helps define three different ways that Witches see Divinity.

One way is to see Them as metaphors for aspects of ourselves and of humanity. These people use their religion as a journey of self-knowledge and self-awareness. The Gods are mirrors that reflect and accentuate aspects of our personality and being.

Another way to see Divinity is as a singular whole, where all Gods and Goddesses are one (or all Gods are one God, all Goddesses are one Goddess). These Witches seek out the oneness of the Universe. They love rituals that celebrate the cycles of life and of time, since those rituals connect them to the great patterns in the Universe. These Witches frequently say that we only see the Gods as separate beings because of our limited human perception.

The third way discussed is seeing the Gods as individual personalities that have objective reality. Witches that see Divinity this way have a literal belief in the Gods as real, living entities. They seek personal relationships with specific Gods and Goddesses, either in worship, service or both.

People can change how they see Divinity as time passes and they develop. I started out in the first group. I was disillusioned with Christianity and I am naturally a skeptic. I did not have faith in Divinity or myself. Witchcraft was a way for me to learn about the subtle aspects of the Universe and how to use them for the things I wanted.

The Gods were archetypes to me. I believed that They held little, if any, objective reality. The only objective reality They could have is what was given to Them by people who worshiped Them over the centuries. As a result, there was no reason we could not simply invent new “gods” and give them energy.

My thoughts on this were challenged when I saw a God invoked. Invocation is when a spiritual entity, like a God or Goddess, enters a person’s body and takes it over. The first number of times I witnessed it, I thought the High Priest invoking was a good charlatan. He spoke such words of wisdom that I stayed to learn his insights. But I did not honestly believe that it was a deity speaking. Instead, it was an astute and wise man who could read into people very well and speak of spiritual topics more advanced than I. Until one day…

Hermes was invoked during one ritual about seven years ago. He spoke to me at one point and made specific references to an event that happened in my childhood. It was an event that I had not spoken about to anyone, so I knew it was not information gained through investigation. I listened for a sense of vagueness that charlatans have, as they expect the listener to fill in the blanks in their own mind. No, there was no vagueness. He was specific. To make sure, I asked a specific question about the event and He responded correctly.

It resulted in an epiphany for me. I had to put away my old thoughts about Divinity and change to the third option above. It was the only logical resolution of the dilemma for me. It could not have come from my subconscious, as I suspected whenever I meditated or prayed. It was spoken with someone else’s mouth. The Gods became real, living entities for me. Since then, I have developed deep relationships with a few of them which have been very fulfilling as my faith increased.

This does not mean that I exclude the other two ways of seeing Divinity. I do see that the Gods can represent archetypes for me when I see similarities in aspects of my personality and Theirs. This does not diminish Their literal reality any more than comparing an aspect of myself with a human friend’s personality makes the friend cease to be a real individual.

I also see Divinity as being a part of a singular whole the same way that I see myself as being an aspect of that same singular whole. It does not mean that I don’t have an individual personality that’s separate from another person as a result of us both being aspects of the Universe. We are all individual humans and all aspects of the divine expression.

So how do you see Divinity? Do you see it as one of the three options I listed, or another way? How has your view changed during your development? Please share in a comment.