polytheism Archives -

“A Step in the Right Direction”

January 11, 2024

Nilsson says, “Another step in the development of polytheism was thinking of the great forces of nature (such as sky and seasons) and of human life (such as love and death) as gods.”

Yes, and the same story applies there. It is quite apt, and not incompatible with understanding a single divine reality behind them all. In fact, seeing them as gods—as personal beings with desires, plans, loves, and so forth—is a step in the right direction, of acknowledging that God is a Person and one with whom one can interact.

“Lord, did the polytheistic response affect You in any way?”

Oh yes, in many ways. When someone sensed My presence in a place and responded respectfully, it increased My awareness of My presence there, and of what it was about Me that evoked and deserved respect.

Then I was given an analogy.

Sometimes someone might be the pillar of a particular institution and not realize their distinctive role until a crisis. And they notice that everyone rallies around them or sees them as their savior or seeks their advice or expects them to get them through it. In a sense, they were the pillar all along, but it was almost latent and not fully actualized until the occasion arose and they saw it reflected in the eyes of others.

I gather that God’s experience was something like that.

“I Came to All Peoples”

September 28, 2023

I have told you that there are many gods but only one God and I am He.

“What do You mean by many gods?”

In a sense, the wind and seas are gods. The elemental forces of nature are gods.

“Why gods rather than impersonal forces?”

They are not impersonal. They are agents of Me. They help direct the world toward its goal.

“What is Your relation to the God of Israel?”

The God of Israel is one face of Me. It is really Me, and I really did undergo the development recorded pretty accurately in the Hebrew Bible.

“You have other ‘faces’?”

Of course. I came to all peoples, but arrived in different guises. I came to the American Indians as the Great Spirit, to the Muslems as Allah, and so on. I came to the Hindus in many different forms, and hence their many stories.

“Let Me Tell You What the Story Is.”

September 7, 2023

In a few days, I asked again about God’s story.

The story begins with creation, the evolution up to life, animals, early man. Then to the very ancient communications that require language and memory.

They (My communications) occurred rather simultaneously, and each communication was tailored to and by the recipients. So the precise sequence for telling My story is more a question of narrative strategy than of accuracy or significance.

“But I will have to tell a story that makes sense.”

That makes sense to whom? Let Me tell you what the story is. I am burgeoning forth, reaching out to matter, plants, animals, activating their interiority, giving them direction.

As I have explained, I grew as a Self in response to the interiority of others, and I wanted to communicate, interact, more fully and at a higher level. This (communication) is somewhat possible with early man, who recognized My presence in nature, in life, and also heard, if somewhat dimly and inchoately, My other promptings such as conscience, (the sense of) right and wrong, fine sensibility, appreciation of nature and beauty, love amongst creatures, and mystical union.

“Early people saw my presence everywhere…”

July 13, 2023

As early peoples caught glimpses of the divine in art or in nature, it must have been natural to think there were gods in things. In fact, I had been told.

Some elements of polytheism are merely superstitious, but other aspects are genuinely responsive to the many ways in which I present myself. It may seem odd to your modern mind to think of fire as a god, but why do you think I made fire mysterious and fascinating? It is a physical metaphor in itself—it is created out of nothing and disappears into nothing, grows and dies, gives life and warmth as well as pain and destruction, and it looks both hypnotically attractive and frightening.

As you know, I am very powerful. I do manifest Myself in storms and thunder, in the ocean and great waves—in the power that drives the universe and that manifests itself in each particular event. The large cosmic forces are divine and so are their concrete manifestations in specific incidents. That does not mean that every rainstorm is a specific communication or is there to advance or retard some particular action, but it does mean that every rainstorm expresses an aspect of Me.

Early peoples saw My presence everywhere, saw the spiritual indwelling of things, their powers and potencies and the divine element in all that. But there was always an awareness, however dim, that there was a single spiritual reality behind them all.

“Do you think I could come to the ancient Jews in the same way I came to the seventh century Chinese? to Americans today?”

October 19, 2022

How God Comes To Different People:

I had been told that culture is a factor in divine revelations.

“Lord, why is culture so important?”

That’s like saying, why language? If I am going to communicate with people, they need a language. For the same reason, they need a culture.

“They need a culture, but why such a variety of cultures?”

There are many ways of realizing (actualizing) the human story. Culture enables lives of different (types of) significance (meaning).

“But why, in terms of Your story?”

I need to come to people in all their particularity, not to mankind-as-such. The Chinese is one way of being. The primitive is one way of being. I come to each in its own terms. Each enables Me to show a different side of Myself.

Do you think I could come to the ancient Jews in the same way I came to the seventh century Chinese? to Americans today? to you?

Learn more about how God comes to different people.

Egyptian God control God, mistake of man

“It’s a mistake to try to control God . . .”

July 26, 2016

Trying to control God:

My first impressions of the ancient Egyptians were formed in Sunday School, put to music by gospels such as “Go Down Moses,” and brought to the silver screen by Cecil B. DeMille. It was not a pretty picture—false gods, harsh rulers, fake magicians, and slave-drivers wielding the lash.

Egypt was on the wrong side of everything.

But now I was told that God was sending divine messages to every culture. So I had to look at the land of the pharaohs through different eyes, Egyptian eyes.

Written in hieroglyphs that were already old when Sumerian cuneiform was young, the Pyramid texts date back almost five thousand years.

Chiseled into the walls of the dark corridors beneath these monumental tombs, these texts provide the deceased Pharaoh. Keys to a successful afterlife. How to overcome each obstacle on the way to the divine realm… What words to speak to the guardians who block the way. One strategy was to enter the cyclical course of the cosmos and accompany the sun god in the baroque that transverses the sky each day.

The deceased king went so far, according to one inscription. As to kick the sun god overboard to make room for himself in the divine baroque.

The complex mythology of the Egyptians far surpassed the simple piety of preliterate polytheism. But, however complex, these greedy efforts to compel or trick the divine powers seem spiritually retrograde compared to the sensitive cave paintings and the humble peasant honoring a stream with a pile of stones.

“Isn’t that right, Lord?”

Yes, it is a fundamental mistake of man to try to control God rather than the other way around.

Do not exaggerate it. It is no different from (no worse than) trying to bribe the king’s mistress or learn the password that goes you through the palace gates, but it is not high spirituality, and in fact is not really a kind of spirituality at all.

“It is a mistake of man to try to control God rather than the other way around.”

July 26, 2015

Mistake of Man-

My first impressions of the ancient Egyptians were formed in Sunday School, put to music by gospels such as “Go Down Moses,” and brought to the silver screen by Cecil B. DeMille.

It was not a pretty picture—false gods, harsh rulers, fake magicians, and slave-drivers wielding the lash.

Egypt was on the wrong side of everything.

But now I was told that God was sending divine messages to every culture.

So I had to look at the land of the pharaohs through different eyes, Egyptian eyes.

Written in hieroglyphs that were already old when Sumerian cuneiform was young, the Pyramid texts date back almost five thousand years. Chiseled into the walls of the dark corridors beneath these monumental tombs, these texts provide the deceased Pharaoh with the keys to a successful afterlife: how to overcome each obstacle on the way to the divine realm and what words to speak to the guardians who block the way.

One strategy was to enter the cyclical course of the cosmos. And accompany the sun god in the barque that transverses the sky each day.

The deceased king went so far, according to one inscription, as to kick the sun god overboard to make room for himself in the divine barque.

The complex mythology of the Egyptians far surpassed the simple piety of preliterate polytheism.

But, however complex, these greedy efforts to compel or trick the divine powers seem spiritually retrograde compared to the sensitive cave paintings and the humble peasant honoring a stream with a pile of stones.

“Isn’t that right, Lord?”

Yes, it is a fundamental mistake of man to try to control God rather than the other way around. Do not exaggerate it. It is no different from (no worse than) trying to bribe the king’s mistress. Or learn the password that goes you through the palace gates. But it is not high spirituality, and in fact is not really a kind of spirituality at all.

________

Listen to this on God: An Autobiography, The Podcast– the dramatic adaptation and continuing discussion of the book God: An Autobiography, As Told To A Philosopher by Jerry L. Martin.

He was a lifelong agnostic, but one day he had an occasion to pray. To his vast surprise, God answered- in words. Being a philosopher, he had a lot of questions, and God had a lot to tell him.

“Any religion that does not allow for this aspect of My presence is missing something.”

October 6, 2014

It sounded as if there were something true in polytheism. Abigail’s father had also been a philosophy professor and I married into his library, which included Martin P. Nilsson’s Greek Popular Religion, a classic on ancient Greek polytheism.

According to Nilsson, anything that had potency or an aura was regarded as holy. Spirits lurked inside striking features of the landscape such as trees, forests, lakes, and mountains. River crossings and cave entrances would be marked with stones or statues.

“Were these valid responses to You, Lord?”

You lump them all together.

We would have to take them one by one. You see them as generic types of actions. I see them as specific communications or acknowledgements. One person looked at a stream and saw the current of My energy running through it and marked the spot in homage. Another was superstitious and marked the spot for good luck.

Some were fearful and thought they might drown crossing if they did not place a token on the bank. Some actually stopped and prayed or meditated or sang a song of praise. These are very different kinds of communications, with different degrees of reality.

If your question is whether streams and mountains and so forth do in fact embody My presence, the answer again is not so simple.

Of course, everything embodies My presence and it is always a good thing when someone pauses to acknowledge that. But some things do embody it more. There is truth to the sense that I am more distinctively present in aspects of energy and force than in matter that is relatively more inert. We would have to go into physics, into the physics of the future, to discuss that in detail.

At particular times, I am especially present in a certain place or to a certain person.

It is not mere superstition that causes (people to) pause before the fact of death, for example. That is a moment and place of particular interaction between Me and the deceased and their survivors. However, there are some dramatic elements of nature, such as lightning, that might be appropriate symbols for divine power but are not in fact times and places of special presence or interaction.

But, in general, did polytheism respond to a divine reality? Yes, it did.

And any religion that does not allow for this aspect of My presence—My presence in nature, in objects, in places, and in forces—is missing something.

________

Listen to this on God: An Autobiography, The Podcast– the dramatic adaptation and continuing discussion of the book God: An Autobiography, As Told To A Philosopher by Jerry L. Martin.

He was a lifelong agnostic, but one day he had an occasion to pray. To his vast surprise, God answered- in words. Being a philosopher, he had a lot of questions, and God had a lot to tell him.