The Cauldron: A Pagan Forum

Taking from this excellent post on this excellent thread:

"The Germans, however, do not consider it consistent with the grandeur of celestial beings to confine the gods within walls, or to liken them to the form of any human countenance.

They consecrate woods and groves, and they apply the names of deities to the abstraction which they see only in spiritual worship." Tacitus, Germania.

From the Eddas, though, I'd gotten the impression that the Aesir weren't celestial beings, but heroes of legend who gained immortality by eating magic apples, and that while these could be taken as inspirational metaphors, it would still have conveyed personality to an extent that Tacitus hadn't observed (although I think I could trust Tactus more than Sturlson, only if it couldn't be both--which I think it can.)

Also throwing in J.A. MacCulloch's Religion of the Ancient Celts here:

early thought everything was a person, in the loose meaning then possessed by personality, and many such "persons" were worshipped--earth, sun, moon, sea, wind, etc. This led later to more complete personification, and the sun or earth divinity or spirit was more or less separated from the sun or earth themselves.

And I'm familiar with a Greek myth where Zeus disguised himself as a mortal to seduce Semele, who (being told by Hera that she, Semele, was bedding a God) then requested of Him to show His true form, which was a presence too glorious for a mere mortal to bear without burning up.

*

I thought I'd try to collect people's experiences with their deities, experiences that might run the gamut. Oddly enough, Loki wasn't present in my life as the notion of mischief, but one that I witnessed as having a location and features that would be physical except that I knew they weren't. (This being through visualization and meditation.) On the other hand, Manannan mac Lir, who other open-headed people seem to experience the same way as I did Loki, to me is more of this giant cloud-like presence without the cloud... sort of, I guess, how some personal-gnosis focused Christian communities experience the Holy Spirit or The Glory Cloud.

I think Joan of Arc said something like, "How else is God going to speak to me, if not through my imagination?" But I don't know if that meant that she saw white toga-wearing Jesus sitting at her table, or if her divinely uninhibited imagination were more... cloud-y, or more conceptual.

The Lady of Shalott, whose origins would create to me some expectation of an "imaginary friend"-like experience, remains similarly up in the clouds and is only present in my life conceptually, like a mood that originates externally.

Wasn't that, like, Snorri's actual explicit agenda?

Would that, or does that, change anything now either way? Considering the influence of sources with Agendas and also considering those agendas is good to keep in mind, don't get me wrong. But I meant to just sort of collect patches or particles of interpretation that are what they are and different from others that also are what they are. I wasn't constructing an argument, if that's what it came off as. :confused:

If you're reading the Eddas and primarily getting the spin that the author explicitly decided to insert into the material, that's not actually terribly informative about the source material that he was working with.

I could see that as having served as a springboard to some (lineages of) modern practices. The source material to the contrary also survives into modern practice. That's why I ask after people's experiences that possibly tie in with both and the others that I mentioned, or in between, or in patches.


And I'll take the opportunity now to throw an idea to anyone out here about how personification ties in with or opposes literalism. (Unless religious literalism itself is a modern concept.) (In that it's named and examined, not that people weren't performatively literal before the word.)

....

 
I'm not entirely clear on what you're asking, and I'd hate to derail (yet another)  discussion by going off on a tangent.

Are you asking for an academic, systematic method for how one approaches personification, or are you asking for that to be set aside for more personal, experiential gnosis? Or...both?

Basically: am I supposed to be thinking or feeling in my reply? :confused:

"The Germans, however, do not consider it consistent with the grandeur of celestial beings to confine the gods within walls, or to liken them to the form of any human countenance.

They consecrate woods and groves, and they apply the names of deities to the abstraction which they see only in spiritual worship." Tacitus, Germania.

I've thought about that last line a lot recently. For the longest I focused on the part about gods being seen only as spiritual abstracts that were spiritually worshipped, thinking that was where the emphasis lay. Earlier this year it occurred to me that maybe the last line meant that the gods were abstracts, and it was only through spiritual worship with which they could be seen.

My thinking went from seeing the gods as only existing as abstracts, to realizing that they may only appear concrete through worship.

So I wonder...How do I really worship, what's my spiritual center, what becomes more solod when this occurs? Music, art and nature make me feel more spiritually focused, but underneath that, its when I stop feeling so buried within myself that I'm worshipping.

I sort of talked about those numinous moments a few months ago here. And I'm starting to understand that a sense of being present, seeing myself as part of something larger, being less self-absorbed and distracted, is when that accidental/organic worship occurs. That's when the presence of something becomes more noticeable, more solid.

Paying more attention to it, I'd say that it feels like a fire in my blood. That which makes it flow and course through me. Not personified, except that the way it overlays me makes it feel almost feels ghostly human in that sense.

Right now I'm considering this Odin.