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Author Topic: How do you contact a god or godess?  (Read 5255 times)

ethelwulf

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How do you contact a god or godess?
« on: November 21, 2013, 10:41:53 am »
I hear about people connecting with certain gods or goddess and communicating to them. I must admit I have never talked to or communicated with a specific god and was wondering how people did this. Some of the descriptions I have read sound as if people have conversations with a god or goddess. I would like to know more about this. How do you communicate to the different gods. Where are they located so that you could communicate to them. Can you actually see them in person or is it more like a shamanic journey where you contact them. I am sorry I have never had such an experience yet. It also seems that they should be able to help us understand our unwritten past better. Can they explain more about our Ancestors and correct the misrepresentations that were given by the Christian, Roman and Greek writers?

savveir

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Re: How do you contact a god or godess?
« Reply #1 on: November 21, 2013, 10:59:33 am »
Quote from: ethelwulf;130141
I hear about people connecting with certain gods or goddess and communicating to them. I must admit I have never talked to or communicated with a specific god and was wondering how people did this. Some of the descriptions I have read sound as if people have conversations with a god or goddess. I would like to know more about this. How do you communicate to the different gods. Where are they located so that you could communicate to them. Can you actually see them in person or is it more like a shamanic journey where you contact them. I am sorry I have never had such an experience yet. It also seems that they should be able to help us understand our unwritten past better. Can they explain more about our Ancestors and correct the misrepresentations that were given by the Christian, Roman and Greek writers?


wait, what are you actually asking here?
If it's just the subject line, I suggest searching through older threads since I'm sure I've seen this topic a few times before and there's bound to be good reading there.
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Faemon

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Re: How do you contact a god or godess?
« Reply #2 on: November 21, 2013, 11:08:10 am »
Quote from: ethelwulf;130141
I would like to know more about this. How do you communicate to the different gods. Where are they located so that you could communicate to them.


Topic title question: I don't contact them. They thwap me. The last time I accidentally did, just because I knew the names and skim-read some wiki pages and found a godawful poem commanding them to do stuff, and meant it when I read it aloud... Well, I got a nightmare about the gods in question considering my attempt to summon them at my own whims very very funny.

When they do thwap me, mostly it's in dreams, sometimes it's in involuntary imagination, or some other altered state of mind. Rarely does it come with noticeable coincidences in ordinary life. These proportions can differ or the ways themselves can vary depending on the practitioner.

As for where they're located...I recently read this odd distinction between a tulpa and an imaginary friend. That is, a tulpa is supposed to come into your experience as if it existed outside of yourself, whereas imaginary friends are always in some mental landscape even if that mental landscape is identical to your outer one. As to how this applies to the gods, whether the experience is in your mind or before your eyes, spatial, temporal, or conceptual--all of them (I believe) can be valid.

Quote
Can you actually see them in person or is it more like a shamanic journey where you contact them.


Usually it's an altered state of mind, yes. You can imagine a happy place, and just sort of stay there until something surprises you: someone approaches, or you get the compulsion to imagine walking somewhere...

Quote
It also seems that they should be able to help us understand our unwritten past better. Can they explain more about our Ancestors and correct the misrepresentations that were given by the Christian, Roman and Greek writers?


Information from them outside of these representations are considered Unverified Personal Gnosis (UPG). While it's free to share those here, it can be notable how different they are for each person. Thus, one pagan contesting The Lore wouldn't really have their "correction" stick.

It's cool when UPG becomes SPG (Shared Personal Gnosis), but I think that's too rare to be reliable enough to trump lifelong (perhaps even non-pagan) scholars of the subject matter and history.
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Jenett

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Re: How do you contact a god or godess?
« Reply #3 on: November 21, 2013, 12:00:29 pm »
Quote from: ethelwulf;130141
Can you actually see them in person or is it more like a shamanic journey where you contact them. I am sorry I have never had such an experience yet. It also seems that they should be able to help us understand our unwritten past better. Can they explain more about our Ancestors and correct the misrepresentations that were given by the Christian, Roman and Greek writers?


As noted, there are a bunch of other threads about this, which may give you some idea of the kinds of experiences people have with it.
 
It depends. On the person. On the deity. On the time of year, sometimes. On specific circumstances.

I very rarely get anything like words from M'Lady, but I do get a strong sense of presence, of specific instruction,

There are ritual practices - Drawing Down, aspecting, channelling, where a deity can speak through a person. (These practices have some risks, have some potential for abuse, and should therefore, in my opinion, only be done with careful attention to managing both of those things.)

The thing is, what a deity says is what a deity wants to say. It's not "Oh, sit down, let's have a long comfy chat." Generally, they a) have other things they're also working on and b) the actual strain on the humans involved means it's just not a lengthy conversation at the best of times. (Most of the time, in my experience, you get maybe a paragraph of text per individual person/comment in a group ritual setting: in meditation that connects with a deity, you may get more time, but it's usually also at least something of a riddle: it's generally not straightforward "Follow these instructions" or an information dump.

There's a reason oracles needed interpretation, historically speaking, is what I'm saying.

You can think of it like being at a lecture by a highly-respected professor or expert in a field. They're going to say their thing, you might get a chance to ask a question or two, but it's probably going to be a pretty specific question, focused on a specific need, not "Tell me about your childhood!" or "Tell me about people who listened to you a couple of lecture stops ago!" though sometimes you can get a "So, if I wanted to get you an extra nice present, what would you like?" in there.

(And really - I also hold to the idea a couple of my elders do, that the deities continue to change and learn and grow. So they are, on the whole, somewhat less intersted in a couple of thousand years ago than they are in right now, just like we are generally less interested in what happened when we were 10, and more interested in right now. Sometimes when we were 10 is relevant, but mostly it's not, or only very briefly in passing.)

In terms of how - in Drawing Down, it's actually out loud (in the practices I'm familiar with, the deity may speak to the group, or they may speak briefly to individuals, or they may do a little of both. If they speak to individuals, it's quite common that the deity has a lot to say to some people, and less to say to others.)

In meditation, it's - well, meditation, astral work, whatever one calls it, where you're not on the physical plane. How one gets to that point depends on one's background, one's ritual methodology, the deity, and a whole bunch of other factors. (I tend not to have conversations in that setting, I tend to just suddenly know a bunch more data, without anyone actually refinining it into words. Which is useful on a number of levels, but not, y'know, like talking to humans.)

There's also, like I said, huge variation, between people and deities and so on, just like people. I've been in - four, five? - rituals where Brigid has been present via Drawing Down, and she has never had anything to say with me (and that's with at least four different people being the host for the Draw.) Half a sentence, maybe, that's it. (The most amusing of those was "My, you're short." Which, y'know, is not a stunning divine revelation, seeing as how I'm 5' and a half inch.)

Likewise, a group that assisted me with some brief work with M'Lady used to work regularly with Mab - in the spring time she would be volubly chatty, in the fall she was very no-nonsense and sparse. (And it took them doing repeated Draws at different times of year over the course of several years to be sure of the pattern, because there are Lots Of Variables at play.)

Short version: The Gods do what they will. Sometimes they give us a bit to chew on.
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ethelwulf

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Re: How do you contact a god or godess?
« Reply #4 on: November 21, 2013, 02:32:18 pm »
Quote from: Jenett;130149
As noted, there are a bunch of other threads about this, which may give you some idea of the kinds of experiences people have with it.
 
It depends. On the person. On the deity. On the time of year, sometimes. On specific circumstances.

I very rarely get anything like words from M'Lady, but I do get a strong sense of presence, of specific instruction,

There are ritual practices - Drawing Down, aspecting, channelling, where a deity can speak through a person. (These practices have some risks, have some potential for abuse, and should therefore, in my opinion, only be done with careful attention to managing both of those things.)

The thing is, what a deity says is what a deity wants to say. It's not "Oh, sit down, let's have a long comfy chat." Generally, they a) have other things they're also working on and b) the actual strain on the humans involved means it's just not a lengthy conversation at the best of times. (Most of the time, in my experience, you get maybe a paragraph of text per individual person/comment in a group ritual setting: in meditation that connects with a deity, you may get more time, but it's usually also at least something of a riddle: it's generally not straightforward "Follow these instructions" or an information dump.

There's a reason oracles needed interpretation, historically speaking, is what I'm saying.

You can think of it like being at a lecture by a highly-respected professor or expert in a field. They're going to say their thing, you might get a chance to ask a question or two, but it's probably going to be a pretty specific question, focused on a specific need, not "Tell me about your childhood!" or "Tell me about people who listened to you a couple of lecture stops ago!" though sometimes you can get a "So, if I wanted to get you an extra nice present, what would you like?" in there.

(And really - I also hold to the idea a couple of my elders do, that the deities continue to change and learn and grow. So they are, on the whole, somewhat less intersted in a couple of thousand years ago than they are in right now, just like we are generally less interested in what happened when we were 10, and more interested in right now. Sometimes when we were 10 is relevant, but mostly it's not, or only very briefly in passing.)

In terms of how - in Drawing Down, it's actually out loud (in the practices I'm familiar with, the deity may speak to the group, or they may speak briefly to individuals, or they may do a little of both. If they speak to individuals, it's quite common that the deity has a lot to say to some people, and less to say to others.)

In meditation, it's - well, meditation, astral work, whatever one calls it, where you're not on the physical plane. How one gets to that point depends on one's background, one's ritual methodology, the deity, and a whole bunch of other factors. (I tend not to have conversations in that setting, I tend to just suddenly know a bunch more data, without anyone actually refinining it into words. Which is useful on a number of levels, but not, y'know, like talking to humans.)

There's also, like I said, huge variation, between people and deities and so on, just like people. I've been in - four, five? - rituals where Brigid has been present via Drawing Down, and she has never had anything to say with me (and that's with at least four different people being the host for the Draw.) Half a sentence, maybe, that's it. (The most amusing of those was "My, you're short." Which, y'know, is not a stunning divine revelation, seeing as how I'm 5' and a half inch.)

Likewise, a group that assisted me with some brief work with M'Lady used to work regularly with Mab - in the spring time she would be volubly chatty, in the fall she was very no-nonsense and sparse. (And it took them doing repeated Draws at different times of year over the course of several years to be sure of the pattern, because there are Lots Of Variables at play.)

Short version: The Gods do what they will. Sometimes they give us a bit to chew on.

 
First thank you for your answer and those that answered above. I know this has been a thread before but there are things I do not still understand and I was looking to see if others had some answers. Again your answers are so good as they have in the past. My questions are not to question another persons belief but to help me understand better. I still do not know how one determines what god they are connecting with. There is some belief that at least some of the gods were not gods originally but over time become seen as a god. So how do you really know who you are connecting with?

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Re: How do you contact a god or godess?
« Reply #5 on: November 21, 2013, 03:51:23 pm »
Quote from: ethelwulf;130173
I still do not know how one determines what god they are connecting with. There is some belief that at least some of the gods were not gods originally but over time become seen as a god. So how do you really know who you are connecting with?

 
Some of your original questions in this thread are definitely discussed in some of the older threads, which is why I think both I and others pointed at them.

As far as "How does one know?"

How do I know who someone is that I meet for the first time? I go to professional (and other) conferences periodically, and it's pretty common for me to meet people where I don't know much about them other than we're at the same conference.

Usually, I'll have *some* sort of name to call them (which might or might not be their legal name, or the name they use at work, or the name their parents gave them.) I know they probably have some interest in whatever the conference is about.

But beyond that, we talk, I might ask a question or two, I compare the answers to other data and information. We go back and forth. Some things may match up with data I can check in other places (do they have a LinkedIn account? A website?) Sometimes, maybe, we know people in common, and I'll mention them to the friend, and get "Oh, yes, X is awesome, tell her I said hi!"  Over time, if I interact with them more, I'll see that either thigns are consistent, or inconsistent, or probably a bit of both (this thing they told me is more complicated than they initially implied, that thing is a thing they just didn't mention, whatever.)

Interacting with deities is not as different from that as it sounds like.

In my training, we were encouraged to learn about deities through research, and then to find a way to connect with them - in a very low-key way - through some sort of artistic or hands-on project. Later in our training, we did a specific meditation to help introduce to a deity who might be particularly interested in getting to know us.

(Some people got very strong and clear "this deity! over here!") contacts from that. Some people didn't. Some people - like me - got something that that took a lot more work to sort through.)

One can also decide that one is interested in exploring a relationship with a particular deity (maybe because that deity is associated with a particular passion or interest of theirs, or is from the area they live in, or has some other connection.)

Either way, the next step is usually some exploration - the same way you would with someone you met at a convention and wanted to learn more about/get more friendly with. You might spend some time setting up a simple shrine or reading mythology or resources (like you might spend time exchanging emails or reading someone's blog), for example.

Some of those relationships will blossom. Some of them won't. Sometimes they go very slowly, or they're relationships specific to a particular setting. (There are deities I have perfectly good relationships with, but they're very much "this one ritual most years", just like there are people I love to see at one convention, and don't talk much to the rest of the year.)

It's a process that very often can take years (just like it takes people months or years to progress from "Hey, you're interesting" to a wedding), though there may be parts of it that go much more quickly than others, too. Depends on a lot of factors.

As to "Is this a god?" - well. That depends. I tend to not worry about the origins of gods hugely, personally: I am convinced the ones I honour and worship are worthy of it, but beyond that, I am not overly fussed about their origins.

(Sort of like I am not horribly fussed about the parents of my friends, except when actually relevant to the friendship.)

I do believe it's very smart not to make a commitment to an entity until - as again, one of my favourite elders says - I am sure they love me beyond all reason (and I love them beyond all reason.) But that's not specific to deities: I would not get married again unless that were true, or mingle finances unless that were true, and there is a very limited number of people I'd desire to share housing with.

And yet, you notice, there's a recognition here that sometimes we get that wrong: I was married, am not divorced, have been for 8 years. People sometimes connect to a deity or to an entity, and then decide later that they can't continue - sometimes for good reasons, sometimes for reasons I think are misguided. But they're that person's relationships to have, and mostly it's not my business unless they're dragging me into the relationship drama somehow or I have responsibility for them (as I would for a student working toward initiation in my tradition, say.)

But that process? Very human, very normal. That it's a step forward, a step sideways, a step of "What the heck is going on here." a step of "Wait, is what this person is telling me real/meaningful/what I need?"

Relationships with deities are like that, too, just they tend to move at different timescales, and it's harder to insist the deity sit down and talk out your concerns on a given day and time. (Which is to say, there tends to be more stuff that is determined by them in the relationship, than by the humans involved, but the human still get to decide if they're going along with it or not.)

I'm going to recommend something fiction here, because it's the closest thing out there to my experience of building a relationship with deity - there's a series of light-magic fantasy books by Lois McMaster Bujold that have a five deity system (Father, Mother, Son, Daughter, and Bastard), all of whom have different interests, different goals, but also different interactions with humans over the course of the book.

The first one is _Curse of Chalion_, and the second one is _Paladin of Souls_, and they're particularly relevant to what deity asks of great service, and the ways some people are shaped for that service and other people aren't (and how, really, that variation is good for everyone involved.) There's a third book in the series, but it's somewhat less relevant here.
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ethelwulf

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Re: How do you contact a god or godess?
« Reply #6 on: November 21, 2013, 06:08:37 pm »
Quote from: Jenett;130189

In my training, we were encouraged to learn about deities through research, and then to find a way to connect with them - in a very low-key way - through some sort of artistic or hands-on project. Later in our training, we did a specific meditation to help introduce to a deity who might be particularly interested in getting to know us.


As to "Is this a god?" - well. That depends. I tend to not worry about the origins of gods hugely, personally: I am convinced the ones I honour and worship are worthy of it, but beyond that, I am not overly fussed about their origins.



.

 
Evidently I have not yet experience what you have. I still do not see how you know that it is a god you are communicating with. What do they do which allows you to identify them? I seriously want to find a way but have been unsuccessful. I also do not completely understand where the gods are. I had an impression that they were associated with the land whether a well, spring, mound, grove or other location.

Another question I still do not understand is if you can have a relationship then can you then can you find out more about them and start to answer the questions we have from the past. It would be amazing to be able to understand more about what was true from the past and what was not. This could certainly solve some of the confusion and disagreements we have about paganism. Have they ever been able to help you clarify what happened before Christianity took over in Europe? I am sorry if I have repeated things said before and will go back to see if I can find one of these threads but you have been so helpful. Thank you.

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Re: How do you contact a god or godess?
« Reply #7 on: November 21, 2013, 07:21:05 pm »
Quote from: ethelwulf;130208
Evidently I have not yet experience what you have.


Probably, not, nope. I've been doing this Pagan community thing since early 2000, and I had the great good fortune to have done my training in a metropolitan area with a widely-known and quite diverse Pagan community (plus all the awesome and informative people I've talked to over the years online. Hi, y'all.)

Which means I don't know everything, but I have a decent idea of what the scope and range and variation looks like in experience, and I've had the privilege of being in a number of ritual styles and implementations besides my own tradition.  

Quote

I still do not see how you know that it is a god you are communicating with. What do they do which allows you to identify them?


Fundamentally, the question for me isn't "Is this is a God." It's "Is this an entity I want to spend my time with, connect my energy with, help and commit to." And really, that gets run through the same set of checks whether we're talking Gods or humans.

I do believe that the deities I honour and worship are deities rather than some other kind of entity, or ancestor (and ancestor work is also a part of my tradition and my practice). But it's a belief, I don't really care if anyone else believes it, and what I actually care about is that it helps me live a better life, and helps me contribute to things that are important in the world.

In terms of identification - well, there's two modes, really. One is that you identify a specific deity you're interested. (In which case, it's roughly like going somewhere you know they'll be, and seeing if you can strike up a conversation.) The other is that you do some work to prepare yourself, and see who's curious (in which case, you have a lot of identification to do.)

M'Lady - the primary deity I serve in my personal work - is a deity I still don't have a name for that matches anything written, 11 years after finding her. I'm okay with that. I got some specific things she likes (useful when making offerings, though mostly she's not about the physical offerings, it's more a "If you're getting flowers *anyway*, I like these ones more than those ones.") I'm very clear about the work she wants me to do (via Drawing Down, via specific meditation work, via some other stuff.)

And there's still a ton I don't know. And I am largely fine with that. The researcher in me would sometimes like to know more. The rest of me understands that it's good for there to be things I can't organise and explain and align into tidy little spreadsheets and lists.

Quote

I seriously want to find a way but have been unsuccessful. I also do not completely understand where the gods are. I had an impression that they were associated with the land whether a well, spring, mound, grove or other location.


Some of them are. Some of them aren't.

You also should understand that when we're talking about gaining these experiences, most of us are talking about gaining them over a period of years. I had a very moving experience with someone else Drawing Down a deity early on in my group work (enough to convince me there was something REALLY REAL there - the deity in question quoted in paraphrase the last paragraph of a letter my father wrote to me before he died, at a time when I don't think the priestess in question knew more than that my father had been dead for a while. It wasn't quite word for word, but it was phrase for phrase by meaning.)

But it took me about a year after that to make any kind of interactive connection with M'Lady at all, and it took me about four more years to get enough more data points to feel reasonably confident about what she wanted me to do, and how I could serve her, and whether I wanted to make that whole-hearted commitment to her.

(Which I did, and I have, but it's a big deal, and not something anyone should do lightly.)

Quote

Another question I still do not understand is if you can have a relationship then can you then can you find out more about them and start to answer the questions we have from the past. It would be amazing to be able to understand more about what was true from the past and what was not.


I don't know how to say this more clearly than I did upthread. It's just not that relevant to them. It's not the thing They seem to want to talk about. Like I said, even if very direct explicit communication (like through a Drawing Down ritual or something similar) you might get a paragraph or two of communication. If you're lucky, it's not all riddles.

Expecting them to sit down and talk about the past is really like someone sitting you down and expecting you to talk about what you had for lunch on Wednesday, October 15th, 1975. It's not that it might never come up - but they have been in my experience, and in the experience of a lot of other people I've talked to, a lot more interested either in what's happening right now (or in the coming future) or a lot less attached to time in general.

I also sort of think that sorting out history is a human sort of thing. They were there. They don't need to sort it out. If they think we need help sorting it out, they might tell us, but mostly, it seems to be that "Yeah, that odd hobby you have? Have fun doing it, but I'm going to be over here while you're busy with that."

Which, really is fine. Beings get to have their own interests.
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ethelwulf

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Re: How do you contact a god or godess?
« Reply #8 on: November 22, 2013, 02:22:36 am »
Quote from: Jenett;130223

Expecting them to sit down and talk about the past is really like someone sitting you down and expecting you to talk about what you had for lunch on Wednesday, October 15th, 1975. It's not that it might never come up - but they have been in my experience, and in the experience of a lot of other people I've talked to, a lot more interested either in what's happening right now (or in the coming future) or a lot less attached to time in general.

I also sort of think that sorting out history is a human sort of thing. They were there. They don't need to sort it out. If they think we need help sorting it out, they might tell us, but mostly, it seems to be that "Yeah, that odd hobby you have? Have fun doing it, but I'm going to be over here while you're busy with that."

Which, really is fine. Beings get to have their own interests.

 
Your answer as always is amazing. During your experiences did the gods indicate they are in contact with each other or have awareness of each other or the Christian god? I would also like to know how the feel about the god of Islam and the goal of the Muslims to eliminate all non-believers of the god of Abraham? Sorry for so many questions but the thought that we can actually communicate with the gods is amazing. The knowledge we could gain seems endless. There are so many mysteries of the world can now be understood if the will help us.  I guess I never thought that we could have so much personal communication but I am pleasantly surprised and hope I am honored with them.  I looked up some of the sources you have suggested .

Is there a thread already present that describes some of what people have learned from the gods. There must be a way to spread their wisdom.

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How do you contact a god or godess?
« Reply #9 on: November 22, 2013, 03:53:55 am »
Quote from: ethelwulf;130208
Evidently I have not yet experience what you have. I still do not see how you know that it is a god you are communicating with. What do they do which allows you to identify them? I seriously want to find a way but have been unsuccessful. I also do not completely understand where the gods are. I had an impression that they were associated with the land whether a well, spring, mound, grove or other location.

Another question I still do not understand is if you can have a relationship then can you then can you find out more about them and start to answer the questions we have from the past. It would be amazing to be able to understand more about what was true from the past and what was not. This could certainly solve some of the confusion and disagreements we have about paganism. Have they ever been able to help you clarify what happened before Christianity took over in Europe? I am sorry if I have repeated things said before and will go back to see if I can find one of these threads but you have been so helpful. Thank you.

In my opinion, when we experience the gods, we filter them through a lens of our own knowledge, cultural background, etc. We can't have direct access to them without these filters - we wouldn't be able to interpret what they were saying, because it would be so different from human existence and communication. There are good reasons, again in my opinion, why the Bible is full of examples of people having to have mediated conversations with their god (through a burning bush, or while looking away) - the theory in the Bible is that the listeners would burn up if they saw their god face to face, but I wonder if it's more a metaphor for the way we simply wouldn't understand *really* direct communication with the gods. Our brains work as pattern-finders - we don't deal with free-floating things, disconnected from culture and society, very well.

So of course we're not going to hear the full details of history from them. For a start, they see history VERY differently from us - they have a totally different vantage point on it, since our concerns are not their concerns. Secondly, when we filter them through a lens of our own cultural and social understanding, we fit them into our own mental boxes, based on our research and current understanding. We don't see them as the timeless beings they are. Not only could we not cope with their view of history, but also our brains are socially constructed things, and we filter stuff. Anything the gods tells us has to pass through our filters. (Again, this is my own theology and YMMV.)

So, for example, if I'm talking to a goddess and my socio-cutural filters kick in and I interpret her as the Morrigan, I believe she'll either be OK with that, or if not, she'll let me know otherwise. Does this mean I could have been talking to the 'wrong' gods all along? It's entirely possible. But they'll let me know if they're not happy with what I call them. Even if the conclusion, based on my limited knowledge, has to be that I don't have a name for them - just a presence. This was actually the case with a deity I was aware of, until very recently, when I worked out who she was. It's taken me three years, and there are plenty of people who work with unnamed deities for much longer than that, or forever. AND it's still possible that all I've found is a name and identity that she's happy to 'fit into', rather than her *actual* identity, which could be lost in the entropy of centuries passing.
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How do you contact a god or godess?
« Reply #10 on: November 22, 2013, 04:01:02 am »
Quote from: ethelwulf;130248
Is there a thread already present that describes some of what people have learned from the gods. There must be a way to spread their wisdom.

That's (sometimes) called UPG, and it's individual and very varied. I doubt there's one place where it's all being collected. First, it would contradict itself all over the place, because of these cultural filters we pour things through. SPG is rare, because we are all different, especially in our interpretations. Second, why would people want to share private, personal and sacred revelations with the whole internet? Some people might want to share some of it, but most of it will be too personal. Third, a site with UPG from gods ranging from Greek and Gaelic to Egyptian and Slavic would be very messy, and much of it would be irrelevant to most people. Like Jenett said, the things that the gods reveal to us are not usually of the "...and then the Romans defeated the Gauls at this location" type, but more of the "...and here's another thing that's important to me, that I want to be important to you" type.
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Re: How do you contact a god or godess?
« Reply #11 on: November 22, 2013, 04:25:02 am »
Quote from: ethelwulf;130248
I would also like to know how the feel about the god of Islam and the goal of the Muslims to eliminate all non-believers of the god of Abraham?

 
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Re: How do you contact a god or godess?
« Reply #12 on: November 22, 2013, 04:25:26 am »
Quote from: ethelwulf;130248
Sorry for so many questions but the thought that we can actually communicate with the gods is amazing. The knowledge we could gain seems endless. There are so many mysteries of the world can now be understood if the will help us.

 
The deities do not exist for your benefit, but (not unlike human-type people!) exist because they exist, and get to have their own agency and priorities. Usually when we say, 'the gods are not vending machines,' around here, it's in response to someone who expects the deities to give love or luck or material wealth on request... but the deities are also not vending machines of information/knowledge.

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Re: How do you contact a god or godess?
« Reply #13 on: November 22, 2013, 08:15:08 am »
Quote from: ethelwulf;130248
Your answer as always is amazing. During your experiences did the gods indicate they are in contact with each other or have awareness of each other or the Christian god? I would also like to know how the feel about the god of Islam and the goal of the Muslims to eliminate all non-believers of the god of Abraham?

Assuming for the moment that you were not intending to religion bash, my personal experience is that the deities I've been in communication with are certainly aware of the Christian deity but don't interact with said deity much. The God of Islam is supposedly the same God, but that may or may not actually be true (as far as I can tell, for example, the God of the Protestant fundie Christians certainly is not the same deity as the standard Christian God worshipped by most -- even Fundamentalist -- Christians). I've never had a deity I have interacted with mention any contact with the God of Islam which might mean that He simply pretends other deities do not exist, refuses to interact with others, or the like.
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Re: How do you contact a god or godess?
« Reply #14 on: November 22, 2013, 09:28:42 am »
Quote from: RandallS;130271
Assuming for the moment that you were not intending to religion bash, my personal experience is that the deities I've been in communication with are certainly aware of the Christian deity but don't interact with said deity much. The God of Islam is supposedly the same God, but that may or may not actually be true (as far as I can tell, for example, the God of the Protestant fundie Christians certainly is not the same deity as the standard Christian God worshipped by most -- even Fundamentalist -- Christians). I've never had a deity I have interacted with mention any contact with the God of Islam which might mean that He simply pretends other deities do not exist, refuses to interact with others, or the like.

 
I am not bashing any religion but simply presented one of the goals that Islam has or at least had in history. There are historic records that explain that one of the goals of Islam was to remove other beliefs. They would tolerate Christianity and Judaism because they believed in the same god of Abraham. This still came at a cost to Jews and Christians including a financial penalty and a loss of  political power. The slaughter of pagan by the Muslims is well documented in history.

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