Gods of Place (when you move away)

[PetitAlbert]

How do people feel about revering gods of a specific place, at a distance?

I recently went to the shrine of Sulis, goddess of the hot springs of Bath. I want to keep reaching out (otherwise it feels a bit rude/one-and-done - I know historically people made pilgrimages there when they needed something, but that doesn't sit right with me)

But - she's *specifically* the goddess of *that particular hot spring*. Anyone have a similar experience?

[Liberty]

How do people feel about revering gods of a specific place, at a distance?

I recently went to the shrine of Sulis, goddess of the hot springs of Bath. I want to keep reaching out (otherwise it feels a bit rude/one-and-done - I know historically people made pilgrimages there when they needed something, but that doesn't sit right with me)

But - she's *specifically* the goddess of *that particular hot spring*. Anyone have a similar experience?

 
I believe they choose you. Whatever your 'conscience' and the 'signs' are telling you to do. Not much of an answer I know.

[PetitAlbert]

I believe they choose you. Whatever your 'conscience' and the 'signs' are telling you to do. Not much of an answer I know.

 
No, it's a fab answer ^_^

I've been practicing for a while, and personally I've moved away from waiting for gods to make the first move. Some people seem to have the skill of reading signs and receiving nudges, but I never have, and I've never been "chosen" or "thwapped" as they say. So now I'm more with picking a deity who seems interesting and who might have something to offer me, and vice versa, researching their preferences and the history of their cult, and doing that for a bit. Not quite so cool I know :p And I haven't had any better luck with this than waiting, in terms of contact.

[Liberty]

No, it's a fab answer ^_^

I've been practicing for a while, and personally I've moved away from waiting for gods to make the first move. Some people seem to have the skill of reading signs and receiving nudges, but I never have, and I've never been "chosen" or "thwapped" as they say. So now I'm more with picking a deity who seems interesting and who might have something to offer me, and vice versa, researching their preferences and the history of their cult, and doing that for a bit. Not quite so cool I know :p And I haven't had any better luck with this than waiting, in terms of contact.

 
I'm just learning I've been schizophrenic for a couple years and then a few weeks ago I woke up in the middle of the night hearing a voice saying I'm saving your worthless life and all the insane hundreds it seems like of differents voices have disappeared and now I just hear three voices consistently well four but the two female say they are aspects of the same 'goddess'. So they have given me back my sanity and drove out the the masses of voices that have put me in the hospital and jails for the last two years. So I like to think I was chosen. Hope that inspires you some it sure does me.

[Jenett]

How do people feel about revering gods of a specific place, at a distance?

I recently went to the shrine of Sulis, goddess of the hot springs of Bath. I want to keep reaching out (otherwise it feels a bit rude/one-and-done - I know historically people made pilgrimages there when they needed something, but that doesn't sit right with me)

 
So, there's two different things here.

First, yes, shrines and temples were pilgrimage destinations, but the point of a pilgrimage destination is sort of fundamentally partly that it isn't the place you worship at all the time. (The journey is part of the point, etc. etc.)

But - she's *specifically* the goddess of *that particular hot spring*. Anyone have a similar experience?

One of my primary deity relatonships is with a water deity of somewhere in England (not Sulis! That would be too easy, apparently!) and I'm over here in America, and she first started being present in my life when I was living in Minnesota (the land of ten thousand lakes, so if it'd just been 'water deities are us' like I sort of am anyway, you'd think there'd be somewhere closer.)

But no.

There are times it's a little complicated for me (Research, for one. Figuring out how to turn the emotional experience of deity connection into something sustainable, for two.) But it's also a relationship that's been part of my life for 13 years now, so something appears to be working.

A thought that works for me is that I don't believe that deities are generally single dimension like that anyway. (Spirits of place, yes, maybe. But deities are bigger than that.) So a deity might be a deity of a particular place or well or river - but they may also have other things they do.

The parallel I use to explain sometimes is that I'm a librarian, and I work at a particular library, doing a particular job. I don't *stop* being a librarian when I'm not at work, though.

That means I might answer questions about things that are not my get-paid-for-it-job, but it also means I might know and help with other things - knitting, or how to do a thing on the computer, or giving a friend a ride, or cooking, or - well, lots of things. Multifaceted, even if some facets are a lot more obvious or public facing.

[PetitAlbert]

Hmmm, intriguing. I especially like this:

A thought that works for me is that I don't believe that deities are generally single dimension like that anyway. (Spirits of place, yes, maybe. But deities are bigger than that.) So a deity might be a deity of a particular place or well or river - but they may also have other things they do.

Which makes a lot of sense. I'll keep doing what I'm doing and see if I get anywhere

[keen]

How do people feel about revering gods of a specific place, at a distance?

I recently went to the shrine of Sulis, goddess of the hot springs of Bath. I want to keep reaching out (otherwise it feels a bit rude/one-and-done - I know historically people made pilgrimages there when they needed something, but that doesn't sit right with me)

But - she's *specifically* the goddess of *that particular hot spring*. Anyone have a similar experience?

Digging this one up for the sake of promoting more discussion around here, and because I had a relevant experience a few months ago.

So last month I moved to Canada. Big move. Said goodbye to all my friends and family, to my regular haunts, to the rhythm of a city and bioregion I'd called home for almost 30 years. I was moving away from the yearly sun movements that I knew, familiar flora and fauna, familiar weather patterns... and familiar genus loci.

I'd visited Vancouver plenty of times over the years, and spent the better part of an entire year here back in 2015, and what I always found disorienting during my visits both long and short was how my 'signal clarity' for gods and spirits seemed to outright break every time. Since then I've spoken with some friends of mine about why that may be - a large part of it I can blame on all the time I spent living in desert environments, and the kinds of spirits you tend to encounter in places like that. Versus... a temperate rainforest, which is an entirely different beast. The one is slow, quiet, unyielding, with pockets of spirit activity and long stretches of a certain kind of patient stillness. The other is teeming with activity, always changing, shifting, moving. The result, for me, coupled with my gut's unfamiliarity with the local ecosystems and weather and drastically different march of daylight, was a kind of white noise that I didn't know how to recalibrate to. So every time I visited, I felt acutely spiritually isolated.

But I was moving, whether or not my sensitivity was ready for it, so I did the only thing I could think of: ask some of my old genus loci to come with me.

It was a risky move, and I had no idea how it would turn out in the end. That ritual was one one of the most powerful I'd ever done in all my 16 years of practicing, and it required a not insignificant sacrifice to be made to show the spirits that I was serious, and that I was ready to take on the responsibility of caring for them in an unfamiliar land. Three in all stepped forward, and the place of power I'd gone to do the ritual sent me home with a gift as well.

What I think the ritual did, in more technical terms, was bind those spirits to me rather than to those hills where I first encountered them. This experience has taught me that for spirits of place, the 'place' portion of their existence is vital. So if you remove them from their place, then you'd best provide them with another that's satisfactory so they can make the adjustment.

Gods, obviously, are different. They are much less proximal beings, truly incorporeal in that they don't require such a narrow physical/material locus. (If the whole planet goes, well, that's another matter.) But they do have preferences. Most of them don't care, but some of them do. I've reached out to gods from other parts of the world before, and have been very gently and politely turned down because they prefer to stick "closer to home" you might say. (Or at least that was the reason I was given.) It happens.

Also know that when you transplant gods, sometimes they... change in response. My storm god, for instance, is thousands of miles away from where he was originally worshiped, and my experience of him shifted accordingly. From rainforest to desert to rainforest again - however, his core mysteries are still powerful as ever. Now, he increasingly appears to me as an old man of the sea, white-haired and white-bearded, dressed in black at the prow of a fishing vessel. Contrast that with the looming, crocodile-skinned friend of farmers that I thought started getting to know 7 years ago! And again, when we move away from the ocean, he will change then again too. But still, I'll always be contemplating the same mysteries and calling him by the same name.

What's helped me since I moved was to become more rigorous and disciplined in my daily observances, and do all I can to pay attention to how things feel here and learn to move to this very different beat. The one keeps me grounded in something familiar, something that I know for a fact is a source of spiritual power, giving me a solid foundation from which I feel comfortable reaching out to this new place without getting swept away by indecipherable noise.