Difference between working with or venerating gods and spirits

[EclecticWheel]

Do you find there is a great difference between working with or venerating gods and spirits?

I have read about various gods but don't really know where to start with working with them because I don't have a religious structure for it, and I am very structured in my religious life.  Maybe I don't need an annual structure to work with a certain god from a different pantheon than my main cast of entities, but that's kind of how my brain works right now.  I'll have to think about it.

The main god I have venerated is Jesus, but he is also a human at least in orthodox thought, so he doesn't feel too different from a spirit to me.  Part of why I can relate to him is that he is well, human.  Other than that the main entities I venerate are saints, some traditional, some that I simply recognize as saints on my own.  And then there are the entities that are a part of my personal life, but since I know them personally they do not feel too foreign to me culturally or otherwise.

For those of you who have worked with both gods and spirits or venerated both, do you feel there is a difference in your experiences between the two?  I'm just wondering if there is since some neo-pagans don't feel drawn to gods at all and work solely with ancestors or other types of spirits.

[Eastling]

Do you find there is a great difference between working with or venerating gods and spirits?

By and large, no, but it's complicated.

For those of you who have worked with both gods and spirits or venerated both, do you feel there is a difference in your experiences between the two?  I'm just wondering if there is since some neo-pagans don't feel drawn to gods at all and work solely with ancestors or other types of spirits.

For me, making that kind of distinction in my practice would be virtually impossible, since the Powers I follow are so deeply concerned with the apotheosis of the mortal spirit. My primary Power is the apotheosis of a mortal man who, as a god, syncretizes with preexisting gods and goddesses. So does that count as divine or not? I don't know.

Most of my clearest communications have come from the Power identifying himself as that apotheosized mortal, and he seems more amenable to being channeled. But I don't know how much of that is dependent on him being "not a god" and how much is simply that different Powers manifest and communicate differently.

[Jainarayan]

Do you find there is a great difference between working with or venerating gods and spirits?

Absolutely! Not to offend or criticize anyone, but the term "working with" is like fingers on a blackboard to me. I worship the gods of my religion (Hinduism), and venerate and respect the gods of other religions I am familiar with, namely Norse, Taoist, and Buddhist (Tibetan Buddhism is fairly bursting with deities).

Working with implies a certain level of familiarity, equality and cooperation to get a job done. I am in no way remotely equal to the gods. They are not remote and aloof at all, but they are powerful and benevolent beyond understanding in my faith, and worthy of worship, though they don't demand or ask for it. The gods do not need me to help them accomplish anything.

[Jenett]

Do you find there is a great difference between working with or venerating gods and spirits?

My practice includes gods, ancestors, and beings without bodies who aren't either (mostly elemental guardians and to some degree elemental powers). I've also been doing a bit more work in the past year with planetary influences, which are sort of 'personification of thing' without necessarily being deities, even though there are also deity associations.

As I've said in other threads, I often use the term 'working with' as a broad term, because some of what I do is worship and veneration, and some of it is "M'Lady said write a thing, I am writing the thing." sometimes with me asking about the nature of what I'm doing and why. And sometimes it's "Go do this thing that involves having physical hands in this particular location." So even with deities, for me, there's something of a mix.

For me, the differences are partly flavour, and partly a sense of what it is reasonable to ask.

Deities, for me, have a lot more range and scope. Even though they specialise in various areas (like people do) and can't necessarily affect every area of life or respond with specific help tailored to every question, they do have a very broad scope when it comes to effect, in terms of where and how they might act. And they have a very long timeline.

I also feel like the deity relationships are the ones where the relationship is the dominant consideration. It's important to act with integrity and keep my promises for the others, to the greatest degree I can, but messing up there is not necessarily as relationship-damaging as messing up with the deities could be. Not because I think a lightning bolt is going to strike me out of the blue, but because it'd hurt a relationship I care about, and I do not want M'Lady (or others) disappointed in me.

Ancestors have a lot of wisdom, and can give great advice and support, but can't necessarily act (even once we get out of the physical realm). They're just in a place, in my experience, where acting on this world is not a thing that's really feasible.

(I do think it happens sometimes - that's why we have stories of ghosts, etc. - but in terms of 'actual meaningful action about specific situation, it's pretty rare.)

Guardians and elementals tend to be a lot more - well, in my cosmology, they're made of the element that they deal with, and they are limited in scope because unlike humans (alive and dead) and the Gods, they don't have all four elements (and arguably spirit) in their make up. This makes them really effective for some things, and not at all helpful for other things.

They also have the timeless sense of gods, but my experience has been they want acknowledgement, not worship. And certainly, a lot of Western magical tradition works with them as a series of agreements and negotiations, rather than worship or reverence. As people build up a history with the guardians, those negotiations often get a lot easier (like asking a friend to help with a thing, rather than going and hiring someone you've never worked with before) but there's still a negotiation aspect.

Things like planetary powers are a bit of both - a lot of my practices are in the liminal space between guardians and deities. I will light candles, make offerings, and so on - but it's partly transactional, in a "I am giving energy so that you can use this energy to do the things you do" where with deities, it is more "I am giving you energy because I honour and love you." At the same time, they have a broad scope, but not as broad as deities, and with fewer quirks of personality and personal history.

[Ashmire]

For those of you who have worked with both gods and spirits or venerated both, do you feel there is a difference in your experiences between the two?  I'm just wondering if there is since some neo-pagans don't feel drawn to gods at all and work solely with ancestors or other types of spirits.

I think it's very hard to exactly categorize.   I have some similarities with Eastling in that I'm primarily dealing with a fairly modern apotheosis( though not the same one), who does seem a bit easier to talk to than what I tend to think of privately/informally as the Big Gods, though mine doesn't so much seem to syncretize with other gods as socialize with them, but what stands out for me is the memory of one of my major, established deities dropping in on my doubts about this (nowadays) unconventional spiritual practice to inform me quite firmly and acerbically that there were in fact quite a few deified mortals in Ancient Egypt and it would be Very Strange Indeed if there had been no one worthy of that in the intervening 3000+ years, and if the rest of the Netjeru have no problem acknowledging my patron then I should quit worrying about it so much!   

Apart from that, Jenett's categorization list makes sense except it implies I've never dealt with any but deities (albeit often small ones) even though many people would call them just spirits.  Of course, if I was talking to someone who only had advice but couldn't affect anything, I'd be very likely to dismiss that as being simply another part of my own consciousness.

[Hariti]

Do you find there is a great difference between working with or venerating gods and spirits?

Not sure if you are asking about the difference between working with them and worshiping them, or the difference between Gods an Spirits. I *think* it's the latter?

[EclecticWheel]

Not sure if you are asking about the difference between working with them and worshiping them, or the difference between Gods an Spirits. I *think* it's the latter?

I see that wasn't phrased clearly.  The latter.

[arete]

Do you find there is a great difference between working with or venerating gods and spirits?

What is work with gods?