Two, One, or Many?

I've been meditating on the nature of Deity. As a Wiccan, I was taught that there are 2 Deities; the Goddess and her Consort/Son the God. But are they really 2 separate or just two sides of one divine coin, unknowable and beyond human earthly concepts of gender? My friend Rufus calls this one All That Is. . For S/he split into two halves that S/he may know love and separation. Enya sings that this deity is Love, pure and simple. My Significant Other Lachlan RainDancer believes in one all encompassing goddess and many demigods and demi-goddesses. When he is confronted by jezoids on the street asking him if he's found Jesus yet, to which he replies in a high dudgeon "Have you lost your deity again? I swear you jezoids are always losing your deity. I know where my Deity is. She is under the concrete under my feet, and in the vacant lot over there, in the air I breathe, and the Sun that shines on my face, and in my cats at home, to name but a few. She is also in me and in my Significant Other."


Men have debated the nature of Deity for millennia. Some people aren't certain they have the right answer unless they can force others to believe as they do, which is then the motivating force behind many wars which have killed millions of people and laid waste thousands of acres of land, which would be better used to raise crops to feed the hungry or for pastureland for livestock. I asked a few other Pagans about the concept of Deity. My housemate Stephen Abbott said, "Deity is basically a force of nature." This was how primitive wo/man saw Deity, which is a pretty pantheistic animistic view shared by thousands of Pagans worldwide. Debbie Babcock said: "Deity is a higher power, an endless supply of knowledge and wisdom for us to learn from." She has a more modern view of Deity, as a source of information, much as many scientists view the uni/multi-verse, as being a construct of information. My old school friend Li I started from the position of Deity being infinite potential. In Cherokee, the name is Yona, an infinite/eternal mystery.


Stefan's friend Tina says that it's "One god that we can't conceive of. This deity all that old gods come from, Who is beyond human understanding. This is not meant to be, by any means, a complete survey of how Pagans view the Deity. If it leaves you with more burning questions than you had at the beginning of this reading then I am doing my job well. One man once said that he lay down with Faith, and in the morning his bride was a withered old hag and then he lay down with Doubt and in the morning she was as fair and beautiful maiden as the first dew of May. I think that each person must apprehend Deity for him or herself. No two people apprehend Deity in exactly the same way although there might be similarities, because no two people, even in the same family, have exactly the same living experience, ur way of seeing the world. Paganism is one system where each of us is allowed to have our own way of apprehending Deity. Some Pagans see the Mighty Ones as archetypes, which goes along with psychologist Carl Jung's view. The important thing is that we can work together in a circle to bring down upon the earth plane the fruition of our collective will.


How do you see Deity? How do you see the Mighty Ones? How did you come to develop this concept of Divinity? What did you start out with? These are all questions which I ask you the reader, and you can put your answers down in the comments or replies to this blog.