{"id":417,"date":"2009-11-12T13:32:21","date_gmt":"2009-11-12T13:32:21","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/apagansblog\/2009\/11\/are-the-gods-in-us.html"},"modified":"2009-11-12T13:32:21","modified_gmt":"2009-11-12T13:32:21","slug":"are-the-gods-in-us","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/apagansblog\/2009\/11\/are-the-gods-in-us.html","title":{"rendered":"Are the Gods in Us?"},"content":{"rendered":"

Some interesting comments about my “Drawing Down the Moon”
\npiece in “12 Things…” have prompted me to offer a longer discussion, based mostly on
\nmy personal experience.  <\/span><\/p>\n

<\/p>\n


\nAre the Gods in us or outside us?  <\/span>So much depends on what we mean by “us.”  <\/span>I became Wiccan after I encountered the
\nGoddess, and She was most definitely outside me, a separate personality.  <\/span>I was a guest at my first Sabbat, not
\nin a particularly open frame of mind (I was compulsively punctual and this was
\nan example of Pagan Standard Time at its worst) and was standing far from the
\ncenter of the action.  <\/span>Her arrival
\ncame immediately after She was invoked. 
\n<\/span>Like flicking a light switch.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

I encountered the Goddess that time when She was being drawn
\ndown into the priestess.  <\/span>The
\nexperience had every dimension of encountering Someone quite different from
\nmyself: wiser, more loving, more powerful, more beautiful – and all to many
\norders of magnitude.  <\/span>We had enough
\nin common that I could recognize those qualities as perfections of what I
\ncarried as seeds or small shoots.<\/p>\n

Much later the same being, or so She seems to me, made a
\nshorter but more personal contact when She was drawn down into a high priestess
\nin a Esbat.  <\/span>There was one other
\ntime of strong contact and a few others not so strong, almost entirely
\nunexpected and sometimes separate from ritual of any sort.  <\/span>In none of them was She ‘in’ me in the
\nway She would be in a Priestess drawing down the moon.<\/p>\n

When the God was drawn down on me,
\nmy experience was of a being very different from me – imagine masculinity minus
\nany fears, insecurities, desires to control, etc., etc – that I was changed by
\nthe encounter.  <\/span>My teacher in these
\nmatters describes these experiences as a “tuning” where our vibrations,
\nso to speak, are drawn into greater harmony with the Gods – a bit by bit
\nprocess to be sure, but one that fits my experience.<\/p>\n

Again, speaking from my
\nexperience, the gods do not come equally strongly to everyone or to any one all
\nthe time.  <\/span>They appear to have
\ntheir own agendas.  <\/span>They can appear
\nunexpectedly and fail to appear when expected.  <\/span>But almost always they appear in ritual space. <\/span><\/p>\n

Last February I was on a panel at
\nPantheacon. http:\/\/www.pantheacon.com\/<\/a>  <\/span>We were asked to discuss the nature of
\nthe Gods.  <\/span>One thing that a great
\nmany of us agreed about – and no one challenged – was that an encounter with
\ndeity was an encounter with something that seemed more real than we were or
\nthis world was.  <\/span>Thos was not a
\ndenigration on our part of either the world or ourselves but rather an
\nacknowledgement of the extraordinary qualities of deities.<\/p>\n

This can only plausibly be a “Thou art Goddess Thou art God”
\nkind of experience from a monistic perspective – we contact what lies at our
\ndeepest core – and while I happen to be a monist, using the same reasoning, you
\nare me and I am you.  <\/span>I think there
\nis a sense where that is true, importantly true – but there is an important
\nsense where it misses the point. 
\n<\/span>To live in this world I need to differentiate between you and me, and
\nsimilarly, I need to differentiate between myself and a God.<\/p>\n

Other Traditions<\/b><\/p>\n

My view is strengthened by the long existence of other Pagan
\ntraditions centered on incorporating deities and spirits into humans during
\nritual time.<\/p>\n

I will never forget the first time I was a guest at a
\nBrazilian Umbanda<\/a> drumming ceremony. 
\n<\/span>I sat in the back because I was unsure what was going on, and wanted
\nsimply to watch.  <\/span>As the drumming
\ngot stronger I found my body was twitching.  <\/span>“Energy releases” I thought, and tried to sit still.  <\/span>They got stronger, until the man in
\ncharge, who was in trance with a Caboclo, a kind of Indian spirit, suddenly
\nstopped the drumming, and wordlessly motioned for me to come forward.<\/p>\n

I got up and walked up to where he was, completely convinced
\nthat I was considered disruptive and would be asked to leave. Instead, he
\ntouched my forehead and the nape of my neck, and motioned for the drummers to
\nbegin again.  <\/span>When they did, my
\nfeet started dancing – but I was not involved.  <\/span>I had the impression that with great will I could probably
\nstop, but was too amazed and fascinated to do that.  <\/span>I went along with it, dancing alone in front of a crowd who
\nI scarcely knew.  <\/span>This was about as
\nout of character as it could be.  I was an still am far too shy (as well as being a mediocre dancer) for that kinds thing.<\/p>\n

The guy in charge knew what was likely to happen, I had
\nabsolutely no idea.  <\/span>At that point
\nno one else had entered into possessory trance.  <\/span>No words were exchanged between us.  <\/span>I ended up working closely with him for
\n6 years, but that’s another story. <\/span><\/p>\n

In the Brazilian traditions, and African Diasporic
\ntraditions generally, different spirits are associated with all manner of
\nthings.  <\/span>The same is true for
\ntraditions in Asia, the Americas, and elsewhere.  <\/span>Some are Gods and Goddesses, some were human, some are
\npowers of nature, some seems mixes of these qualities.  <\/span>But while some of their behavior seems
\nclearly tailored for the tradition of which they are a part, the basic
\nphenomena encountered in trance do not seem to be simply parts of our inner
\npsyches.<\/p>\n

I do not want to carry this discussion into too much depth
\nand sublety because we are discussing concepts which themselves have no settled
\nmeaning.  <\/span>What is our inner psyche,
\nour inner self, consciousness, and so on. 
\n<\/span>But I experience these beings as quite independent of myself, and see
\nlittle experiential evidence that they are part of me, unless I assume my
\npsyche\/self\/spirit has firm boundaries, and that awareness cannot exist outside
\nof what we consider a physical body. 
\n<\/span>I think both of these assumptions are mistaken.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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