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Learning to Think Pantheonically

Och, I still cringe to think of it.

Back when I still knew everything, I made the mistake of arguing theology with a Hellene elder.

I was talking gods.

He was talking pantheons.

“Oh, pantheons,” I opined, as if I had even the slightest idea of what I was talking about. “I just put together my own.”

(In defense of my callowness, I can only say that this was the prevailing attitude of the day.)

“If you take a head from one statue,” he said, “and a torso from another, and an arm from yet another, and a leg from somewhere else, and you put them all together: the result may be a sculpture, but it isn't a statue.”

For the ancestors, tribal people all, the concept of a “personal pantheon” would have been unthinkable, a contradiction in terms, even a betrayal.

Polytheism ≠ serial monotheism.

It lies at the opposite pole from All gods are one god.

All gods are distinct.

So Thórr ≠ Perún ≠ Perkunas ≠ Zeus ≠ Jupiter ≠ Indra ≠ Ba'al ≠ Changó?

Yikes.

Although, in a History of Religions sense, I can see a certain merit-of-convenience to the hyper-Distinct school of thought, I have to ask myself: just how far does this extend? Is African Changó a different god from Brazilian? Is the Thunderer of my valley existentially distinct from the Thunderer of your valley next door?

If a dreary monism is the danger of “All gods are one god,” is not the danger of “All gods are distinct” atomization? Personally, when I see gods getting smaller and smaller, I worry.

Looking at pagan history, I note a pronounced tendency to look for one's own gods behind the masks of other people's.

"Don't mix pantheons."  I hear this frequently in Pagan circles.  I have heard it for as long as I have been Pagan.  And I've never heard it challenged.  The idea is that we aren't supposed to invoke Kali and Loki in the same ritual, for example, or Zeus and Odin, or ... pick two any deities from any two pantheons.

This injunction is often made by hard polytheists, but is made by some soft-polytheists too.  Often they are quite open about their disdain for those who mix pantheons.  It is seen as a form of immaturity or ignorance.  Others see it as a sign of disrespect.  I hear this no-mixing-pantheons talk so often, it seems it must happen a lot, so I wonder why all the pantheon-mixers aren't speaking up in their defense.