PaganSquare.com - WitchesAndPagans.com PaganSquare is a community blog space where Pagans can discuss topics relevant to the life and spiritual practice of all Pagans.
A “Theological” Short
In Bollywood, films about the gods are known as “theologicals.”
The Gods are rehearsing a play.
As the Old Gods act onstage, the Younger Gods stand backstage as chorus. One of the Younger Gods, though, keeps dashing onstage and interfering with the action.
Finally the Great Mother, who is directing the show, can't stand it anymore.
“Knock it off, Yahweh,” she remonstrates. Her mouth twists wryly. “Younger Gods should be heard, but not seen.”
The Old Gods laugh.
Is an electron one, or many?
Is an atom one, or many?
Is a cell one, or many?
Is a body one, or many?
Is a flock one, or many?
Is a coven one, or many?
Is a tribe one, or many?
Is a people one, or many?
Is a land one, or many?
Is a planet one, or many?
Is a solar system one, or many?
Is a galaxy one, or many?
Is what is, one or many?
“The disunity of the monotheisms is proof of polytheism.”
Bruner Soderberg
It's a Golden Age of polytheist theology, and I'm very much looking forward to reading Gus diZerega's God Is Dead, Long Live the Gods: A Case for Polytheism. If what I've seen of his work in the past is anything to go by, I'm expecting a crisply-expressed, thought-provoking argument.
But first I've got a question: In order to make a credible intellectual case for polytheism, do we really need to start with a deconstruction of monotheism? In order to prove polytheism coherent, must one first prove monotheism incoherent?
Here's the Table of Contents:
Introduction 1
Polytheistic “Monotheism” 9
How “Monotheism” Dissolved into Polytheism 31
The Incoherence of Monotheism 51
Science, Monotheism, and the Death of the World 75
Polytheistic Experiences 99
Science and the Spirit 123
The Living World: From the Many, One 147
The Living World: Mind and Culture 167
The Case for Polytheism 189
Bibliography 211
If my math is accurate (never a good assumption), to judge from what we see here, nearly half of the book—half!—is devoted to discussing monotheism, and—as I gather from the “See inside” extracts—Abrahamic monotheism in particular. (There are, of course, other kinds.)
OK, well. The sons (I use the term advisedly) of Abraham have been a major force in Western religion for the last 1500+ years or so, and most modern pagans (in the West, anyway) have grown up in an intellectual environment shaped by, in particular, the Christianities.
Still, it would seem to me that if polytheist modalities of thought have any validity, they should surely be able to stand on their own two (or however many) hooves. On current evidence (such as it is), polytheist worldviews would seem to have got along just fine on their own recognizance for oh, say about fifty thousand years or so. Historically speaking—for all their latter-day success—the Abraham religions are an aberration, a blip. Given this fact, do we really need to set about proving polytheism by first disproving monotheism? Why must monotheism be our point of departure? Aren't we tired of talking about monotheism yet? I, for one, sure am tired of hearing about it.
Curse you, Narendra Modi.
You're shooting all my nice, simplistic binaries to bloody red rags.
Monotheism = narrow-minded, intolerant, exclusionist.
Polytheism = broad-minded, accepting, inclusionist.
Here's a nice, pat example of Binary-Think that I suspect many pagans are familiar with. History provides us with just enough buttressing examples to make it look almost convincing.
Then along comes bloody-minded Indian premier Narendra Modi with his anti-Muslim Hindutva-Think, thus proving—insofar, at least, as Hinduism may be said to be polytheistic—that polytheists are just as capable of narrow, intolerant, exclusionary thinking (and behavior) as any monotheist.
As if we didn't already know as much from our own community.
Of course, we could make excuses.
We could say: Hinduism isn't really polytheist.
We could say: Hindutva isn't Hinduism, it's a misuse of Hinduism.
We could say: They're not real Hindus.
These, of course, are the same lame, unsatisfying excuses that everyone else makes when their co-religionists act badly.
Or, with a little more thought, we could say: In the policies of the Indian Right we see polytheism aping monotheism at its worst.
We could say: Here we see polytheism reconceived monotheistically.
Monotheism is better than polytheism because...
...it's easier. With monotheism, you never have to waste time wondering “Which god?” You'll already know.
...it's cheaper. Gods are like children: the more you have, the more it costs to keep them all happy. Think of what you could do with all that extra time and money.
...it's more unifying. Having different gods is just one more thing for people to fight about. Imagine how much more peaceful and conflict-free the world will be when everyone, everywhere, worships the same god!
...it's simpler. Think how much simpler life will be when humans are the only beings that have rights. In polytheism, you always have to be worrying about the rights of animals, trees, stones, rivers, mountains. In a monotheist world, you can forget about all that. They don't have any.
...it's more psychologically healthy. In a polytheist world, you always have to be thinking about relationships. In monotheism, on the other hand, you only have to look out for Number One.
It's a Golden Age of polytheist publishing.
To incisive works such as John Michael Greer's World Full of Gods and Steven Dillon's A Case for Polytheism, we can now add W. D. Wilkerson's Walking with the Gods, in which 24 (counting Wilkerson herself, 25) contemporary polytheists tell their own stories. It's a pioneering, and invaluable, study of Polytheism-as-Lived in the modern world.
Sigh. If only the news were better.
