POLYTHEISM
poly’thēĭzəm [Gr. poly = many, Theos = God],
- The belief in and worship of multiple deities, called gods and goddesses. These are usually assembled into a pantheon, along with their own mythologies and rituals. Many religions, both historical and contemporary, have a belief in polytheism, such as Hinduism, Buddhism, Shinto, Ancient Greek Polytheism, Roman Polytheism, Germanic Polytheism, Slavic polytheism, Chinese folk religion, Neopagan faiths and Anglo-Saxon paganism.
PANTHEISM
păn’thēĭzəm [Gr. pan = all, Theos = God]
- A name used to denote any system of belief or speculation that includes the teaching “God is all, and all is God.” Pantheism, in other words, identifies the universe with God or God with the universe.
Removing gender and sexual bias from pagan practice goes beyond being politically correct. It removes from our pagan practice biases which may burden us and create barriers for others. It puts into action our belief in the immanence of spirit in all things and in all persons. It acknowledges the equal value of all persons and of their unique expression of life.
Balance in all things, including male and female energies. We all have male and female energies, regardless of our gender. The relationship between both is an important mystery in the traditions of the craft.
GOD AND GODDESS
Janet & Stewart Farrar, authors of books such as the Witches Bible and The Witches Way write, “The supreme creative polarity is that of the Goddess and God principles, for without polarity, from divinity downwards, there can be no manifestation, as above so below.”
This polarity principal is associated with right and left brain activity of the human mind. The masculine principal is the linear, logical, and fertilizing aspect with its emphasis on ego-consciousness and personal individuality; the feminine principal is associated with the cyclical-intuitive, nourishing aspect, with its emphasis on the vastness of the unconscious. Carl Jung, the famous Swiss Psychologist, identifies the most fundamental archetypes as the symbol encompassing the rich feminine principle, the Anima, and its masculine counterpart, the Animus. Both are present within every human psyche, regardless of gender. The Anima and Animus have to be in balance before a person achieves spiritual wholeness. “The Great Goddess is the incarnation of the feminine self that unfolds in the history of mankind as well as the history of every woman (Erich Neuman, The Great Mother: An Analysis of the Archetype, 1955).”
The Anima or Animus, Goddess and God respectively, are the models through which we communicate with the collective unconscious and it is important to get in touch with them. They are also responsible for our love life, always looking for our other half. The union of the Goddess and God is like two poles of a battery or the splitting of an atom; it is the contrast that gives energy. “Therefore, strong contrast, such as that between the Goddess and God, gives strong energy.”
According to Jung, the God aspect is symbolized by the phallus and is a subconscious request for manna or spiritual power. The connection between the penis and strength, between semen and seed, between fertilization and fertility are understood in the subconscious mind. This God archetype represents our need to comprehend the universe, to give a meaning to all that happens, and to see it all as having some purpose and direction.
The Goddess archetype is our built-in ability to recognize the mothering relationship. This mothering concept is symbolized by the primordial mother or Earth Mother of mythology. The simplest and most meaningful aspect of the symbol of Goddess is the acknowledgment of the feminine power as a beneficent and independent power; this power is strong and creative. The Goddess is divine female, a personification which can be invoked in ritual; She is a symbol of life, death, and rebirth, energy in nature and culture, and a symbol of the affirmation of the legitimacy and beauty of feminine power. The Goddess reflects the sacred power within woman and nature, suggesting the connectedness between the woman’s cycles of menstruation, birth, and menopause and the life and death cycles of the universe. The symbol of Goddess aids the process of naming and reclaiming the female body and its cycles and processes that represent the birth, death, and rebirth of the natural and human worlds. The female body is then viewed as the direct incarnation of the waxing and waning, life and death cycles in the universe.
PANTHEON
pan-thee-on
- The gods of a particular mythology considered collectively.
- All the gods of a people considered as a group
The Romans gods were from a strange mixture of influences. Before Rome became a big city, the area around it, called Latium, was settled my superstitious villagers, the Latins, who believed in many gods and spirits.
As Rome grew into a city and began to become more powerful it came into contact with the Greeks, who had a complex Pantheon of their own. It seems that the Roman gods were a mix of those two main influences; Latin and Greek. In many cases the Romans found there were a Latin and a Greek god for one and the same thing.
They tended to take the two and make them one. So for example, Vulcan, was the old Latin god of fire. But the Greeks had a god called Hephaistos, who was very similar. And so the Romans just mixed the two together and made them one. Paintings or statues of Vulcan generally showed him as a blacksmith, like the Greek Hephaistos, but his name still was the Latin Vulcan.
In Wicca we use many different sources now available for our Pantheons.
Here are a few other resources:
- How to utilize the God and Goddess for a specific need
- The Celtic Pantheon
- The Phoenician Pantheon
- The Egyptian Pantheon
- The Greek Pantheon
- The African Pantheon
