My Path
Animistic Druid

   by Catherine M.

I walk an Animistic Druidic path - Continental and Insular Celtic inspired mainly, although I do incorporate a few Mediteranian and Mesopotamian elements. I am Pantheistic as well. This means I believe everything is infused with divinity. There is no "god" per se but rather all life and energy together create the divine force. I see gods as symbols we use to tap into that divinity. Archetypes, if you will, that make it easier to focus and direct our thoughts, efforts, and energies.

As I said, I am very pantheistic in my views. I see the infinite Divine as formed of all energy. So we are as much a part of the Divine as Inana/Ishtar/Astarte or Kernunnos/Cerne/Horned God.

I believe this Divine has always been there, but as life began the Divine changed. Prior to life it was pure energy. After the first life - and subsequent first death - the Divine began to grow, to develop biological sentience (I have no idea if it had sentience before that). The contact with living organisms that had biological impulses, a drive to breed, to survive, affected the Divine over time. Eventually thinking beings emerged, sentience infected the Divine, and everything changed forever.

The relationship between the Divine and sentient biology is a mutually beneficial one (in my belief). We affect the Divine, our desires and needs influence how it develops. When enough of us clamour for a god, the Divine responds. This new god is not a seperate entity, merely a facet of the vast, unknowable Divine. The Divine is influenced by our need to create the deities - intermediaries that help us communicate with the Divine. Masks that have become semi-independent of their wearer. Maybe the Divine could be described as an immense brain that experiences infinite split personality syndrome?

To use the example given, Inana grew as the Sumerians developed a need for a goddess of love and war, fertility and lust - a deity of contradictions and passions. In neighbouring Akkadia Ishtar came into existence - perhaps influenced by travellers who knew of Inana, perhaps individually through a similar need in the Akkadians. Elsewhere the Semetic Astarte flourished - all answering the same needs. A multi-faceted extension of the Divine that responded to our primal passions of love and hate. A being that combined both child-like innocence and ultimate power. We know of Inana through the Hymns written to her, through the Enama Elish and the Epic of Gilgamesh. We know of her counterparts through fragmentary wall carvings, cracked clay tablets, and other detrius of a flourishing culture. But no one today really "knows" Inana as the original progenitors of her did. Our needs have changed, and Inana, after a period of rest, has responded with growth and change herself.

Elsewhere, other Great Goddesses came into being, as the Divine answered the call of the many peoples. Sopdet, Aset, and Het-Hert in Egypt, Brigit and Danu in Eire, or Zemyna in Latvia - to name the smallest fraction.

I see these all as facets of the Divine. Some are more than counterparts seeming to be the same deity with different names - such as Bubona and Epona. Or Venus and Aphrodite. Others seem to be similar in many ways but with some differences (sometimes significant ones) such as Inana and Aset. Others seem totally different - Danu and Sopdet for example. I do not feel it is a good idea to lump all in as "the same" for a few reasons. Firstly as pointed out here and in previous posts, not all goddesses are the same. Secondly the goddesses came into being (in my understanding) as a response to a cultural need. Otherwise we would have the exact same pantheon world wide. We don't. Different groups had different needs and the resulant deities developed through a cultural filter - which I believe influences how those deities respond. Calling them the same lets one ignore these differences which can at best be limiting and at worst dangerous. Kali and Hekate are often considered the same, yet they are vastly different. The Hekate of witches is a modern Wiccan creation. Hekate was a psychopomp, a teacher, a guide, a guardian, a healer, and a triple Goddess, and her role was one vastly beyond the dark witch goddess. Kali's crazed death aspect is not one Hekate ever held - mixing them up draws Kali's aspect into Hekate and if that's not your intent it can negatively influence your ritual or prayer.

Yet, whether alike or not, each is another part of the puzzle that shows us the feminine face of the Divine. I also believe that in death our soul reunites with the Divine, returning whence it came. For the Divine is the source of souls. We are the Divine, but we are sleeping, dreaming this life and these experiences. When we die we take all this back into the Divine while we rest for a time before our next life. In this way the Divine experiences life rather than simply observing it. From this comes growth.

When I am praying or communing or whatever I tend to speak to the Divine. If my work is female focused, I call upon the Mother or Sister. If I wish to draw upon a particular strength then I will work with a deity related to that. So Hekate is often my deity of choice when it comes to spirituality, growth, knowledge, while Blodwedd tends to be my Beltaine bride. I do the same thing with the masculine.

We bring forth the gods by our need and desire, but it is the Divine who creates them, births them, influences them, and ultimately devours them. And once a god has come forth, we progenitors have little control over the new deity. After all, it is a god, and we are only human. In this incarnation.
   

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