Thanks

[sunbear]

Just wanted to say thanks to your replies about my deity question. What you both said made a lot of sense. I'm goning to just wait and see what hits me over the head (hopefully that's figuratively and not literally, tho it might take a good head-knocking with me!). So Raevyn, if I understand you correctly, if I feel the need to work with a particular deity in a ritual or spell, that's ok, right? Or I can just invite the Lord and Lady in general? Actually, I feel most comfortable with that aspect of deity right now.

Thanks again for the advice.

[ankhesen Sekhmet]

Do whichever feels most comfortable to you :)

(psst this is Raevyn with my new nick)

[Jenett]

It's fine to work with a particular deity. However, there are lots of folks out there (and I'm one of them) who think that it's important to do your research before you ask a deity for something (and ideally, it's better to establish an ongoing relationship with them)

You can think of this like the fact that your friends are more likely to help you out than if you ran up to a complete stranger on the street and asked for a favor. Deities are more likely to help you than the stranger on the street (at least if you're reasonably polite about asking) in my understanding - but an ongoing interaction will often benefit you in various ways (more complete help, more help in general, better understanding, etc)

Don't just research deities in Wiccan or Pagan books (especially the ones that summarise a deity to 2 or 3 lines of text.) Take the time to find a good book on mythology (your local library should have good ones). Brewer's Dictionary of Phase and Fable also has good short (but fairly thorough, as far as they go) summaries. (And that one's a library standard)

Online, I recommend http://pantheon.org highly (they have good multi-paragraph summaries that I find are a good place to start)

You don't need to do a huge amount of research (though it'd probably have good benefits for you, especially if you find you keep working with the same sorts of issues), but enough to write 3-5 paragraphs about that deity, their major areas of influence (and symbols and such) and a little understanding of any important stories is probably a good amount of information to aim for.

[ankhesen Sekhmet]

(Lest anyone's confused or wants to see what's been covered here already, this began with another thread started at http://mysticwicks.com/showthread.php?s=&threadid=22077 )