questions on the god and goddess

[Wolfie Girl]

I am at a stand still in life right now. I was just wondering what you though about the God and the goddess.
DO you believe that there is one god and one goddess with many names; or that there are many names because there are that many gods and goddesses?
Also, how did you know that the praticullar goddess and/or god you pray to was the one for you....or do you pray to them all depending on what aspect you are useing?

^..^

[Pure Ahimsa]

Well, this is my own personal belief, but... I believe in one Force, and two making that force. Yin and Yang. Opposites. Good and Bad, Light and Dark, Male and Female. I call them the God and the Goddess, emphazizing gender because of the patriarchal world we live in now.

Since divinity is infinite, their are infinite ways of connecting to that force. When we think up a God/dess, it is not that we invented it, it is already there, for divinity is infinite, but we "discover" it. The Gods and Goddesses are aspects of Divinity, in my beliefs, and representations of different parts existance.

[John_Mischief]

I don't believe in the "Many Names, One God" thing. I'm a hard polytheist, and for the most part I think all the gods are seperate individuals.

As for which gods I pray to; I pray for the most part only to the gods of my religion, Irish Reconstruction.

[Anubis RainHawk]

I don't really know if I believe there is only one Goddess and one God that have many names. I'm not sure if they're all individual either. I lead more towards polytheism than dualism. When it comes to the One Life Force, I tend to thing that it's not just deities, but everything. IOW, I think that the Great Spirit is not only deities, but tress, birds, cats, humans, etc.

As for prayer, I tend to think that we are "called" by the gods we are ment to work with. If unsure, ASK THEM! If they say no, there will be another deity that you are ment to work with.

Anubis RainHawk

[Pandoras]

I believe that the creative power in the universe is manifested through God and Goddess, with infinite aspects and thousands of names. However, I do not have a polarized view of energies -- good/bad, light/dark, etc.

I don’t use the terms “female energy” and “male energy.” I don’t identify femaleness and maleness with specific set of qualities and predispositions. Any quality assigned to one divine gender can elsewhere be found in its opposite. If we say, for example, “Male energy is aggressive,” I can easily find aggressive goddesses without thinking hard.

I have a few Goddesses that I work with. I have found them (or they have found me) at different points in my life when the circumstances were right.

[AlAskendir]

I am at a stand still in life right now. I was just wondering what you though about the God and the goddess.
DO you believe that there is one god and one goddess with many names; or that there are many names because there are that many gods and goddesses?
Also, how did you know that the praticullar goddess and/or god you pray to was the one for you....or do you pray to them all depending on what aspect you are useing?

^..^

Being a gamer, and having created characters that used aspects of myself but were not themselves aspects of myself, I feel that most gods are full persons that are parts of the God the way my characters are a part of me, and that there is a similarity, though less concrete, with goddesses and the Goddess...

Or, as my teacher always put it....we are all waves on the ocean of consciousness - - - the froth of the wave is our awareness of our selves and of our being aware of ourselves; the top of the wave is our conscious mind, where we can all see that we are completely seperate from each other; below that is our subconscious mind, that runs most of our minds ( alittle less if you are being a mage properly) and bodies; below that in the wave, where it merges with the bases of other 'nearby' waves, is our higher selves; just below that is our interactions with spirits, angels, patron or summoned gods and goddesses; the current below that is the actual group of gods and goddesses interested in our lives; the whole ocean if God and Goddess together;; but not 'current is an aspect of the ocean'. Currents are parts, but not representative and they have just as much depth, intensity, and 'true'-ness as any other portion of the ocean.

[nightstream]

<personal belief>

Another hard polytheist here. I've experienced my gods as individuals, and whenever I've tried to force myself to try meshing them all together in any way, it just hasn't worked for me. To me, it's seemed like whenever I try to see, say, Brighid and Arianrhod and Branwen all as "parts" of some greater, cohesive and united whole, it's not made sense to me - and my relationships with those gods have suffered for it. Understanding them as individuals, I feel like I can fully appreciate who they are through their own uniqueness. However, I see the gods collectively as being a part of a greater gathering of energies (including the possibility of the fae, or angels, or whathaveyou, though I've never worked with any of these other beings) that make up the spirit of the universe, creation - maybe sort of a collective world soul. In my view, this collective world soul includes the gods and other energies like the term "humanity" includes individual humans - we're all still individuals, we're just individuals in a larger category.
But, that's just me :) I've run the whole gamut of ways to understand God/s - from my time as a monotheistic Christian when I was a child to a duotheistic view later. I think that a person's understanding of divinity is the understanding that is revealed to them by their gods, and there's a reason for that beyond my own sight... so I think it's pointless to judge other people by the number/gender of deities they relate to.
Supportin' the UPG.

</personal belief>

[argento_occhi]

polytheist here, though I work closest with my Parents, Aset, Sebek and Djehuty. I go to Them with everything. How else can I build a relationship with Them if I go elsewhere with my problems? I have to trust that I can go to Them with any problem and They'll deal with it, albeit in Their own way. I will honour the other Egyptian Gods if need be, but those three are the ones I'm focussing my efforts on to become closer to Them. I hope that makes sense.

Argent

[Wolfie Girl]

Thanks everyone, for taking time to answer my questions. I appriciate it!

^..^