GODS AND GODDESSES

Some pagans will tell you that "we don't really believe in Gods and Goddesses, they're just symbols". Such teachers are to be avoided like the plague. A traffic light is just a symbol, but getting run over by a bus is somewhat more than a symbolic act.

It makes more sense to realise that Gods and Goddesses represent real, external forces in a way that has evolved for tens of thousands of years, and so to treat all of them as real except when they pretend to be the only god. Any post-modernists objecting should realise that post-modernism is just so last century it should be called pre-now-ism, just to annoy them.

Many pagans are visionaries who have been visited by these deities, and I find it an act of arrogance to dismiss their reports. It may be difficult for the modern pagan to "believe" in the way we were taught to "believe" by monotheistic religions, but practice suggests that "deciding" to believe is a lot more useful, and less cowardly, than hiding behind Jung (without actually bothering to read his books).

There are also theories that "all Gods and Goddesses are reflections of one energy/spiritual force/whatever", sometimes divided into a single God and single Goddess along with mentions of Taoism (by people who have never bothered to read the Tao Te King). To be fair, the Romans started this, but only in response to Christian arguments.

The most dangerous view, called "Radical Polytheism" by Prudence Jones, is that every single God or Goddess ever worshipped is a separate entity. Being dangerous and radical it is almost certainly true.