What is your personal concept of the divine?

[too2sweet]

Discuss...

What is your personal concept of the divine?

 

[Sanguina Cruenta]

Polytheist, baby! cool

More helpfully... I believe in a God and Goddess who are the primal deities of the universe, predating all else, you know the drill with primal deities.

I also believe most deities exist. I believe Yahweh exists, but not that he's omnipotent or omniscient or anything like that. I tend to think of the multitudes of gods and goddesses as the "Children" of the two primal deities. How much of a metaphor that is I'm not sure. It's a metaphor, yes, but how much of one...

Okay, so it's 4am and I'm confusing myself. So sue me wink  

[Talyn178]

Quote:

Atheistic Wicca: Some Wiccans view the God and Goddess as symbols, not living entities.

I found the above quote recently. I think that describes my beliefs pretty well.
I personally believe in nature, it's energy all around us and the power it holds. I believe the Triple Goddess and the Horned God ARE nature.  

[Sanguina Cruenta]

Talyn178

Quote:

Atheistic Wicca: Some Wiccans view the God and Goddess as symbols, not living entities.

I found the above quote recently. I think that describes my beliefs pretty well.
I personally believe in nature, it's energy all around us and the power it holds. I believe the Triple Goddess and the Horned God ARE nature.

Just to clarify... so you believe that they are merely Jungian archetypes produced by the mind to represent parts of nature? That would indeed be atheism. But why would one honour these representations, if they're just your imagination?

Or do you believe that They are deities who are within nature itself (pantheism) and interpret that through the symbolic representation of the Wiccan deities? (Soft polytheism, possibly? But at least that leaves one theistic, and there is something that one honours in ritual.)  

[Talyn178]

It's confusing I know, I spent a long time studying and thinking about the right path for me to follow.
It's not that I see the deities as representations, more like Nature IS the deities. E.G. I don't think there are higher beings controlling nature, I believe nature is the 'higher being' controlling the energies around us.

Sorry if I worded that wrong, lol, I suck at descriptions.

Peace & Love, Keith  

[Sanguina Cruenta]

Talyn178

It's confusing I know, I spent a long time studying and thinking about the right path for me to follow.
It's not that I see the deities as representations, more like Nature IS the deities. E.G. I don't think there are higher beings controlling nature, I believe nature is the 'higher being' controlling the energies around us.

Sorry if I worded that wrong, lol, I suck at descriptions.

Peace & Love, Keith

So, Pantheism?  

[Talyn178]

Hehe, yeah kinda biggrin
And the god and the goddess are the spirits of Nature. (Like in the sense that we have a body and soul but are still the same thing, Nature and the deities are body and spirit).  

[AiRune]

I believe in a primal energy source that encompasses both the feminine and masculine that permeates every fiber of reality. I don't worship this energy, but do seek it's guidance and ask for it's help in manifesting. Deities are specific manifestations of the same energy to help with life lessons and to access parts of the subconscious for specific spells. I personally look to Sun Wukong for victory through strife and Brigid for strength in the home.  

[MoldyTofu]

Well, I believe that there is a god and goddess, and also deities.
I have no Idea what the word for that is. xp  

[Columbae]

I take a very classical view of deity and the divine in that I think, in honesty, the divine is unknowable. I believe it is everything at once, masculine and feminine, god and goddess, past, present and future, creation and destruction, and all of us; all that lives and breathes, all that has past and all that will be. I guess I believe in a basic source of divine energy that ties us all together.

I think it's hard for us to accept something so abstract, so we anthropomorphize the divine into something we can relate to. For me, I think it can ultimately be split into masculine and feminine archetypes, then into various personalized deities for more specific purposes. This creates a very wide system of belief for me.

From that, I believe Christians, Jews, Hindus, Islamics, Buddhists and whatever other religious sect you can think of are all worshiping, in essence, the same thing. The interpretation is different, but it all comes from the same source.

So as far as I'm concerned, we're all family.  

[Maxwell_Pink]

All the "theisms" confuse me, but I believe I am what would be considered polytheistic. I feel there is "The All," an entity that we cannot comprehend, and then there are the individual Gods and Goddesses who, like district managers, deal with us directly and do most of the work.  

[Verbeley]

Because the thread title is "my personal view", so I'm not going to use any wise term, jut say as I see, cause that will be the most honest what I can do.

I think that divine is perfect and absolute in everyway, not like christians that he's absolute good, cause that leads to problem why the suffering exists, but in every aspect ever matter.

Now because working with such a "welter" of all would be both confusing and dangerous there are dozens of different aspects of that absolute, thanks to which we can tune to the right energy and work with the one that shall "grant" us the effect we want to. However because the absolute is absolute (yey for my logic) those aspects are not just a figures, but are "living" self-describing and self-aware beings.

Now even more confusing part (as for some sad ) - because we are also parts of the absolute (to be more precise- our will) we shape both the reality and the gods themselves.

Voila, that's I guess all I remember about now.

Peace
Mea  

[Starlock]

Ask yourself what everyone else believes about the Divine. Combine. Mix thoroughly. That about covers it for my concept of the Divine.

In practice, though, I pretty much stick to working with more pantheistic (immanent) varieties through what most would probably consider a more animistic framework. If I had to define the Divine in a word, it would be 'sacred.'  

[Jernni]

I've always felt that the god and goddess are representative of the balance within humanity and ourselves. I don't think they are actual beings, per say, but more the personification of the deity within ourselves, our families, our tribes and our world.

I worship them, in a sense worshiping myself, and my goodness, but also the goodness in the world. Asking the Goddess to channel my energy is a way to call my energy into focus within myself.

Did that make sense?