Livejournal Polytheists

Hi all!

I'm new here and was wondering how your deities communicate with you? I myself have Odin and Thor appear to me in my dreams and was wondering if anyone has had similar experience? I'm very open and interested in all sorts of paganism so please don't be shy.

 So Im beginning to wonder who my divine patron is,  I am fairly sure that The god or Goddess will be from the Nordic or Celtic Pantheon

what im wondering is are there any good books in the study of either of these pantheons that someone can steer me towards for my own benefit of knowing more about them


thanks in advance!

oh and Merry meet! im new here. 

I'm a college student interested in writing an article on people's experiences as pagans living in the Midwest. More specifically, I'd like to see if there are any specific boons or burdens that come with living in the area--is it easier for you to be theistic in the Midwest than on the Coasts (for those of you that have lived in both)? Have you ever experienced religious prejudice? What about interfaith collaboration? Are our reservations/worries perhaps more imagined than real?

I'm interested in ultimately compiling the responses in an article for submission to a pagan publication (such as the fall issue of Thorn Magazine), so if you object to your comments being made public, please move along. However, your anonymity will be maintained, so you don't have to worry about being identified. The survey should only take 10-15 minutes, so I'd be really grateful if you'd take the time to answer the survey. If you'd like to contact me about the project, don't hesitate to do so at webmistress[at]linden-leaves[dot]com. Thanks!

Take the Survey!
Cross-posted to solitarywiccans. If you'd like to pass this along to your friends, by all means, please do so. And mods, if this violates community guidelines, delete at your discretion.

What I believe:

I believe that all Gods exist. I believe that Jesus and Buddha are real Gods because they are venerated as Gods. I believe that the Gods of the Romans, Greeks, Hindus, Aztecs, and everyone else are real. I disbelieve that the God of the Abrahamic religions is the ONLY god.

I believe in multiple Gods and Goddesses. I believe that they may or may not be part of a greater whole.

Here is a link to Cei Serith's website which is highly influential in my own polytheistic spirituality:

http://www.ceisiwrserith.com/pier/…

Some other good polytheistic websites:

http://www.adf.org
http://www.witchvox.org
http://www.thetroth.org
http://www.imbas.org
http://www.novaroma.org
http://www.hellenion.org
http://www.neosalexandria.org
http://www.kemet.org/
http://canaanitepath.com/

A new member has posted the following comment:

http://community.livejournal.com/p…

"I wonder if there are any books/websites anybody could recommend to me about polytheism? What do you do as part of your practice?"

I was wondering if anyone would be willing to:

1. Write a summary of their beliefs and practices

and/or

2. Suggest books or websites about polytheism in general, or that have supported you in your own particular polytheism?

I will write my own answer to these questions in comments.

Do you think that religious polytheists and more magickal and wiccan oriented neopagans are part of the same religious movement? Should religious polytheists continue to interact with the pagan community, or should self-identified polytheists have their own category on meetup.com?

One of the main reasons I think I feel such a strong sense of disconnect in the Pagan community is that I have no interest in magic(k). I dont mean to bash magick, or people who are occult influenced or interested, but this is something that has never clicked with me.

As a practitioner of Asatru, I read my myths and walked out into the American Desert to pour libations from a cow horn. In my archetype worshipping phase, I still was primarily focused on worship. Now that I have found a new path - in creating a vaguely Proto-Indo-European influenced neopaganism in which I venerate Proto-Indo-European gods and deified abstractions according to kennings and epithets rather than proper names, I am still primarily focused on making offerings and speaking prayers of my own composition.

when I go to pagan meetups, I listen to people's narratives about how they became pagan, and it doesnt really sound like me. I encounter maybe a stray Kemetic Orthodox person ( who I always tend to like and get along with for some reason ) and maybe a stray Asatruar, and thats basically it.

I think the division, to me, is between people who are primarily *religious* polytheists, and people who are more into spellwork and other forms of magick. I also dont mean to bash the New Age, but I hear a great deal of it, and I don't feel connected to it at all. I think religious polytheists, and reconstructionist oriented people are vastly outnumbered. I stopped going to the local Pagan meetups when a presentation about Babylonian religion became a forum for a woman to talk for an hour about her past life experiences as a Babylonian priestess.

( I dont want to sound like I think one form of Polytheism is more valid than another. I consider Wicca and NeoWicca to be polytheistic, they just emphasize different things and have a different approach. ).

I started calling myself a Polytheist because it gives me a chance to explain. I never get tied to wicca ( not that thats a bad thing, but I dont practice wicca or any kind of Witchcraft) or what people know about NeoPaganism. Pagan, Heathen, Druid, Witch, all have connotations in the greater society that dont resemble or describe my beliefs and practices.

I get to explain: "I believe in multiple Gods and Goddesses. I believe that deity can be both male and female. I believe that nature is a manifestation of the Divine. I worship a pantheon of Proto-Indo-European gods and deified abstractions using kennings and epithets rather than proper names." If people are still curious, I get to explain further. I dont get grouped in with a subculture I dont identify with, and I dont have to use words that to a nonpagan have an extremely negative connotation.

So this is why I call myself a polytheist. I stopped going to the local pagan meetups long ago, and am getting to the point where I can no longer stomach the online pagan community either.

Name: Romulus online, unless i know you.

Religion: I started out in Hellenic and Roman reconstructionism moved somewhat out of reconstructionism Greco Roman polytheism with eclectism in the mix.

Patron deities. Well I believe that my patrons are Athena Minerva, Apollo, Dionysus, with some other gods that aren't greek or roman in the mix

Location: Lost in the deserts of Nevada.

Reading materials: I read history and classical authors ie Ovid, Virgil etc along with modern and neopagan publications.

Hobbies. Reading, Learning, expanding my personal path and understanding of the gods, designing and being creative, and attempting writing but we'll see how that goes.

Name: Christopher
Age: 37
Region: Hudson county, New Jersey. It's not New York, but you can see it from there.
Path: Very much my own. That pitchers and catchers are reporting to Spring Training in a couple of days means more to me about Spring's arrival than a holiday based on shearing sheep, if that helps. Nothing against anyone, it's just how the wheel of the year is relevant in my life.
Religious History: Raised Episcopalian, which is kinda like Roman Catholic, 'cept the Episcopalians I knew didn't really care so much about who you slept with, and were more into the "clothe the naked, feed the hungry" bits of Christianity. Plus, instead of nuns with 12-string guitars singing campfire songs from the '70s, church music was William Byrd and Henry Purcell and Benjamin Britten.  Dad was an Episcopal priest, so yeah, I got to know quite a bit about that religion. Jehovah and I just really stopped clicking somewhere along the way, and I figured I needed something different. So I went exploring a few years back, ran into Neo-Paganism, and it made so much more sense. So I did some reading, and then some more reading. Joined a coven at one point, had a falling out, moved from California back to Jersey, and haven't been able to really click in to anything organized. So I take solace in the Earth's rotation.
Books that have impacted my spirituality: Cunningham's Wicca for the Solitary Practitioner is the book I always wind up going back to when I need to reconnect. I've also really dug Ann Moura's "Green Witchcraft" books, just about everything I've read by Starhawk (especially The Fifth Sacred Thing), and gobs of others. Drawing Down The Moon was the first book on the subject I read. Outside the Neo Pagan world, AA's Big Book, much of Jack Kerouac and Hermann Hesse's work, and even the Harry Potter series (*ducks*) have affected the way I look at the Divine.

Name: trip_tych, I also appear on various forums as parallax and parallaxreality.
Age: 25
Region: upstate NY
Path: Heathen-leaning member of ADF
No patron deities as of yet.
Religious history: My father is a pretty staunch atheist and didn't want my brothers or I to be indoctrinated in any religion. My mother is a lapsed Catholic and didn't mind. She did take us to Sunday Mass on occasion because my grandmother sang in the choir (and had everyone over afterwards for a big, Italian Sunday dinner). Well anyway, my father is big into sci-fi and fantasy and both my parents are nature-lovers so I grew up immersed in my own little world of magic and nature spirits and such. Around 13 or 14 I got ahold of The Spiral Dance and spent most of junior high and high school exploring Paganism. I fell out of practice in college. Afterwards, a friend introduced me to ADF and I've been working on the Dedicant Path for the last...2.5 years.
Books that have impacted my spirituality: The Eddas, The Spiral Dance, American Gods, D'Aulaire's Book of Greek Myths.