As the title says: Have you made (or discovered) a god, a deity, a spirit, a being of some kind?
Is there a difference between "creating" a god by yourself versus submitting to an already existing idea of a deity? (We still do interpret deities through our own lenses. I wonder if there really is a big difference, other than the cultural aspects of already existing gods.)
I find this interesting because pagans are often accused for believing in "what they want to believe" (which could and probably has been a thread of its own already) and this idea of having a 'made-up god' is certainly something that would sound a bit odd to people who are used to thinking that a god is something external, dictated by a religious scripture and can't be 'made' or 'changed'.
I admit it, "creating a god" sounds odd to me, but it's an interesting phenomenon and I have no idea how popular it is amongst pagans. There seems to be a tendency to interpret old gods in new ways, rather than finding completely new ones.
How does it happen? Do people put effort in creating a deity that suits their path or are they discovered in meditation or is it something else? Or is a deity a personification of a natural/philosophical phenomenon? (Can we even talk about "made-up gods" in that case?)
Is there a difference between "creating" a god by yourself versus submitting to an already existing idea of a deity? (We still do interpret deities through our own lenses. I wonder if there really is a big difference, other than the cultural aspects of already existing gods.)
I find this interesting because pagans are often accused for believing in "what they want to believe" (which could and probably has been a thread of its own already) and this idea of having a 'made-up god' is certainly something that would sound a bit odd to people who are used to thinking that a god is something external, dictated by a religious scripture and can't be 'made' or 'changed'.
I admit it, "creating a god" sounds odd to me, but it's an interesting phenomenon and I have no idea how popular it is amongst pagans. There seems to be a tendency to interpret old gods in new ways, rather than finding completely new ones.
How does it happen? Do people put effort in creating a deity that suits their path or are they discovered in meditation or is it something else? Or is a deity a personification of a natural/philosophical phenomenon? (Can we even talk about "made-up gods" in that case?)
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