Devoured by Flame

Here’s a philosophical discussion for ya that’s always whirling around in my brain that I can never pin down no matter how much I try. And trust me, I do try.

I think, going into what defines a deity, we need to lay down everything we think we know about Deity based on Christianity (omnipotent, benevolent, omnipresent, etc.). I could go on a very long tangent about how Christianity has fucked up the entire definition of Divinity and bleeds into paganism and how even polytheists seem to relate to Them, but I don’t feel like it today.

Mostly, I am focusing on my own personal theories of what the Gods are. And then, maybe what they are not. And if we’re really lucky, why are the Gods. So buckle up and get ready to charge down this philosophical rabbit hole with me.

What are the Gods?

Depending on the framework we look at, the Gods can be defined any which way. Perhaps they are enormous cosmological beings that have been present since the beginning of Time. Maybe they are created via a collective subconscious, given meaning through myth, stories, and metaphor. And then, maybe they are just… grander spirits who have accrued much energy to become so enormous that we feel that They are worthy of worship.

I don’t want to focus into any one part of the paragraph above, so I’m just going to answer: yes. Deity is all of the above and none of the above and get ready for more oxymorons because holding two truths to be equally true at the same time is kind of how this works.

In my personal experiences with Loki and beyond (though I am going to focus primarily on Loki because He is pretty much the one I know intimately well), there seems to be a multitude of ways in which the Divine show up to humans, and in each way, They fulfill whatever need the devotee or inquirer needs, and judge the size of Their being for that human based on the above.

Now, I don’t know how relative “size” would be – does size mean they are more powerful? Are they just physically taller or shorter? More condensed energy? See into the future and past and into your very essence of your existence? The answer is, once again: E.) all of the above.

Size, I think, is moreso dependent on how much of their energy is dispersed around us. I think of the different states of matter – solid, liquid, gas. And in each state of matter – the molecules remain the same but their vibration is higher or lower dependent on temperature. Same thing with Gods. How much Their energy is dispersed is entirely based on the purpose They are wishing to fulfill.

Firstly: ice.

I see a lot of people in the lokean and heathen community turn their nose up at when people feel like they treat Loki as a “boyfriend” or “roommate.” And as silly as some of the interactions may seem, they have just as much legitimacy in physicality as they do if you think Gods can only be some enormous Being of cosmological influence and nothing else.

This might rattle some people, but I do personally experience Loki as a roommate in my home. I have invited Him to live here, I have set up space for Him to exist and touch base at, and I have active engagement with Him in my home as much as I do with my very human fiancé. There has come a point where, as long as I am open and willing, I will have a daily experience. Rarely does He ever leave. However, He has indicated to me that, in this state, He has less influence to the world around us. Just as much as ice cannot do much to it’s external world besides have a small circumstance of coldness around it – and then it can be yeeted at someone, I guess, if you want to make it move. It is in this state that I feel like Loki often exists in my home and in the majority of my personal interactions with Him. He is only present next to me on the couch – not elsewhere – and sometimes we mesh together because He is obviously incorporeal and thus, creates different levels of possessory experiences via my very solid and very real human body. If I make a request for Him to do something elsewhere in some other time, He says He cannot in that very moment. At least, not in this form.

It is a very real, very physical experience with Gods in this state. It is more human and human-dwelling as (most but not all) polytheists would like to believe. Experiences like these silence my monkey brain who argues and decides that this isn’t real and then gaslight myself out of what could have been a life-changing experience with a God. It creates a foundation from which a life I share with the Deity I hold most highly and most dearly in my life just as ice for the polar bears or concrete for a home.

From such a point, most of my worries about the reality of Deity disappear into dust. They are the lure which keeps me waking up to continue to have such a life and choose to believe when Deity might be in some other state.

And then you have the people who still believe the Earth is flat simply because they’ve never seen the Earth beyond its state as a flat existence to the naked eye.

If you haven’t seen something, you’re not inclined to believe it, but yet most of us have never ventured out to space, some of us maybe haven’t flown on a plane or went above any level in the atmosphere that would be the best view of the curvature of our Earth, but I would wager that most of those people believe the scientists and astronauts who have seen it and don’t try to debate them just because they haven’t. They recognize the scientist is probably pretty good at what they do in their field and if all of the scientists are saying the same thing, maybe consider it’s legit.

In this scenario, I’d consider scientists to be the mystics in this case. Mystics do tend to function off of the scientific method and experimentation using the basis of their prior knowledge to expand the collective’s knowledge about said Deity or experience of Deities and there’s a lot of times two mystics from two completely different paths, traditions, or walks of life come to a realization that seems to be true on both sides – they just have different ways of attaining said truth.

Sure, sometimes there’s wonky science out there. I’m not going to try to look up any format in which we have actual scientific evidence of the Divine. Its not going to happen unless you study a human’s brain chemistry when deep in prayer or religious ecstasy just as you might study an emotional experience in the same way. No physical phenomena beyond human experience is likely going to state for absolute fact the imminence of the Gods. But yet… we don’t try to conceptualize love in this way.

Then: water.

Now, water is also tangible. Water you can touch and tap but your hand can move through it. You can also drink it, but it is less removed from a necessity to remain one singular shape as it can form into many shapes and fit it into any container.

This quality of experience of Deity is probably the experience I have had the most of. This is the experience of knowing They are around, but maybe only getting glimpses of conversation here and there. I think that, when invoked in ritual and given They oblige, this is the state They are in. The sacred space is the container in which They function in but can also leak out and disperse given the intention to do so. They can also feasibly become one state or another – water can become both ice and gas given the various intensities of temperature.

In a ritual space, Gods can become physical. They can walk among us, talk, and engage actively with us. This can be as formal or as informal as you’d want. Often, you can tell that the God has arrived because the air thickens, shifts, and becomes heavy and humans have a very difficult time ignoring it. At least, humans who are most sensitive as I am yet to speak to any non-theist about this so the sample size is small.

They can then “leak” out and return to gas or move to another human body to inhabit. Sometimes They can inhabit multiple bodies at once. Other times, They can inhabit one single body and do one single thing. It depends on intention.

Additionally, the astral plane or the Other world would be a manifestation of Deity as “liquid.” The experience of touching, smelling, and experiencing the presence of the Divine in another location that is more akin to their typical state. However, it is intangible in the way that we cannot actually touch the Divine in our experience in the astral. Physical reality is augmented in the experience of it just as physics is seemingly paused when underwater.

Also, the astral can bleed into the mundane. Often, we can get glimpses of the astral as a layer over the mundane reality we experience day-to-day. The astral blends into the mundane depending on certain conditions of the world – typically around the liminal seasons like Spring or Fall. Lately, however, the veil has become thinner and thinner between these two worlds wherein one side leaks into the other.

And lastly, gas.

Gas is a bit more complex and that is because we often cannot see nor feel it in the air and space that it exists in. It is easily inhaled and can form around and beyond the container it is in. It can disperse into the air forever as particles, only to return once a major shift of the weather or its conditions has occurred to make it capable of doing so.

It is more of a concept than anything because most times we cannot see such things. And this is where a more generalized concept of Deity happens.

This concept often occurs when the Deity has no vested interest or purpose in existing in one particular spot at any given time. Perhaps it is a non-devotee reaching into the aether to make a request of a Deity they do not presently know or work with. The Deity then has the mutual lesser expectation of existing around said non-devotee and it will take some work to bring it into any other form – mostly water.

In this form, Deity is more of a concept, a story, a set of values. For example, I recently felt compelled to look into Persephone’s myths but when I reached out, I never felt a response. I took away from this that I needed to gather Her values from the myths and stories as well as experiences from Her devotees in order to better understand Her and also take those values into my own life. I never offered to Her nor did I actively create a sacred space, or do any other activity that might spark Her interest (mostly because Loki was piling my plate with work high enough and dealing with Him is a ball game I wasn’t up for). However, I was okay with this. No skin off my back or Hers, and if anything, She got more attention that didn’t require Her attention and that’s probably a win, too, in some way or another.

However, this can also be a way the Divine is most often felt or heard by the majority. It is a vague shift of resonance or maybe not even a shift at all but rather a vague realization that there is something else present.

This isn’t a perfect model by any means.

This is just a string of theories I have had the pleasure of playing with and realizing the deeper I get into mystical practices and deeper devotion. So… if you experience something different? Cool. No harm nor foul.

However, if you can take away anything from this, consider what it takes for the molecules to change between the three forms and how much the energy must shift in order to make it happen.

Now, if the environment is already predisposed to any of these elements – a freezer is more likely to create ice as a lake is likely to contain water and the clouds, gas – it is more likely for any of these states to occur. Just as a lake can turn into ice given the right climate, a marsh can turn into a tropical climate with high temperatures and humidity.

Relating it back to human-Deity relationship, proper conditions often need to be formed – given the Gods are willing – to change the Gods’ state of being.

For example, if you are already predisposed to the notion that the Gods are imminent beings who are in an active relationship with humanity and you believe you can speak to Them, develop a deep relationship, and work through a multitude of trial, error, and growth, you, too, can be a “freezer” for the Gods. It’s a lot more difficult in this climate change apocalypse we live in (read: Christianized, individualistic, late stage capitalistic hellhole we call the present state of Things), but it take a certain level of perceptive judgement and rearranging of your life to become better suited to house a Deity in such a form.

Now, I’m not saying it’s impossible for a beginner. A lot of us are already predisposed to this notion without needing to devolve into extensive work and readjustment of our lives and existences and it takes some random fuck on Tumblr to tell you you’re “wrong” to throw the entire ecosystem off balance. I like to think that evolutionarily speaking, humans are already built with the capacity to house Deity and Deity to deal with humans.

Given that you are human and with human parts, organs, and brain, you are equally capable of Deity interaction as any other fucker off of Reddit. That’s right: if that idiot can do it, you can too. Perhaps it feeds your imposter syndrome thinking that you are as worthy of Divine interaction as the troll on YouTube who caused you to throw off the pH balance of your awareness, then be the imposter of your dreams. Thrive and dance in the ashes of all of the societal structures you have burned to the ground and join me as we contemplate sanity together!

If you don’t want that – that is equally valid. As long as you’re not sitting there debating with a chemist about the reality of the atoms of a water molecule when it turns to ice – maybe don’t. It’s a dumb argument and waste of breath and time but hey, you do you.

You can thrive in an environment where the Gods are only ever ethereal, intangible beings. Christians do it all the time and look how far they’ve come! I’m not meaning that as an insult – but it is true. The growth of a religion and belief structure is not dependent on ensuring all of us perceive the Gods in the same exact way. We have our mystics who push the boundaries of theology and our reconstructionists who keep us grounded and those magical unicorn people who manage to do both at the same time.

So, next time you come onto some (insert social media community here) post about whether the Gods are real and some idiot is debating with some other person about their UPG – maybe consider it doesn’t fucking matter. Unless you’re going to specialize in this particular science (and most people don’t and shouldn’t) and you’re happy in the ecosystem you thrive in, there is no one who should tell you to change it. As long as you’re evolving and becoming a better human, and not a jackass, we’re all Gucci, fam.