Tensions in Pagan and Polytheist Discourse- Some Underlying Factors?

As part of the work for one of my classes this term, I’m reading extensive excerpts from Dubois’ recent book “A Million and One Gods.” It’s not bad — and I was dubious about it at first. (1) In chapter one she discusses at great length, the inherent prejudice against polytheism in academic discourse and also in our contemporary, Christian influenced culture. It’s a good and thought-provoking chapter and I want to unpack some of the issues she raises here, specifically with an eye toward examining some of the tensions that often seem to arise between polytheists and pagans (particularly humanist and non-theistic pagans). I think many of the attitudes she examines are relevant to the discussion.

I’ll start by laying my own assumptions bare because they color the way that I approach these debates. I largely view humanist “pagans” as people who are consciously, willfully refusing to open themselves to awareness of our world full of Gods. I look at them as being deeply and negatively impacted not only by monotheistic prejudice (polytheism as primitive), but moreover by our society’s fixation with “progress” and unconscious assumptions that religion and piety are not congruent with that progress. If it’s not willful, I look at it as a type of spiritual tone-deafness, after all if one can be aurally blind to the overwhelming beauty of music, then why not spiritually blind to the presence of the Gods? Finally, I deplore the emphasis on ‘self’ that would posit the self as the center of human endeavor, the self in place of the Gods, etc. etc. There is absolutely nothing that they could possibly bring to the table that would enhance polytheisms, save for the debate itself, which forces us to more accurately articulate our position and the defining borders of our traditions. Most of all, I contest their right to the word ‘pagan,’ but opinions on this are split in polytheism and that last point is an argument for another day.

At the same time, the two most fundamental, core axioms of polytheism are that the Gods exist as individual Powers and that they it is right and proper to venerate Them. (Polytheism is more complex than this, of course, and there are many different branches of polytheisms, but we can start with this fundamental position as being the one thing held more or less in common).

It was a huge shock to me the first time I attended an interfaith event sponsored by COG almost a decade ago (maybe more!) and realized that the majority of Wiccans and Pagans there did not actually believe in the Gods. They talked about thought forms, and archetypes, and natural forces, and I and the other polytheist present (a priestess of Aphrodite) objected most strenuously. One of the speakers was expressing dismay over the lack of interfaith accord within Paganisms and we pointed out that the moment you reduce our Gods to the limits of human experience (i.e archetypes or thought forms), and insist upon this position being dominant, you lose your polytheists. That, for us, is gross impiety and we want nothing of it. I was shocked but figured this was a one-off. After all, it had been presented as an interfaith round table and the interfaith community is rife with this sort of nonsense: reductio ad monotheism all under the guise of “unity.” I figured at the time, this was just another permutation of the same. Unfortunately, as the last two years have shown, I was wrong. The number of Pagans who dispute the actual existence of Deities is dismaying. (2)

At the same time, I find certain threads coming up in the discussions that are intriguing. Dubiois’ book helped clarify a few of them for me. She begins by pointing out that the arrogance of monotheism in denying the legitimacy of other forms of religion has deep, deep roots: in our culture, in our scholarship, across the board. She quoted an incident drawn from years of teaching introductory courses in world civilization in which the majority of her students were committed to the idea that monotheism represented the apex of spiritual evolution and those cultures and people who were polytheists —ancient or contemporary—are “under-developed and barbaric.” (3) Moreover, the students were incredibly resistant to changing this attitude, something that stood out to her enough that she noted it in her book. I think we are dealing with elements of the same unconscious assumptions in our inter-community discourse.

There are a couple of things going on here: an unconscious prejudice against polytheism, driven by the idea of a hierarchy of religions that places Protestant Christianity (of the non-pentecostal, unemotional type) as the apex of rational, evolved religious thought, viewing polytheisms as primitive (and perhaps even dangerous and unethical), coupled with a twinning of reason with monotheism. (4) Eventually this latter idea became reason and agnosticism vs. piety and devotion of any kind, but it’s essentially the same trope, since the type of monotheism favored is certainly not one that elevates devotion, emotion, or active veneration as positive attributes of a religion (in fact, there is often a deeply hostile backlash to be found against even Catholic forms of devotion: veneration of saints, of Mary, of reliquaries and ossuaries, and the rich tapestry of mystical and spiritual engagement these things reflect).

Moreover, we have the discipline of Religious Studies, coming of age as it did during the height of British colonialism, inculcated with the idea that ethics and morality are indisputably twinned with the idea of one, transcendent God, and a code of ethics enshrined in a holy book….as though ancient polytheists had no concept of the Good (um…..neglecting the fact that ancient philosophies wrestled with just this. I’ll leave it to polytheist philosophers to discuss the ways in which philosophy was co-opted by monotheists, and the piety of ancient Greek philosophers white washed away to make them palatable first to Christians and later to our so-called Age of Reason).

Dubois also talks in passing about what I term the fetishization of individuality that pervades our culture. She talks about it more with respect to the difference between an individual relationship mediated solely through text where God is a god of reason and the relationship is defined by individuality, versus the interdependent imbeddedness of polytheism. (5) I’ve often wondered how on earth we ended up so obsessed with individualism. She ties it to Descarte’s theory of ‘reasoning individual consciousness’ and draws the parallel with contemporary consumers and ‘me, me, me’ culture.(6) I would draw a further parallel to the feel good self-obsessed dialectic so prevalent in new age culture too. It’s all about the self. The self is the highest expression of reality, of consciousness. The self is god and all religion, all other spiritual beings are there to foster this evolution of the self. It’s all about me and my self-actualization.

Granted, some of this might very well be a reaction to generations of Christian dominance, coercion, and abuse. Also in this age of rapid globalization and change perhaps there is a certain comfort in centralizing the self, rather than dealing with a larger cognitive unknown in which we as humans are but a small, small part of the cosmological picture. A recent comment on my blog by a humanist pagan talked about us (polytheists) viewing the Gods as people and I thought “no, we view them as Powers,” so even in online discussions and comments there’s this attempt — conscious or not—to reduce everything to the sum of its human parts. I find it so representative of the spirit of the age. I often wonder if there’s not a desire for a community, for a social identity but a deep un-articulated anxiety about being classified by one’s peers as ‘superstitious’ if one actually acknowledged the Gods as something other than archetypes.

I think as polytheists we need to be aware of those anxieties and perhaps in this, the humanist pagan contingent may be viewed as a good mirror. We are all products of the same culture after all. That we have responded to our spiritual hungers by stepping up into right relationship with the Gods and trying to restore what was lost does not mean that we are free of the ingrained assumptions and prejudices of so-called ‘modernity.’ I think at the very least, it’s worth contemplating whether or not, in stepping up and out as a polytheist, you may have a certain nervousness about being considered ‘backward’ or ‘anti-modern,’ or superstitious’ by your peers. Then think about why and from where those attitudes might come. I’m not going to belabor this here — I still have a ream of articles to read before tomorrow’s class—and my goal with this article was to put these idea out in the open for discussion. Instead, I want to close with a personal reflection.

When someone asks me, surprised, if i’m a polytheist, I always respond “of course, i’m educated.” When missionaries come to my door, I always note “you only believe in one god? Why, you’re practically an atheist.” It’s my way of challenging their paradigm. I think as polytheists we need to imagine a world —which was, I might add, the world of our ancestors—in which polytheism and reason were indisputably twinned, in which polytheists *were* the educated elite: your teachers, doctors, advocates, philosophers, linguists, poets, diplomats, rulers, architects, and theologians. We need to restore this reality to our hearts and minds just as much as we need to continue the restoration of our traditions. The depredations of monotheism and later of the age of reason affected not just our traditions, but our own ability to engage with them holistically. It affected our perception of the goodness, relevance, and power of those traditions and unless we root out those unconscious prejudices from our minds, unless we consciously drop this bit of ideological baggage that has been given — against our will and even knowledge—to carry, we are hobbling ourselves as we go.

Notes

1. I still remain somewhat skeptical of any scholar of religion, particularly of polytheism who is surprised by the abundance of contemporary restorations of ancient polytheism though. I mean, come on, there is google,for Gods’ sake. Also, for all her examination of scholarly and social prejudice toward polytheism—something she addresses very, very well in chapter one— she still prefaces her initial response to contemporary practitioners by calling them “so-called” polytheists, automatically betraying her own prejudice. Seriously, why that ‘so-called’? It automatically de-legitimizes contemporary polytheisms in the minds of the readers. Still, overall, in her discussion of the academic challenges to accurately examining polytheism, she does a really good job.
2. As a scholar it is always interesting to parse out the politics of terminology, to point out to other scholars that ‘pagan,’ ‘neo-pagan,’ and ‘polytheist’ are three very different terms and don’t be calling a polytheist either of the other two — not unless you know that is also a term they use for themselves. it’s not that simple. there is a whole backdrop of community debate and discourse of which outsiders to both paganisms of all stripes and polytheisms are simply not aware.
3. P. Dubiois “A Million and One Gods” (2014). Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, p. 23.
4. ibid. she discusses this a bit on p. 21
5. ibid. 32
6. ibid. 40