Where did your Gods come from?

General Discussion
1

Hey BALG,

So in the LDS Church there is a deep hidden doctrine that states that our world was created by the materials of other worlds. The leftovers if you will (though that is an oversimplification). I always just tucked that away under the file of “Mormon Doctrine that I don’t believe in” until I was having a discussion with another magician who told me he was investigating the idea that the Gods/ guardian/Loa/ etc were all spirits that were tied into their lands. Kinda like uber powerful nature spirits of various aspects of nature. In time humans started worshipping them and these spirits were elevated to God statuses, or highly respected statuses, that they retain today.

In researching both Hecate and Odin I have found sources that claim both are older than their respective traditions. This got me wondering, what if these Gods influenced the cultural aspects of humanity they came in contact with. There is a saying in anthropology that man created their gods, and this is why gods of various cultures reflect that culture’s traditions. What if it was the other way around. What if the way ancient Greece’s culture was influenced by a spirit of magic, crossroads, and necromancy that was later named Hecate by the Greeks. What if a nature spirit influenced the Nordic World and later became Odin? It would explain why much of the Nordic Magic deals with Fire, Ice and Chaos if it was designed or influenced by uber powerful Ice, Fire, and Chaotic nature spirits.

So in your opinion, where did your gods/spirits/guardian…etc come from? Were they always here? Are they aspects of a human oversoul? Did they create us or did we create them?

2

From my human (the world and what I see is real) perspective I would say they were here long before me. From a post-human identity (beyond thought) perspective they are megalithic powerful thought forms that are brought into existence as I become aware of them.

Depending on the subjective mind-state for me they go from;

  1. Entities greater than me which I can petition, pray to, etc. Which are my creator(s), or destroyers. (individuated limited I am a human body/mind perspective)

  2. Co-inhabitants and co-operators, or allies, obstacles, etc. that exist with me in the various levels of beingness. (empowered I am a magus working with powers to facilitate transformation perspective)

  3. Latent forgotten memories, unactivated potential thought forms, irrelevant and pale shards of the infinite undivided wholeness. (enlightened merged with the infinite mystical beyond thought perspective)

So I would have given a different answer at different times in my life. I would say that the most important beliefs about them are the ones you hold, and thus accept and therefore constrain your choices and understandings.

As of now, I really don’t know for sure, but continued exploration, experimentation, and observation results in an ever expanding definition for me.

3

Definitely before. I’ve read about the origin of older Goth’s religion and Gout/Got/Gut that later was named Odin (Gout literally meaning “God” and Odin meaned “Frenzy” as in divine frenzy").

Seems to me that there are existences older than this and that when a human enter in contact with it, the experience is named realting with the kind of physiological experience they have, the place where they had it, the time, the effect in social life, riches… etc… Like a human sculping in marmol, the first strike does not resemble the statue at all. But with many strikes (Many experiences of many humans) the marmol starts to take intelligible form.

Of course, we can argue that “the artist form the marmol”/“human form their gods” yet I’ve always seen it backwards so to speak, the statue is already there, the artist can only uncovered.

The “things” we’ve called “gods” are already there, we’re just tearing the veil appart, tearing it apart, tearing it all apart… so they can come, they can form the wolrd hearing our petitions, desires and commands.

4

[quote=“Orismen, post:1, topic:2598”]There is a saying in anthropology that man created their gods, and this is why gods of various cultures reflect that culture’s traditions. What if it was the other way around. What if the way ancient Greece’s culture was influenced by a spirit of magic, crossroads, and necromancy that was later named Hecate by the Greeks. What if a nature spirit influenced the Nordic World and later became Odin? It would explain why much of the Nordic Magic deals with Fire, Ice and Chaos if it was designed or influenced by uber powerful Ice, Fire, and Chaotic nature spirits.

So in your opinion, where did your gods/spirits/guardian…etc come from? Were they always here? Are they aspects of a human oversoul? Did they create us or did we create them?[/quote]

I think they were always here, and I don’t think humans (or even animals) are generic beings with a single spiritual ancestry either, which is what we’re led to think most of the time.

I think of earth as a “level” - kind of like in a video game, only not actually a game, although my views on that shift almost monthly so i won’t bother posting what I think at the moment.

Anyway, I don’t think “the gods” as a class are all alike, not even the ones within the same pantheon (I believe Odin to be different to some of the other Norse gods) and I think the nature of the netjer, Egyptian gods, is fundamentally different to say the nature of the Norse, Greek, or Aztec gods, although I know a lot of people view them as kin, as a distinct but basically homogeneous class, and even as “aspects” of an archetype.

This is just my experience and since that changes daily, I’m not making a big case for other viewpoints being “wrong,” y’understand! :slight_smile:

I also think that the different types of gods affect different “races” or genetically and culturally distinct groups of humans in different ways, and that the genetic and cultural differences are healthy and exist for a reason. People go to weird places with that concept sometimes but I think it’s sound - diversity is a good thing in any species, ideologically-led homogenisation, less so.

5

My saint, Santisima Muerte is my personal reaper. Death itself, so she’s always been around. But as Santa Muerte, that’s from manifesting in a Mexican culture, dominated by catholicism and remnants of Aztec/Mayan culture. So… the manifestation of Santa Muerte is a spirit of sorts that took on the attributes of the culture that she manifested in.
Dionysus is just… Scholars can’t pin point where he came. Whether an indigenous deity eventually branded as foreign, or as the wild God coming from the depths of Africa, or from the east.
Satan, obviously the name is the Hebrew. I’m not going into his origins, I don’t know them.
Jezebel was a dead queen, not a nature spirit.
So… Yeah.

6

Hekate is my matron. She comes from the Egyptian Heqet, who was a goddess associated with childbirth and fertility. She may have other origins, but Heqet is as far as I’ve got. There’s also Heq, her male counterpart. They are both gods of Creation.

YHVH goes way back than any religion. I won’t speak about that. Suffice to say he’s not Abrahamic in origin, at all. One of his origins is El and his wife, Asherah, which would form the Elohim. For the Egyptians that’s Neteru.