Originally published in Cup of Wonder, Issue 7, in the fall of 2003

While I hate describing things in the negative, let me start by explaining the basics of my beliefs by what they aren’t – it will help clarify things more quickly than trying to define them in the positive.

First off, I’m not Wiccan. No calling the guardians of the directions, no elements, no Silver RavenWolf, no cone of power, no “all Gods are one God” no “The Goddess as supreme being and her consort, who is occasionally useful for reproduction.” For me, while the Gods have different spheres of influence, there is not necessarily a rule for who is most powerful – and there are lots of Gods. Rituals with circles, High Priest & High Priestess, and lots of trappings aren’t generally in my world-view either.

I’m not a Reconstructionist. I don’t follow the Gods of a previous culture – although I do use that history as a guideline. History shows how others have seen the Gods, and how they have worshipped. There’s no sense in starting from scratch when there’s so much useful information out there to use as a springboard. I’m syncretistic, not eclectic, and occasionally make offerings to specific Gods from older cultures when they seem to be the most appropriate. But when I do that, it’s with a lot of background knowledge about that particular God and the culture from which that information comes.

I’m also not a new-agey fluffy white lighter, who believes everything is love, light, and lollipops. Go back and read the stories, folks – you leave offerings for fairies, elves, and the like to keep them from hurting your family or doing other nasty things, not because you’re trying to be neighborly.

I’ve recently taking to describing myself as a MAP – a Modern American Polytheist. While I fully understand the idea of worshiping Gods in a cultural context, I see no reason that my current culture cannot be that context. In the past, when people moved, they took their Gods with them, but also found Gods specific to their new homes…and I believe the same is true within the United States. Throughout history, new Gods come into favor, and others fall out of favor; Gods take on new responsibilities as their
society changes around them.

With those thoughts in mind, let’s continue on with the basic ideas of Modern American Polytheism, as I see them

The Gods Themselves

There seem to have been differing numbers of Gods in any society, but some were always the most popular or most well known, while others were local deities, or only worshipped by those in certain trades. The Romans had Gods for everything. Hundreds of them. Looking at the complexity of the world around us, such an idea seems to be reasonable.

And it’s pretty hard to know all of them – realistically, I’ve met thousands of people in my relatively short life. I regularly interact with maybe 100-150 of them, and I’m friends with an even smaller group. Gods are probably similar – maybe you’ll meet some of them once or twice, and you’ll occasionally interact with a small subset of those you’ve met who are appropriate to your daily life. But on a regular basis, there will be a small number – maybe a dozen, probably less – which you regularly worship or honor.

Somewhere along the way, each of those Gods made themselves known to men. While we’re not always sure how a new God comes into the popular culture, unless a being appears in the middle of a village and says “hey, I’m a God, worship me and good things will happen,” it almost certainly starts with just a few people on the human end of the equation – or maybe even just one person.

What about those you don’t know? The Romans had, as noted in the Bible, shrines for “unknown” Gods. My usual method of dealing with such a God or Goddess is to basically say “I don’t know who you are, but would whoever is responsible for such-and-such please hear this request?” If I end up needing to interact with that God or Goddess more often, I try to find a name – any name – that generally fits, until or unless the God tells me otherwise. Sometimes it’s as simple as a description.

In the US, there are many “concepts” in modern life that seem to have taken on God-like status in the mainstream world. We talk about Lady Liberty, Lady Luck, and “Sun Worshippers.” We have Elvis, still worshipped by many as “the King” (of rock & roll), even after his death – people make pilgrimages to his home, sing his songs, dress up like him, and insist that they’ve seen him alive.

Additionally, most conservative Christians will tell you that anything we treat as more important than JHVH is a “false god” or an idol. But think about their beliefs – maybe they’re right about the idea that those things are Gods…just not their God.

There are Gods and Goddesses out there – we just need to find them.

Definitions

Let’s talk a bit about the meanings of words.

Pantheism is defined by Webster’s as “a doctrine that equates God with the forces and laws of the universe” or as “the worship of all gods of different creeds, cults, or peoples indifferently; also the toleration of the worship of all gods.”

In typical conversation among the modern, wide-ranging “Pagan” community, pantheism often refers to the idea that the divine is in everything around us.

Animism is defined by Webster’s as “a doctrine that the vital principle of organic development is immaterial spirit,” “Attribution of conscious life to objects and in phenomena of nature or to inanimate objects,” or “Belief in the existence of spirits separable from bodies.”

My experience is that people usually mean that second definition – that inanimate things are alive.

While I don’t see them as alive, or as having souls or thoughts, I do believe that many of the things around us have spirits associated with them. Much like the land spirits are seen in Norse and Roman mythology – land wights and lares – the spirits are a part of the land; it belongs to them, and they belong to it, but they have a separate existence.

One of my on-going theories is that there are “levels” of power for these spirits. Gods are the biggest and most powerful, with large spheres of influence, while other spirits may only have enough power to be responsible for a flower, a tree, or a house.

And generally speaking, I take a loose definition of what makes something qualify as a God – if it seems to be a God, it’s probably best to treat it as such, since I’m not going to be able to tell the difference between “almost a God” and “a Real True ™ God.”

Personal examples

A big part of my life revolves around computers. And they’re known for being temperamental. It’s my belief that there are several Gods, along with a host of spirits – envision the computer version of a dryad – that make the infernal things work (or not, as the case may be). With an average of 5 computers per person (that’s about one for every 125 square feet in our house), and more than one printer per person, keeping the computer Gods happy is a useful thing. We leave offerings of Doritos (the original flavor) and either Mountain Dew or beer for them – as often as we can remember to, at any rate. As long as we make our offerings fairly regularly, we have very few problems – and the times we’ve forgotten to leave our offerings, things have reminded us (like the week we had several hardware failures plus we broke 2 of our printers, one of which required 2 service calls and almost $1000 in consumable parts, plus cleaning lots of internal parts, to fix).

I occasionally leave offerings for the spirits of my house – bread with honey and milk seem to work well when things keep getting lost. I burn incense, candles, and use other methods of communicating with my Gods as seems most appropriate. When I’m trying to do something specific, I look at how other cultures have worshipped similar Gods, and see what portion of those suggestions seems meaningful.

Final thoughts

Finally, I see this as a journey – nothing is set in stone, nothing is absolutely required or absolutely forbidden. What matters is my interactions with the Gods that seem most appropriate for my life, and most interested in interacting with me. The more I learn about other cultures and other means of worship, the more likely it is that I’ll get it right the first time when I’m interacting with a God or Goddess I’m just meeting for the first time.

I’ve explained before that I am a Modern American Polytheist. Here, in a nutshell, is what I think Modern American Polytheism means.

Definitions

First, Polytheism. Polytheists believe in more than one (and usually more than 2) deities. Whether you worship/honor more than one deity is irrelevant – obviously, no one could worship every God and Goddess out there, that’d take waaaay too long. The point is, they believe that there is more than one in existence.

Further, whether you are a hard polytheist (multiple distinct deities) or a soft polytheist (deities are individual manifestations of some larger single divine force) doesn’t matter much either. The point is, we interact with the divine as if there are multiple Gods, because he/she/it/they act as if there are multiple Gods.

As polytheists, we are open to the idea that there are many more Gods out there than we likely know about. We also do not need to take offense that others do not worship the same Gods we do – people will worship whatever God or Gods speak to them.

Next, modern. We are not specifically bringing back old practices, but neither are we rejecting history either. We use modern methods to both learn about the way things have been done in the past, and to investigate other opportunities that may be available to use that the ancients would not have had. We use history as a stepping stone – the modern world would not exist without the past, and we can learn much from the past.

Finally, and perhaps most importantly, American. While many Pagan religions these days focus in on ancient cultures, either in an attempt to reconstruct their practices or as inspiration for newer patterns of worship, we are rooted firmly in American culture.

Some would say that America has no culture. But this is not true – America has a culture all its own, based in part on the ideas that went into its founding, and in part on the hundreds of sub-cultures within it, both old and new. Even our language, “American” English shows this – it is unique from the English spoken in other countries while absorbing words and concepts from other languages as needed.

In fact, America is, by and large, the ultimate large-scale example of syncretism – the bringing together of disparate beliefs and practices into a coherent whole. Americans are masters at celebrating the best traditions from their ancestors while incorporating traditions of others around them and making their own, new traditions.

As such, the Modern American Polytheist often includes a mixture of old Gods from the cultures of his forefathers, UPG about newer deities local to him, icons from popular culture, cultural practices of his locale, other spiritual practices that he finds useful, and enough research and personal introspection to hold it all together.

Practice

The practice of a Modern American Polytheist may take may forms, just as there are many subcultures and beliefs within the United States.

In general, Modern American Polytheist practice will include celebratory rituals for holidays and deities important to the practitioner. Celebratory rituals are non-magickal rites, meant to honor a specific deity, spirit, or holiday.

Generally speaking, national holidays such as 4th of July, Veterans Day, Memorial Day, and the like will probably have some ritual celebration. It’s also expected that some “American” deities and traditional American heroes will be honored on these national holidays – Lady Liberty at 4th of July, for example; various US Presidents on Presidents’ day, and so on.

Additionally, solar holidays, such as equinoxes and solstices are often celebrated. I’ve personally considered a ritual celebration of daylight savings time at the switch points – it’s a much more dramatic solar effect than solstices or equinoxes.

Neo-Pagan cross quarter days, as festivals tied to seasonal changes, are not strictly celebrated by the Modern American Polytheist, as they may or may not actually tie to seasonal changes in her locale. The one major exception to this is often Halloween, which is seen as a celebration of our honored dead, a time to remember our ancestors and offer them a place at our table, since they are still a part of our family and without them, we would not be who we are.

Modern American Polytheism may or may not include elements of magickal practice, depending on the practitioner. While it will likely be common for magickal practices within Modern American Polytheism to use elements common to many western magickal traditions and neo-Pagan practices, it is also expected that other forms of magickal practice will develop over time, based on other cultural paradigms. Chaos magick, in general, seems to be common among us.

In moral/ethical terms, there are no prohibitions or restrictions, other than to treat each other with respect and dignity, and to consider whether you are willing to accept the consequences of your actions. Each person is encouraged to look inside themselves and seek to create a specific code of ethics for themselves that is inspired by the concepts behind Modern American Polytheism.

Modern American Polytheists are encouraged to participate in other groups, both on-line and in person, that meet their specific spiritual goals, such as a group with a specific magickal style, or a group that works within a specific cultural paradigm or with specific deities.

There are no “official” organized Modern American Polytheist groups – it’s really not necessary for most of us to belong to a group, and the diverse workings of those who fall into this category would make group workings a challenge.