09/01
My Religious Definition
In my religious definition of myself I am a Wiccan, but I also have taken upon other titles such as pantheist, polytheist, and monotheist.
Pantheism: The belief that God is immanent within the universe aka “God is All”.
Panentheism: The belief that God is immanent within the Universe, but also transcends it.
Monotheism: The belief in the existence of one deity or God, or in the oneness of God.
Polytheism: The belief in or worship of multiple gods or deities.
Although, I don’t consider myself a panentheist I thought it was important to include that definition to distinguish it from pantheism, because I don’t think diety is transcendent. For me divinity is very much present and physical as much as it is emotion and higher states. For divinity to be transcendent it has to be independent from the physical world with a consciousness.
Monotheism and polytheism are two terms that seem to be opposites of each other, but I like Dianne Sylvan’s description of soft polytheism:
”Soft polytheism– belief that the gods are manifestations or aspects of other, usually bigger, deities. This was pretty popular in ancient Egypt. Soft polytheism, I have observed, is a lot more popular in American Wicca than in British Traditional, which tends to be hard polytheist.”
In my practice all the God’s that I worship are just manifestations or interpretations of the Universal Force that I call Divinity or God.
How do you definine yourself (or not)?
