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Post by Deleted on Oct 3, 2009 7:10:11 GMT -1
I posted this question in response to the 'Ceridwen question' but thought I'd repost it here to see what people thought:
"Historically it seems relatively clear to me; you know Brythonic gods and goddesses are those that we have some reasonable evidence to suggested were worshipped by our ancestors. But as powerful ancestral spirits and local spirits can sometimes be 'worshipped' or offered to at times too I wonder where we place the line. It seems to me that the fact that the Roman's equated a particular entity with one of their gods is the best way we have to know that something was seen as a 'god' in the sense that we are familiar with the term.
If Ceridwen (for exampe here) is a witch/sorcerer ancestor spirit or the geni loci of Llyn Tegid or even an egregore, or even a combination of the three (which seems to me the most likely thing) what happens now if modern people start recognising her as a goddess? What does this mean? Is it as simple as a mistake, does an older, name-forgotten goddess choose to work through this name or does people acknowledging an entity as 'a god' form part of what makes a powerful spirit a deity?"
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Post by redraven on Oct 3, 2009 7:50:31 GMT -1
What makes a God a God? Human constricts probably. If our ancient ancestors could visit us today, they would see things unimaginable at their times, therefore, I would suspect, we would qualify through their terms of reference as Gods. That doesn't make it so though. I'm not convinced that there is a delination in the spiritual world between these entities as such. I suspect that it serves a purpose for one to be used as a tool by which to deal with the isolational egoic nature of humans, thus making a common term of reference for us to use, hopefully, successfully. I am somewhat convinced, for my own terms of reference, that there probably isn't a hierarchy of Gods, as such, although I am probably somewhat on my own with that term of reference here.
RR
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Post by potia on Oct 3, 2009 9:10:19 GMT -1
This is a difficult one to pin down. As you say Annua where we have a reasonable amount of evidence for worship in some form of a particular being it's pretty safe to say they were a god and therefore that the being probably still is a god. But what about the many names where we only have one or two examples? Were they local gods or powerful spirits or lesser known titles for other deities?
When does the spirit of a river such as the Clyde in Glasgow become a goddess and how far does the influence of such a being extend? I personally see the Clude as a local goddess tied to the river and the banks where the waters may on occaision flood. Others in Glasgow see her as a goddess of the whole Strathclyde area and still others as a powerful spirit of place.
I think there are beings who are on the cusp between what might be considered a deity and what might be considered a powerful local spirit. I'm not really sure there is a line to be drawn for such beings. It maybe simply a matter of perspective.
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Post by Lee on Oct 3, 2009 11:02:12 GMT -1
my own way of seeing it as a spectrum; the more influence, PR and 'power' the further along the spectrum towards godhood. local spirits of place fall on it at different points, some arguably close to the god bit, other way down closer to the other end.
to be fair though we tend to take our view on how or what constitutes a god based upon what has been called a god in history or prehistory; they get a wildcard to godhood on the spectrum. others have to work their way up.
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Post by Francis on Oct 3, 2009 12:00:35 GMT -1
my own way of seeing it as a spectrum; the more influence, PR and 'power' the further along the spectrum towards godhood. local spirits of place fall on it at different points, some arguably close to the god bit, other way down closer to the other end. Yes. This is pretty much how I feel it is as well. Rather than 'power' though, I see it more in terms of "spheres of influence". My thinking on this ties in very much with my view of the 'Physicality' that underlies the manifestation of Spirit of Place. Hopefully this will be something we can discuss in person soon! Look in to my eyes. You are all busy on the weekend of November 14/15. You'll have to arrange the Winter Gathering for a different weekend. 1,2,3 click. Your back in the room!
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Post by megli on Oct 3, 2009 16:12:08 GMT -1
I. am. busy. on. the. 14th/15th.
ALL GLORY TO THE HYPNOTOAD!!!!!!!!!
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Post by Deleted on Oct 4, 2009 0:18:39 GMT -1
So basically when people are saying that a particular name/being was not 'a god' what they mean is: a) there is not historical proof that our ancestors worshipped a being with that name, with the addition of Lee's point that: "we tend to take our view on how or what constitutes a god based upon what has been called a god in history or prehistory; they get a wildcard to godhood on the spectrum. others have to work their way up." Meaning I think that we are open-minded to the possibility of people experiencing the presence of a god through names like: Cailleach, Ceridwen, or even Blodeuwedd who I recall being mentioned in the 'non-god' catagory, but we're just not going to assume god-hood upon every name mentioned in the Mabinogion/Wonder Tales etc without some greater consideration?
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Post by megli on Oct 4, 2009 10:20:21 GMT -1
So basically when people are saying that a particular name/being was not 'a god' what they mean is: a) there is not historical proof that our ancestors worshipped a being with that name, with the addition of Lee's point that: "we tend to take our view on how or what constitutes a god based upon what has been called a god in history or prehistory; they get a wildcard to godhood on the spectrum. others have to work their way up." Meaning I think that we are open-minded to the possibility of people experiencing the presence of a god through names like: Cailleach, Ceridwen, or even Blodeuwedd who I recall being mentioned in the 'non-god' catagory, but we're just not going to assume god-hood upon every name mentioned in the Mabinogion/Wonder Tales etc without some greater consideration? Yes. I think that's fair. Assuming the latter would be a huge mistake. (A classic example is the Otherworld Woman of 'Connlae's Adventure', whom many pagans have taken as a goddess of the Otherworld, and incorporated into druid funerals etc ---but whom recent scholarship has revealed as a medieval allegory for the Church!) We have two main sources for British gods. 1) medieval literature 2) Romano-British epigraphy 1) has to be used with extreme caution. I would say that we can only be sure that characters whose named ending in the theonym suffix '-on' were pretty definitely ancient gods, though this leaves us questions like 'Was *Rigantona (=Rhiannon) an alternative name for Epona, or was she a different goddess altogether?. So Rhiannon, Teyrnon, Gwydion, Amaethon, Gofannon, Don, and (in a separate but secure category) Lleu, Taran, and Nudd were definitely once Gods. Some of them may have been local to the British tribes of what is now Wales---I can imagine Gwydion as a deity of the Ordovices---but others, like Taran and Lleu (Taranis and Lugus) were widely distributed across the Gallo-Brittonic and wider Celtic world. 2) presents us with a wealth of material, much of which, however, is little more than a very large number of names (Sulis, Belatucradros, Cocidius) which sometimes---not always---we can etymologise and thus get an idea of function. In some rare cases (Lydney, Aquae Sulis) we have some idea of the appurtenances and imagery of cult. Other than that, there's sod all to work with really. One bracing thought is how there is so little overlap between 1) and 2)---only Lleu and Nudd are attested from the pagan period, as Lugus and Nodons. We don't find a goddess *Hul, or the gods *Belltgadr or *Cogydd in the Mabinogi.
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Post by Heron on Oct 4, 2009 17:40:30 GMT -1
When I first got involved with a serious worshipping pagan group, we used made-up god names. We also used descriptive terms like 'Mother Goddess' and 'Horned God' in common with others at the time who were working out of the wiccan 'tradition'. But the names we used in the quite elaborate rites we developed were the names by which also developed a relationship with these gods. We saw them as inherent in nature in some way, but also as archetypes as they appeared in human culture. But we never thought we were re-constructing the worship of particular gods from a past tradition. They were 'our' gods and they lived in the worshipping life we had created for them but were also 'the' gods in that the five god forms we used were seen as expressing the main forces of nature. Much of what we did began to seem arbitrary to me after a while, but the relationship with those gods never did. So one answer I would give to the question 'what are gods' is that they constitute a particular sort of relationship we can have.
For some time after this group broke up, that sort of relationship was, for me, with particular places, and I thought not of gods so much as a general sense of numen as the Romans called it, a living presence in places which, it has been pointed out, the Greeks humanized into naiads, dryads and nymphs that sometimes were gods and sometimes something less than gods. But the Romans, before succumbing to Greek influence, did not humanize in this way. And nor did I. But ...
In reading around, some stories seemed to particularly appeal and I found myself internalizing some things more than others. I had previously written a story for a pagan magazine that incorporated Rhiannon into it. She seemed to be taking on more of that feel of relationship that I described earlier, but at this stage unconsciously. Then about 20 years ago I had a quite profound and unsettling experience involving a white horse, and I can't to this day be sure if it was an actual horse, though I thought it was at the time. The significance of that experience grew rather than lessened with time, but I remain haunted by it.
So a relationship with an equine goddess seems to have grown over time out of - or by extension from - those earlier relationships and gelled into something more specific as I became actively engaged with polytheism. By now it seems to me that gods are that relationship which we fall into and have no choice but to have and which expresses itself in our religious life.That relationship can grow out of a ready-made religious framework or it can be an intensely personal experience of presence. But it is the relationship, the two-way process, that makes it real. As we can't have a relationship with ourselves, I take it that the gods are real rather than the creation of either personal or collective fantasy. So they are there in nature. They are also there in our culture, where they take a particular form so that you and I and the others can share our experience of them and develop the relationship socially.
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Post by Deleted on Oct 4, 2009 22:08:23 GMT -1
I would say that we can only be sure that characters whose named ending in the theonym suffix '-on' were pretty definitely ancient gods, What does this suffix '-on' mean linguistically speaking that it helps us in this way?
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Post by megli on Oct 5, 2009 6:57:01 GMT -1
What does this suffix '-on' mean linguistically speaking that it helps us in this way? It's a suffix coming from Celtic - onos (masculine) or -ona (feminine) and ultimately related to the - unus/una you get in Latin god names like Portunus, Neptunus and Fortuna, and which in Celtic is characteristic of some types of theonym. Linguists call it the 'Herrschaft' or 'lordship' suffix, and its essential meaning is 'Divine - X'. So Tigernos, for example, meant 'lord' in British, but TigernONOS (the linguistic ancestor of Teyrnon) means 'DIVINE lord.' Mapos meant 'boy'; MapONOS means 'Divine Boy'. Ambaxtiios was 'farmer', but AmbaxtONOS means 'Divine farmer.' We have loads of these attested, especially from Gaul: Sirona, 'Divine Star', Matrona, 'Divine Mother', Epona, 'Divine Horse' etc etc. This Herrschaft suffix became non-productive in the later Celtic languages, i.e. at some point the Romano-Brits stopped coining new god names using it. Thus, if we find a medieval Welsh name that has - on at the end (and which hasn't arisen from another source), we can know with certainty that this is the medieval descendent of an ancient theonym. It's very useful.
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Post by Deleted on Oct 5, 2009 7:39:21 GMT -1
Now I'm really glad I asked. I've heard it meant 'great' or 'divine' but heard both interchangeably and 'great' is really not quite so explicitely god-like as 'divine'. Thank you!
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Post by megli on Oct 5, 2009 7:43:52 GMT -1
Well, it's an intensivising suffix, but one only used in theonyms, so 'divine' is as good a translation as 'great'. (i.e. you couldn't take an ordinary noun like the word 'cattos' 'cat', and by turning it into 'cattonos' make 'big cat'!)
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Post by Blackbird on Oct 7, 2009 15:32:51 GMT -1
What makes a god a god... as Lee suggested, perhaps just good PR ;D
To me, 'god' is a catch all term for various beings that fall into three main types:
Powerful ancestors Land-spirits And... er... god-gods, whatever they are.
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Post by Adam on Oct 8, 2009 20:01:17 GMT -1
What makes a god a god... as Lee suggested, perhaps just good PR ;D To me, 'god' is a catch all term for various beings that fall into three main types: Powerful ancestors Land-spirits And... er... god-gods, whatever they are. You see I have some problems with all this vagueness... if a god is all these things, it isn't really anything, and I think that is one of the reasons I've never been able to self-identify as a polytheist. I think, to qualify as a god, this being has to be involved in the origination (or at least the maintenance) of some aspect of the world or at least our experience of it. This makes sense to me in the context of megli's fictional story, in which the hypothetical Druids participated in this work of the gods to ensure that the world was maintained/continued... of course there may be some politics involved (the Yahweh god is probably a prime example), but unless something like this originator/creator/maintainer role exists or is attributed, I don't see how any being qualifies for the title god/goddess
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Post by Heron on Oct 8, 2009 20:20:30 GMT -1
You see I have some problems with all this vagueness... if a god is all these things, it isn't really anything, and I think that is one of the reasons I've never been able to self-identify as a polytheist. I think, to qualify as a god, this being has to be involved in the origination (or at least the maintenance) of some aspect of the world or at least our experience of it. This makes sense to me in the context of megli's fictional story, in which the hypothetical Druids participated in this work of the gods to ensure that the world was maintained/continued... of course there may be some politics involved (the Yahweh god is probably a prime example), but unless something like this originator/creator/maintainer role exists or is attributed, I don't see how any being qualifies for the title god/goddess Point about vagueness taken and endorsed. But I'm not sure about the necessity for a god to be involved in origination of the world. It seems to me quite possible to regard gods as beings in the created world rather than creators of it, subject ultimately to its 'laws' though maybe not in the same way we are.
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Post by Adam on Oct 8, 2009 21:16:15 GMT -1
then the question remains, what distinguishes them? (and I don't hold origination as necessary, though it would certainly be sufficient, and origination of an aspect of the world could take place within it, independent of creation of the world itself... maintenance, or perhaps better, a sustaining role, would satisfy my personal criteria... I had intended to make that distinction clear in my last post, though I don't think I did so very clearly)
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Post by Heron on Oct 9, 2009 19:33:32 GMT -1
then the question remains, what distinguishes them? (and I don't hold origination as necessary, though it would certainly be sufficient, and origination of an aspect of the world could take place within it, independent of creation of the world itself... maintenance, or perhaps better, a sustaining role, would satisfy my personal criteria... I had intended to make that distinction clear in my last post, though I don't think I did so very clearly) If I think about it, I'm no sure that maintenance is necessary either. I don't see the gods as a service industry. How about this: In Nature they are presences ; in Culture they have form. It is possible to sometimes experience their unmediated being in Nature and these are usually considered rare and powerful or intense experiences. It is much easier to experience them in Culture through stories, myths, other media, and such an experience is usually (though not necessarily) less powerful and intense. But humans do, I think necessarily, almost always experience them in some combination of the natural/cultural mode of reception. I say 'almost' because I can attest some experiences that seemed entirely natural and others have also reported these. But I think they are rare. I spoke in an earlier post about relationship and I would reiterate that here. That, it seems to me, is the growing point of a god's manifestation. I struggle with words (as anyone who takes them seriously must) but I hope I have not committed too heinously the sin of 'vagueness'
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Post by Adam on Oct 10, 2009 17:31:47 GMT -1
then the question remains, what distinguishes them? (and I don't hold origination as necessary, though it would certainly be sufficient, and origination of an aspect of the world could take place within it, independent of creation of the world itself... maintenance, or perhaps better, a sustaining role, would satisfy my personal criteria... I had intended to make that distinction clear in my last post, though I don't think I did so very clearly) If I think about it, I'm no sure that maintenance is necessary either. I don't see the gods as a service industry. How about this: In Nature they are presences ; in Culture they have form. It is possible to sometimes experience their unmediated being in Nature and these are usually considered rare and powerful or intense experiences. It is much easier to experience them in Culture through stories, myths, other media, and such an experience is usually (though not necessarily) less powerful and intense. But humans do, I think necessarily, almost always experience them in some combination of the natural/cultural mode of reception. I say 'almost' because I can attest some experiences that seemed entirely natural and others have also reported these. But I think they are rare. I spoke in an earlier post about relationship and I would reiterate that here. That, it seems to me, is the growing point of a god's manifestation. I struggle with words (as anyone who takes them seriously must) but I hope I have not committed too heinously the sin of 'vagueness' I'm hoping I having not caused offence with my accusations of vagueness... my language could have been rather bullish and if so, I apologise unreservedley... I'm pretty much up to my limit here, both linguistically and conceptually (my instinct is telling me this is time to move to maths, but that is way too rusty ;D )... but I certainly don't mean to convey an impression of the gods as boiler suited engineers nor to offer disrespect to someone else's understanding In my head, in my heart and in my limited experience, I would draw a distinction between various human/once-human/non-human intelligences... the ancestors I have experience with are intimate to me. The spirits of the land are different and intrinsic to the land and I relate to them in a different way. The gods... the gods, to me, are an abstraction further... somehow more intrinsically related to the very fabric of existence, or to my experience of it... genius *non*loci if that makes sense... abstracted (in my experience only) to the point that I have been largely able to disregard them day to day, though my day to day experience with the ancestors is drawing me in to a relationship with them indirectly. The question that hangs pertinent for me seems to be one of the nature of the gods as well as the nature of our relationship to them Does it make more sense if I simply say the gods sustain reality?
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