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Post by lorna on Apr 16, 2017 12:38:49 GMT -1
One of my recent blog posts lornasmithers.wordpress.com/2017/04/14/notes-from-a-polytheists-dictionary/ which involves some meditations on the dictionary definitions of polytheist terminology has led to some interesting thoughts on how we address the gods and goddesses. One of the terms discussed was 'invoke' and its various meanings. I reached the conclusion I prefer the word 'invite' as a way of inviting a deity to share their presence should they choose as opposed to a demand. Heron mentioned 'evoke' as preferable to 'invoke'. Has anyone else got a preferred word they use for addressing the gods and goddesses? I guess the terms we use would fit with the situation. It may be more suitable to speak a more formal sounding invocation in a group ritual than a personal one. Prayer/to pray seems like a different mode of address to invoke/evoke/invite. Any more? |
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Post by Heron on Apr 17, 2017 17:41:59 GMT -1
One of my recent blog posts lornasmithers.wordpress.com/2017/04/14/notes-from-a-polytheists-dictionary/ which involves some meditations on the dictionary definitions of polytheist terminology has led to some interesting thoughts on how we address the gods and goddesses. One of the terms discussed was 'invoke' and its various meanings. I reached the conclusion I prefer the word 'invite' as a way of inviting a deity to share their presence should they choose as opposed to a demand. Heron mentioned 'evoke' as preferable to 'invoke'. Has anyone else got a preferred word they use for addressing the gods and goddesses? I guess the terms we use would fit with the situation. It may be more suitable to speak a more formal sounding invocation in a group ritual than a personal one. Prayer/to pray seems like a different mode of address to invoke/evoke/invite. Any more? If we go back to Latin roots. INVOKE means 'to call upon', while EVOKE means 'to call from'. You said on your blog that you prefer 'to call to' which would be ADVOKE using the same method of putting Latin prepositions before the English form of 'vocare' (to call). But the Latin verb ADVOCO actually means 'to summon' which is included in the English usage of INVOKE. INVITE seems appropriate in some ways, but I can't help feeling that something stronger is needed: the sense of bringing a deity into imaginative presence which EVOKE contains in its English usage. If we make a space for a god in our world, it is still open to the god to respond or not, but it also makes it a reciprocal act where each shares the action of making the other present, and occupying the same imaginative space. I take your point about prayer, but perhaps the best prayers are evocative ones, making that space for the god to join with us? |
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Post by Lee on Apr 18, 2017 13:44:42 GMT -1
One of my recent blog posts lornasmithers.wordpress.com/2017/04/14/notes-from-a-polytheists-dictionary/ which involves some meditations on the dictionary definitions of polytheist terminology has led to some interesting thoughts on how we address the gods and goddesses. One of the terms discussed was 'invoke' and its various meanings. I reached the conclusion I prefer the word 'invite' as a way of inviting a deity to share their presence should they choose as opposed to a demand. Heron mentioned 'evoke' as preferable to 'invoke'. Has anyone else got a preferred word they use for addressing the gods and goddesses? I guess the terms we use would fit with the situation. It may be more suitable to speak a more formal sounding invocation in a group ritual than a personal one. Prayer/to pray seems like a different mode of address to invoke/evoke/invite. Any more? My impression is that in modern useage, here used, they have different meanings. Evocation means to call/summon to a place or space, much like a 'stronger' invitation. Invocation is almost always used in the sense of evoking INTO a person, a call to be ritually possessed to some degree or other. So we talk in terms of Drawing Down the Moon as an invocation - for the priestess to be possessed by the goddess being called upon. That is how it tends to be used in Wiccan circles and as a way of differentiating between the two by groups who engage in both. I am easy with invitation or evocation in a group setting as a way of inviting he gods to that place. I think evoking can be done with prayer, but prayer tends to be a much broader category I think, covering many different forms of communication with different intended outcomes. |
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Post by potia on Apr 19, 2017 8:01:06 GMT -1
Like Lee, my understanding of evoke and invoke is that they are different things. In the group rituals I attend we usually call the section where a deity is invited to join us simply a "Call to ...". The wording and any prior discussion/planning tends to make it clearer whether the deity is invited to be present among us or will hopefully be channelled or hosted by someone.
Prayer is something I think of differently again as there is no need for the presence of the deity to be felt just the hope or belief that they are listening.
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Post by lorna on Apr 20, 2017 15:57:56 GMT -1
Thanks for sharing your replies.
From the general direction of your answers I get the impression 'evoke' is overall the preferable term for inviting a deity into ritual. I guess I still struggle with this a bit as it's possible to read an evocative poem, say, and give people a sense of a deity or part of the landscape or a flower without asking them to be present. We seem to have two senses of evoke - to evoke something/somebody into the consciousness of an audience and to invite a deity to be present within a ritual.
The same with 'invoke' - I had always presumed it's possible to invoke a deity's presence without them being invoked into someone. That it's possible for magicians to invoke spirits alone into a circle (I've seen the pictures!) and I guess polytheists gods although we don't tend to use that approach. Thus we'd have two senses again.
Potia - I agree with you about prayer that it doesn't require the deity's presence - just the hope or belief they are present. That part makes more sense to me!
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Post by Lee on Apr 23, 2017 12:16:23 GMT -1
though similarly, to evoke a sense of wonder in a person, is to 'call up' or 'bring' a sense of wonder in them, its shorthand i think for something like "bring to mind, call to mind, put one in mind of, call up, conjure up, summon up"
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