The Facets of Spirit 
Copyright Lillith Avalon 2003 All Rights Reserved

In my sometimes adopted role as teacher of Wicca and Paganism and speaker to college classes about alternative religious and spiritual paths, I've often had to answer the queries about how / why 'Pagans' have so many Gods. This is how I explain it.

Picture Spirit (God, Goddess, as you will) as a huge and precious diamond. So big and bright and shiny, full of light that you can not see all of it at once, even as we can only see a small part of the earth even from an orbiting space ship. From our limited human perception, bound up in these incarnated bodies, we can only see, or even imagine that we see, some small part of the huge faceted diamond that is Spirit.

And so it becomes useful to us to identify and name each facet of the diamond... Sekhmet, Ganesha, Athena, YHWH, Tara, Mercury, on and on and on.  Each facet is but a part of the whole, but the diamond's facet while still huge, is perceivable, definable, made more useful to us by its having boundaries and limitation. Giving those facets characteristic, rulership, attribute, overall the process of creating archetype, makes them more accessible and useful to us. It makes it possible for us to communicate about the facets of spirit with each other. It enables us to call upon the piece or part that we resonate with or need at a given time.

Yet we always know and remember that they are all one.

More, We too are all part of the One. But we are separated / incarnated so that there is an observer and an observed, Goddess and Priestess, Husband and Wife, Mother and Child, all these many separations and pairings so that God can know itself from the outside, and so that we can understand the beauty and value of union, through separation.

Religion and Spiritual Practice if full of Paradox. If we accept only one side of any question, we can become fanatical or atheist or simply limited in a way that is not necessary or beneficial. By seeking to understand and accept both sides of the Paradox, we become larger and more enlightened.

And then there is the question of hierarchy...
How many different ways can my time and attention be divided? How chaotic and contradictory may my existence become if I seek to honor too many facets at once? Do I understand more by looking at a variety, or by delving deep in only one pool? Do I honor Spirit as a whole in all its myriad facets better by skipping and hopping from one deity to another, or by focusing on a few, or even only one aspect?

I find that a just a few Gods and Goddesses at any one time serve me best.  They change over time and with my relative understanding and needs.  I add as I become integrated to a community which recognizes and honors a particular facet or when they come to me strong and unbidden in dream or trance work, I leave behind others with thanks and gratitude practices
related to deities which no longer serve me... for instance Oshun isn't the right Goddess for a Devoted Wife and Mother to honor, but when I was younger and less committed, I worked with her a lot. I find that some, like Sekhmet, have been with me over a long time and through many changes but continue to be powerful and useful for me.

I recognize that each facet of deity, name or unnamed, is valid, useful and
divine for someone somewhere. I honor the whole as I call upon the names of
the many.

~ Lillith Avalon

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Lillith Avalon an Animated Human, initiated Wiccan Priestess, Ordained Gnostic Priestess, and Thelemite, derives joy from organizing and attending magickal events. After eighteen years organizing, teaching, and playing in the thriving spiritual community of Austin Texas, Lillith and her Beloved Jonathan moved to rural Arizona to steward 40 acres of ecologically conscious homestead in the ongoing ritual of their lives, and founded Animated Human Productions. She dances and rattles the fire circle and offers computer and organizational skills to the FIREDANCE community as General Manager for the Festival, Registrar and Web Mistress.