#immanence

To find the gods, many eyes turn to the sky in search of entities separate from the world, distant and transcendent, yet the gods are not to be sought outside because they already reside within us. The divine is not a refuge in another world but the very foundation of this one. The Universe in its entirety is pervaded by two great cosmic forces endowed with consciousness, eternal and perpetually united: the Goddess, often honored in her triple aspect as maiden, mother, and crone, and the Horned God. Their polarities are not in conflict; they are like the harmonious opposition that holds the poles of a magnet together. The Gods are benevolent entities bound by infinite love, which is the very engine of creation. Their bodies are not made of flesh and bones but of pure essence, of vital energy, and are as vast as the cosmos itself. we are immersed in their presence, interpenetrated and surrounded by them; night and day they dwell in us as in every living and inanimate creature, which is why separation from the Gods is impossible, our existence and theirs are inextricably intertwined. All the male deities that various cultures have worshipped, such as Zeus, Apollo, Hephaestus, and Odin, are the many faces of God; like every human being, he has a creative aspect, a warrior aspect, an aspect of profound wisdom, and so on. Similarly, goddesses such as Hera, Demeter, Persephone, Freya, and Isis represent different aspects of the one Goddess. We neo-pagans who walk on this harsh yet prosperous Earth do not believe in the Gods out of faith or because they are mentioned in ancient sacred texts; we believe because we feel and experience Divine energies in the power of our actions and in our feelings. we perceive the ambition of Zeus when we run towards a goal, the righteous anger of Mars when we rebel against injustice, the overwhelming power of Eros when we fall in love.

The Gods are the principles of existence. They are not the architects who decided to forge the Universe in the distant past, but rather the world that spontaneously generated itself from their unquenchable love. Since the dawn of time, the Gods have made reality possible. They are the center of life; without them, nothingness would reign supreme. By manifesting the energies they give us, we become creators of our own reality, we give life to new possibilities, we enhance our emerging qualities and expand our abilities, we discover with amazement and wonder inner treasures we never knew we possessed, managing to surpass ourselves. Thanks to them, the doors of dreams swing wide open; they are the greatest of all assets.

However, in order to approach a genuine understanding of the Divine, it is necessary to clear the field of two concepts which, although deeply rooted, are foreign to paganism: the idea that the Gods punish or reward us based on our behavior, and that they grant our requests in exchange for a few prayers.

The gods are not our judges; the image of a deity who scrutinizes our every action in order to reward or punish us according to a rigid moral code dictated by him is a cultural construct that became established with the rise of monotheistic religions, according to which concepts such as heaven and hell are systems of reward and punishment that place human conduct at the center of a final judgment. in ancient paganism, the association of God as judge has always been absent; the gods are not arbiters of human morality nor dispensers of justice, they do not sit on a heavenly throne ready to pass judgment on what is right or wrong; the responsibility for creating just and fair laws and ensuring their observance rests entirely with the human community; delegating the role of supreme judges to the gods means attributing to them a task that does not belong to them, thereby demeaning our own responsibility.

Another widespread belief, often fueled by superstition, is that the gods are omnipotent entities ready to intervene in human affairs to grant wishes or solve problems; the image of Aladdin's genie, capable of granting any request, is mistakenly associated with the gods, fortunately by few people; in reality, the gods are not wish-granting machines or miracle-workers on demand; observing the world, we realize that the gods do not change the course of events based on the number of our prayers; their existence is not intended to serve mankind.

Daniel Abdal-Hayy Moore

Sometimes I get tired of all this talk about God and I just want to go and sit under a tree

but then the tree starts talking to me about God and we find ourselves in another conversation

No two people and no two things talk about God in quite the same way

A wheel running down a hill all by itself talks about God while its hub remains stationary and its spokes rotate

An ant has another way of approaching the subject that has about it a certain collective resonance

Inanimate objects on the other hand often comment on their surroundings and the pleasant or unpleasant sets of circumstances that landed them there

Stars have the softest voices and you have to listen more attentively but their take on the theme is always illuminating and sheds light in many unexpected and even faraway places

A lover often speaks about God in incomplete sentences with clouds of various colours and densities moving slowly or quickly around their faces and most unselfconscious gestures as they speak in intimate whispers

And then I’m brought back again to the sweet syrups of this endless talk about God that goes on every instant even when no one seems to know what they’re talking about or why they began conversing in the first place

The serpent winks the sunflower opens its concentric mathematical mandala flat and desolate wastes yawn and the air shivers

I stick out my tongue and God’s breath flows all around it whether we speak or remain silent as we sail through the divine events of the sky and earth’s decisive

I have been ‘corresponding’ with three AI ‘bots: Grok, ChatGPT and Deepseek. I do not prefer one over any other, and find gems in each that I value. I ask complicated and serious questions. The following conversation was with Grok… I was hiking at around 11,000 feet elevation in the high Sierra in California when, after a scramble up huge, irregular boulders, I stopped at the top of a ridge,…