By Potia (Pauline Kennedy)
This is about personal experience both my own and those of a few friends I have spoken to about this subject. It is about how we see our gods and how we deal with them. It is about stretching our own understandings and limitations.
Firstly you need to know that I come to this from the perspective of a polytheist. For those of you that aren’t sure what that means, I interact with each God as a unique being in their own right, not simply a face of a whole but a distinct being in the same way that each of us are distinct beings. Yes, some of them have more than one name and often a range of titles but then so do some of us. I don’t use the term “believe in” here either as I no more believe in them than I believe in the existence of my neighbour or in the existence of individuals I have never met but communicated with online. I didn’t always consider myself to be a polytheist, at first I didn’t really know what I was, but as I have grown and learnt more about my path so too has my understanding of the Gods in my life developed and changed.
Often our first experiences as Pagans of Gods is through books or articles we read by others and much of the material available refers to Goddesses as either Maidens, Mothers or Crones or as trinities made up of all three types. The same material will often refer to Gods as either summer gods or winter ones. Sometimes you get references to ‘The Goddess’ and ‘The God’ and a presumption that all are part of the one. Already from this type of material we get Goddesses split into three and Gods into two, one along age lines, one along seasonal lines. In itself that can be confusing.
A maiden is usually thought of as young, innocent, pure and often virginal. Mothers are usually depicted as warm, loving and often large breasted and fat. Crones are often depicted as wise old grandmothers, silver haired and kindly. But what about the feisty teenage girls, confused and sex-mad? What about the angry, stressed and frustrated mothers? What about the urine scented, whiskered old hags? Do we include them? Do we even think about them?
Do we see what we want to see when we deal with our gods? One of the most common things people do when they meet someone new is to look for things in them that remind them of themselves in some way or of someone else they know well and care for. This can be a completely unconscious reaction and often fairly harmless but it isn’t always. For example, the parent that sees traits of themselves in their offspring and starts trying to live through them, not seeing them as a different person. Do we sometimes do something like this unknowingly to our Gods? Seeing only that aspect of them that we want to see, that we feel able to deal with and refusing to see the whole being, limiting both our understanding of them and their interaction with us.
One of my first direct experiences of meeting my Gods was in a visualisation. I met two figures walking together in a field near the edge of a forest that is part of my inner landscape. Both shifted their forms in front of me. One shifted between a stag, a man with antlers and a man with the head of a stag. This was my first direct experience of Cernunnos and this was how he chose to appear to me. With him was a white mare who shifted to a woman with long white coarse hair, and a woman with the head of a horse. This was my first meeting with a form of Epona. Both of them blessed me and we talked briefly although I could never really remember what was said.
I occasionally met Epona in one of these forms in the following couple of years. The meetings were nearly always very brief and did not happen very often. I yearned to meet with her more often, to be able to talk with her and remember what was said but at that stage it was not to be. I gradually learned to listen to the quiet inner promptings in my life that I have come to feel are Epona’s way of guiding me if I am listening hard enough. I came to think of her as a constant presence in my life but one I would rarely see face to face or hear clearly.
Then one day not so long ago now Epona appeared to me with long wavy red hair instead of white. As a woman wearing white and with long white hair She had seemed to me to be a maiden style of figure distant and somewhat unapproachable if loving. With red hair and wearing breeches and a tunic she seemed more mature, maybe motherly, maybe more warrior like, more approachable and still loving but also capable of getting frustrated and annoyed with me. Suddenly I had a revelation. It was if a blindfold had slipped from my eyes as I realised that one of my guides I had come to know as Firehair was in fact another face of the goddess Epona. In showing herself to me on this occasion she was testing me, seeing if I was ready to make that connection. I think my jaw dropped when I had this realisation because Epona just laughed. I asked her if I was right and she confirmed my new understanding. I had unknowingly limited my understanding of her and luckily she was willing to help me work through that.
This new understanding changed everything. It made me re-evaluate all the meetings I had ever had with Firehair, all the interactions, advice and gifts she had given me over the last few years. After all the years of searching in meditation, or wishing to see more of Epona I finally realised that not only had she been a quiet voice in my heart but she was also there as my guide all long. It also taught me that although Epona is not necessarily known as a trickster she has a fine sense of humour and will happily use tricks and jokes to help teach a lesson if it seems appropriate to her.
The other thing all this emphasised to me is that the Gods have no physical form, they take on what form they wish to use. You may see them in one particular form but you may not. In journeying it means it is even more important to treat anyone or anything you come across with respect as you never know when you are being visited by a God in disguise.
If you think about it the forms we see our Gods in are simply a manifestation of their Spirit and they can choose to alter that manifestation as easily as we would change our clothes or hairstyle. Our Gods live by different rules to those we live by, they have different perspectives and different responsibilities. We often try to judge them by our own standards and this is like trying to judge someone from another culture by our own standards, it’s not fair to them or to ourselves.
Our Gods are more than simple descriptions, they are complex personalities and it is only by working with them, learning from them, listening to them that we begin to understand a little of where they are coming from. For example Lugh is known to many as a strong warrior and a solar God but to one of my friends he can also be a great lover and a gardener. He can braid anything you need and can ease fear. And all of that still probably only touches the surface of the complex being that he is.
Or Cernunnos, the horned one, but depicted with antlers most of the time. He is commonly known as a wild man of the forest but for some he can also lead the lost to safety, teach forest lore and speak all the languages of animals and trees. For more about Cernunnos I recommend you read the article “Who is Cernunnos?” by Alexa Duir in the Samhain issue of Pagan Dawn (No. 157). Or Rhiannon, often known for her links to horses but to another of my friends she is also the bringer of dreams, including nightmares. She also has a strong sense of justice and of humility, of love and duty to the things that matter to her. These are not simple descriptions, they are not simple beings but deeply complex ones.
If we are not careful we can be just as prejudiced, just as subject to stereotypes in dealing with our Gods as we can be in dealing with the people we meet in day to day life. And just as I hope you do with those you meet in life it is only in keeping an open mind and getting to know our Gods that we can move past prejudices and stereotypes and learn what the individual is really like. Talking to others about their experiences and reading different accounts and descriptions can help but ultimately you have to develop your own relationship with your Gods just as you would with any other person in your life.
Additional Information
For further information about Epona see http://www.epona.net