More About Gods

I first need to state what many consider an obvious detail about gods. Gods are a class of spirits. According to occultist and author Judika Illes in her book The Encyclopedia of Spirits, spirits are non-corporeal and alive with their own needs and desires. 

Is there one Spirit or multiple spirits? We can look to life on Earth for guidance.

It’s estimated that there are nearly 9 million species of life on Earth. Even if we limit ourselves to our own species, nearly 8 billion humans are alive today. Each one of us has our own personality with our own desires and a capacity for autonomous behavior. In addition, humans aren’t the only conscious lifeforms. We now understand that many other lifeforms, such as elephants, dolphins, octopuses*, and ravens, have their own complex form of consciousness. 

Therefore, applying the Hermetic Principle “As Above, So Below” necessitates that the spirit world should have a wide variety, just as the physical world. Not only must there be numerous types of spirits, but there must also exist various levels of consciousness, some equal to or possibly greater than our own.

What makes one spirit a god while another spirit not? To paraphrase Herald from the play Henry V, how do we sort noble spirits from the common? I turn to Stephen Dillon, who, in his book The Case for Polytheism, distinguishes gods from the other spirits as entities having something he calls “remarkable greatness.”

“Remarkable greatness” is somewhat fuzzy and hard to pin down. I can best describe it as a sense of awe and wonder one experiences when in their presence. I’ve worked with different spirits, some of whom left me speechless and scared the crap out of me. But there is nothing like the presence of a god. 

Now that I've provided a basic definition of what is meant by a “god,” I can further explore their nature and our relation to them in future posts. 

*Note: according to the Ocean Conservatory website, the plural of octopus is “octopuses.”