Soft Polytheism

There are two competing views of the gods found in contemporary Paganism. According to one view, known as soft polytheism, the great multitude of gods and goddesses are avatars of two supreme deities, the Horned God and the Great Goddess. The alternative view, hard polytheism, is that each god or goddess is not an avatar but an individual with autonomy and agency. 

Personally, I’m a hard polytheist. While I think the gods are more complex than some fellow hard polytheists give them credit for, I believe that each god has personal autonomy and should be treated as individuals.  

That being said, soft polytheism isn’t as new as some of its critics claim. There is some historical basis for soft polytheism.

Photo of Isis statue Andrew Winning/ Reuters / Corbis

The ancient Roman novel titled Metamorphoses, also known as The Golden Ass is the only ancient Roman novel in Latin to survive in its entirety. Written by Apuleius between 158 C.E. and 180 C.E., the story revolves around a character named Lucius who has an intense curiosity about magic. In the novel, Lucius performs a spell to turn himself into a bird. However, it goes horribly wrong, and he accidentally turns himself into a donkey or ass. He then goes on a long journey throughout the classical world as a donkey. 

In the last chapter of the novel, Lucius encounters the Goddess Isis. This excerpt is lengthy, but it’s important. I’ve emphasized details pertinent to the subject at hand:

Behold, Lucius, here I am, moved by your prayer, I, mother of all Nature and mistress of the elements, first-born of the ages and greatest of powers divine, queen of the dead, and queen of the immortals, all gods and goddesses in a single form; who with a gesture commands heaven’s glittering summit, the wholesome ocean breezes, the underworld’s mournful silence; whose sole divinity is worshiped in differing forms, with varying rites, under many names, by all the world. There, at Pessinus, the Phrygians, first-born of men, call me Cybele, Mother of the Gods; in Attica, a people sprung from their own soil name me Cecropian Minerva; in sea-girt Cyprus I am Paphian Venus; Dictynna-Diana to the Cretan archers; Stygian Proserpine to the three-tongued Sicilians; at Eleusis, ancient Ceres; Juno to some, to others Bellona, Hecate, Rhamnusia; while the races of both Ethiopias, first to be lit at dawn by the risen Sun’s divine rays, and the Egyptians too, deep in arcane lore, worship me with my own rites, and call me by my true name, royal Isis.

If that excerpt sounds familiar, it should. Compare it to the first sentence of the Charge of the Goddess by Doreen Valiente:

Listen to the words of the Great Mother, who was of old also called Artemis; Astarte; Diana; Melusine; Aphrodite; Cerridwen; Dana; Arianrhod; Isis; Bride; and by many other names.

Others have noticed the similarity between the two. According to historian Ronald Hutton, it’s likely that at least part of Charles Leland’s Aradia, or the Gospel of the Witches drew on Metamorphoses. Hutton writes that while Valiente was fine-tuning the work of Gerald Gardner, who had incorporated the work of Charles Leland and Aleister Crowley, she kept the Leland source and wrote the more succinct Charge. The rest, as they say, is history.

With this, we can draw a connection between the 2nd-century beliefs of a specific Roman pagan cult and the Wiccan belief formulated in the mid-20th century, which many contemporary Pagans follow today.

Whether or not one agrees with the concept of soft polytheism, there should be no doubt about its ancient pagan roots.