Polytheism

This is another installment of a series of posts on how modern Neopaganism is truly the ‘Old Religion’ because it contains similar tropes and beliefs as the oldest recorded Indo-European religion, in this case, Mesopotamian, which far predates Abrahamic monotheism.

Polytheism, a belief in multiple gods, is a definitive feature of Neopaganism. This is true whether it’s soft polytheism in which there are two deities (a God and a Goddess who manifest as numerous avatars) or hard polytheism in which there are many gods, each with their own agency. Both forms of polytheism are found in Neopaganism.

 

The Mesopotamians were also polytheists. According to Thorkild Jacobson, author of The Treasures of Darkness, Mesopotamian polytheism was closely tied to their belief in ‘intransitiveness.’ As mentioned in a previous post, intransitiveness means that a deity is located within a phenomenon and only within that phenomenon. Intransitiveness would require that each phenomenon must have its own deity. Numerous phenomena require numerous gods. For example, if there is a god or goddess of rain and only rain, one would need a different god or goddess for something else, such as sunshine. Here’s an excellent list of Mesopotamian gods and goddesses. 

I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again: Neopaganism is the Old Religion.