Godhood in a Nutshell
This is a first draft, I'm trying to get my thoughts in order. Suggestions for useful revisions are extremely welcome.
I think, in Western culture, we are over-accustomed to a Christian-influenced idea of "God" meaning "ultimate authority" or perhaps "ultimate power". (Which suddenly strikes me, in my minimal understanding of the Kabbalah, as a very Gevurah-rooted conception of divinity.) To become godlike or even a god is to achieve the mighty status of "You're not the boss of me", and to be unfettered by mere social limitations if they happen to be inconvenient.
I think godhood is a path of service.
And this is complicated, and nuanced, and there are threads.
But consider, since I have deep roots in Egyptian theology, the Pharaoh. One of the titles of that personage - the divine incarnation, the person with the sole buck-stops-here responsibility for keeping the spiritual trains running on time in the land of Egypt - was "Hem/et". "Hem" means "servant."
That service was to the other gods, in part, to the divinised royal ancestors, but most fundamentally to the cosmic order, to ma'at: in order for the cosmos to properly function, certain things needed to be done, and the actions of the king were part of completing that circuit. In the great mechanism of the functioning cosmos, the gods also serve ma'at - in Egyptian theological terms, they are said to eat it and to have it sustain their kau, which makes it the mechanism of the basic life force and power of the gods. Without the cosmic order, there is no power, because that is what divine power feeds upon.
Other forms of power do not necessarily feed upon ma'at, but godly power does. Godly magic does. And insofar as Egyptian magic contains the goal to become a god - and that is a major thread throughout, most obvious in the funeral liturgy but elsewhere as well - then it contains the necessity of becoming sustained, becoming fed by, this substance which is justice, is order, is purity, is connection through and within the community. (Community of gods, mortals, the cosmos itself, the whole big-banged shebang.)
In other backgrounds, there is the comment that if one is truly aligned with the universe one can ask it for anything and receive it - if one is truly a part of the divine, then the divine grants all prayers. Prayer-granting is of course a service job - and once one becomes empowered to grant one's own prayers, one, being fed on the flow of the entire universe, cannot feed on that which would unravel the universe, at least not sustainably.
Even Christianity has this concept, as was kindly pointed out to me when I floated it elsewhere, so I quote the fine language of the King James version:
I dabble, occasionally, in nicking bits of mythology into my personal mysticism in occasionally wacky ways. One of the ones I've done a bit of poking at is the concept of the sovereignty goddess - the personification often of a particular river, the governing anima of the land. A king must have a proper relationship, often sexual, with the sovereignty goddess in order to rule; a bad relationship with Her makes for a dysfunctional reign. And when I look at that I see that the relationship with that goddess is one where She is who makes the king, and that rulership - that absolute power to whatever extent it exists - comes about because a deity chooses to serve it.
What is power, and rule? This flow of service from land daemon to land governor. And that governance? Comes back around to that title of 'Hem', servant, or the bit where rulership is etymologically linked to medicine in the Chinese philosophy that artan_eter is studying as part of his schooling. The service of a god makes a king; the job of the king is healing. (O Fisher King where art thou?) Service. We heal each other with it.
I am a polytheist. I perceive any of a huge number of gods, in community, often in conflict, always in dynamic flow. Even the smallest of the small gods has governance over some specific portion of the universe, and thus the power to manifest that portion or withhold it. To continue to manifest - to continue, therefore, to exist - is an act of service to being, to creation. Holding back from that giving forth negates.
If we are to become as gods, if we are to create universes with our hands and our spit and our fucking and our words, however we might choose to do, then we are part and parcel of creation, and because existence is, we serve to uphold it. Should we fall down and cease to serve, then that which we began we will also end, and our domains will collapse. Only by the act of putting forth, of giving, of serving the whole that needs all of the component parts that we can offer, can the essence of being be upheld. Only by the act of accepting that which we do not build - because polytheism requires that there are gods who are not ourselves, that exist outside our scope of control, that govern things that are out of our hands - and building with, serving with, sometimes directing, sometimes accepting direction, partnering with others at times and not at others, can the essence of being be upheld.
What is ultimate power? So many framings of the concept put it in terms of the power to control, the power to destroy, the power to compel, the power to deny. But with all this negation, one loses also the power to connect, the power to influence; these gods, bounded in a nutshell, count themselves king of infinite space. If we are to crack that nut, open it up a little, we find that one irresistable force twined up in among a lot of other irresistable forces, and to be an immovable object stalls the system and makes no power at all. To be, to create, to have power other than the power to deny, requires an ability to flex and, again, to serve a common vision.
Which comes back to that old mystical chestnut - speaking of nutshells - 0=2. Before there were two things, the ancient Egyptians would have said, which meant before there was anything. If the only power is the power to deny, to isolate, to negate, to assert that you are not the boss of me, then that is no power, and that existence as a god is no existence. The power to create opens up from that nothingness to multiplicity to millions of things, and petitions for the end of absolutes.
If I want to make a universe, I have to crack the nutshell, and I must place myself in service to that child.
The Unitarian Universalist church I attend opens each ceremony with a short prayer, an affirmation, which begins "Love is the spirit of this church and service is its law." (Or 'goal'. Some do it differently, and I can't recall which one is in the order of service right now.) It and I are both descended from the Puritans, who would probably not approve of aspiring to godhood or teachings about finding the divine, holy spark in each other, but nonetheless here we all are.
I think, in Western culture, we are over-accustomed to a Christian-influenced idea of "God" meaning "ultimate authority" or perhaps "ultimate power". (Which suddenly strikes me, in my minimal understanding of the Kabbalah, as a very Gevurah-rooted conception of divinity.) To become godlike or even a god is to achieve the mighty status of "You're not the boss of me", and to be unfettered by mere social limitations if they happen to be inconvenient.
I think godhood is a path of service.
And this is complicated, and nuanced, and there are threads.
But consider, since I have deep roots in Egyptian theology, the Pharaoh. One of the titles of that personage - the divine incarnation, the person with the sole buck-stops-here responsibility for keeping the spiritual trains running on time in the land of Egypt - was "Hem/et". "Hem" means "servant."
That service was to the other gods, in part, to the divinised royal ancestors, but most fundamentally to the cosmic order, to ma'at: in order for the cosmos to properly function, certain things needed to be done, and the actions of the king were part of completing that circuit. In the great mechanism of the functioning cosmos, the gods also serve ma'at - in Egyptian theological terms, they are said to eat it and to have it sustain their kau, which makes it the mechanism of the basic life force and power of the gods. Without the cosmic order, there is no power, because that is what divine power feeds upon.
Other forms of power do not necessarily feed upon ma'at, but godly power does. Godly magic does. And insofar as Egyptian magic contains the goal to become a god - and that is a major thread throughout, most obvious in the funeral liturgy but elsewhere as well - then it contains the necessity of becoming sustained, becoming fed by, this substance which is justice, is order, is purity, is connection through and within the community. (Community of gods, mortals, the cosmos itself, the whole big-banged shebang.)
In other backgrounds, there is the comment that if one is truly aligned with the universe one can ask it for anything and receive it - if one is truly a part of the divine, then the divine grants all prayers. Prayer-granting is of course a service job - and once one becomes empowered to grant one's own prayers, one, being fed on the flow of the entire universe, cannot feed on that which would unravel the universe, at least not sustainably.
Even Christianity has this concept, as was kindly pointed out to me when I floated it elsewhere, so I quote the fine language of the King James version:
- So after he had washed their feet, and had taken his garments, and was set down again, he said unto them, Know ye what I have done to you?
Ye call me Master and Lord: and ye say well; for so I am.
If I then, your Lord and Master, have washed your feet; ye also ought to wash one another's feet.
For I have given you an example, that ye should do as I have done to you.
I dabble, occasionally, in nicking bits of mythology into my personal mysticism in occasionally wacky ways. One of the ones I've done a bit of poking at is the concept of the sovereignty goddess - the personification often of a particular river, the governing anima of the land. A king must have a proper relationship, often sexual, with the sovereignty goddess in order to rule; a bad relationship with Her makes for a dysfunctional reign. And when I look at that I see that the relationship with that goddess is one where She is who makes the king, and that rulership - that absolute power to whatever extent it exists - comes about because a deity chooses to serve it.
What is power, and rule? This flow of service from land daemon to land governor. And that governance? Comes back around to that title of 'Hem', servant, or the bit where rulership is etymologically linked to medicine in the Chinese philosophy that artan_eter is studying as part of his schooling. The service of a god makes a king; the job of the king is healing. (O Fisher King where art thou?) Service. We heal each other with it.
I am a polytheist. I perceive any of a huge number of gods, in community, often in conflict, always in dynamic flow. Even the smallest of the small gods has governance over some specific portion of the universe, and thus the power to manifest that portion or withhold it. To continue to manifest - to continue, therefore, to exist - is an act of service to being, to creation. Holding back from that giving forth negates.
If we are to become as gods, if we are to create universes with our hands and our spit and our fucking and our words, however we might choose to do, then we are part and parcel of creation, and because existence is, we serve to uphold it. Should we fall down and cease to serve, then that which we began we will also end, and our domains will collapse. Only by the act of putting forth, of giving, of serving the whole that needs all of the component parts that we can offer, can the essence of being be upheld. Only by the act of accepting that which we do not build - because polytheism requires that there are gods who are not ourselves, that exist outside our scope of control, that govern things that are out of our hands - and building with, serving with, sometimes directing, sometimes accepting direction, partnering with others at times and not at others, can the essence of being be upheld.
What is ultimate power? So many framings of the concept put it in terms of the power to control, the power to destroy, the power to compel, the power to deny. But with all this negation, one loses also the power to connect, the power to influence; these gods, bounded in a nutshell, count themselves king of infinite space. If we are to crack that nut, open it up a little, we find that one irresistable force twined up in among a lot of other irresistable forces, and to be an immovable object stalls the system and makes no power at all. To be, to create, to have power other than the power to deny, requires an ability to flex and, again, to serve a common vision.
Which comes back to that old mystical chestnut - speaking of nutshells - 0=2. Before there were two things, the ancient Egyptians would have said, which meant before there was anything. If the only power is the power to deny, to isolate, to negate, to assert that you are not the boss of me, then that is no power, and that existence as a god is no existence. The power to create opens up from that nothingness to multiplicity to millions of things, and petitions for the end of absolutes.
If I want to make a universe, I have to crack the nutshell, and I must place myself in service to that child.
The Unitarian Universalist church I attend opens each ceremony with a short prayer, an affirmation, which begins "Love is the spirit of this church and service is its law." (Or 'goal'. Some do it differently, and I can't recall which one is in the order of service right now.) It and I are both descended from the Puritans, who would probably not approve of aspiring to godhood or teachings about finding the divine, holy spark in each other, but nonetheless here we all are.