"Three Legs on the Pagan Cauldron, or Must Pagans Be Polytheists?"

"In the circuitous route I took to my current religious practice, I’ve assumed a more and more polytheistic worldview — not for ideological reasons or out of an active rejection of my birth religion, but because in my spiritual explorations, polytheistic practices produced deeper, more transformative, and more ecstatic experiences. I came to Paganism because I was looking earnestly for intimacy with the divine, not so much because of an innate attraction to pre-Christian mythologies or to any particular named deity. Finding myself cultivating a polytheist practice was, therefore, not what I’d expected to be doing — but it’s what I find most meaningful."

"When I say “polytheist,” what I primarily mean is the position that the gods are individuals, volitional and unique beings much like individual humans, and should be treated as such. This position is often called hard polytheism. Soft polytheism is the idea that there are many gods, but they are aspects of one God/dess, or sometimes a Goddess and a God."


"...Today, in 2013, I think the three legs of the contemporary Pagan cauldron are these: polytheism, Goddess worship,* and earth-based spirituality. These three focuses for belief and practice have all contributed to what we think of as Paganism. Within the movement, a great many practitioners embrace all three perspectives, and many also engage two of the three."

"Different Pagan communities tend to lean toward one or two of the above categories without being explicit about their orientation, which can lead to a mysterious sense of alienation among those individuals who came expecting the third. Unspoken and unmet expectations are one of the most common sources of conflict in communities, and yet we Pagans are inconsistent about accurately setting each others’."

Full Article
http://www.patheos.com/blogs/sermonsfromthemound/2013/01/must-pagans-be-polytheists/