The Vocabulary of Divinity.

[emberleo]

Last night BellaCrow asked me what the difference is between "Powers" and "gods". I feel pushed to write out my answer and post it here, with the usual caveats that this is my understanding and perspective - it's an educated one, but nevertheless a biased one, etc. etc. blah blah.

Comments

[deirdremoon]

I love the chess/checkers analogy. I think that would make sense to newbies on both sides of the argument. :)

[emberleo]

That did feel like the key thing They wanted me to get down for future reference. Glad for the confirmation, thank you!

--Ember--

[pearlshadow]

i really like the chess/checkers/kings analogy.. may i "borrow" it????

i like the word "Powers". it is fairly neutrual and espeically in a house like amuh, refering to the joyboysandgirls as powers grants a certain nuetrality to all parties.

i admit i am bad.. i refer to all of them interchangably as powers. gods, "word-of-the-moment" but than i also refer to them as the "kin-cousins" as well.

thanks for this entry, it is worthy of thought...

[emberleo]

Yeah, go right ahead Mama. It's kind of a public service announcement I suppose - I figured it might be because you needed it for some reason. ;p

--Ember--

[alfrecht]

Very nicely done! The chess/checkers analogy is quite fantastic--perhaps you should write this up as a formal article for The Pomegranate or something? (Yes, you should!)

I often point out in my religious studies classes that the same religious studies scholars (e.g. Huston Smith) who believe in an evolutionary view of religion--with monotheism being at the top rung, as it were--also don't believe in evolution itself, and also don't take that model the step further that atheists do in positing atheism as the apex of the pyramid (or what have you).

Edward Butler, a great modern pagan theologian/philosopher, who has published in various journals as well as being a member of Neos Alexandria, pointed out a while back that treating various African and Afro-Diasporic "High Gods" (like Oludumare) as a kind of monotheism is very misleading, because they're a class of deus otiosus deities who, oftentimes even if they're supreme and the creator, receive no propitiation and are utterly removed from and beyond the created world. (This

[emberleo]

Very nicely done! The chess/checkers analogy is quite fantastic--perhaps you should write this up as a formal article for The Pomegranate or something? (Yes, you should!)

*blinks* *blushes* Um... what does that entail?

Otherwise, yes, thank you! If I were to turn this into something more serious I'd want to back it up with references and all.

--Ember--

[alfrecht]

Yes, exactly: by writing it up formally, I'd think you'd need to lengthen it a bit, put in lots of footnotes, etc. The Pomegranate is, as you may know, the only journal of pagan studies currently in existence...

But, because the comparison is made so often between Afro-Diasporic religions and paganism (due to the large degree of crossover membership between them, particularly on the West Coast), it would be useful to have some formal articles out there by knowledgeable practitioners (like yourself!) that clarify the very real and important differences between them.

[emberleo]

It wouldn't bother them that I'm only just going to graduate with a BA in Religious Studies next year?

--Ember--

[bearfairie]

Excellent differentiation! I also really like the chess/checkers analogy. I tend to default to "powers" these days as well, b/c I find the term simultaneously more vague and more accurate in some ways, and definitely far less loaded and more inclusive.

[emberleo]

I've defaulted to Powers because I don't have to stop and think about whether I'm lumping different categories together, or using the wrong label somewhere. They're all Powers, dangit!

--Ember--

Belated response

[ertla]

I don't accept the existence of any kind of Creator deity analogous to Oludumare - or the egoistically named "God" of the Christians. I consider the latter to be a Power (your term) with ideas above his station, and a tendency to lie (assuming the lies aren't all coming from His clergy). I have no experience with Oludumare, to know whether zie is a somewhat personified philosophical postulate, another egotistical Power, or something else.

That leaves the word "god" without a referent, which seems silly. So I use the term for a particular class of Power. I believe that the Orixa belong to this class, but there's no reason not to use the culturally more appropriate name, when there is one.

Re: Belated response

[emberleo]

Well, the point of this post is to explain the difference in perspective from two different groups, and why the same word seems to mean different things, such that things said in one context to not translate directly to the other.

My own perspective on what "gods" actually are, and whether there is one being bigger than the rest which should or shouldn't be called "God" is beside the point. I'm not actually discussing what beings exist and what they are. I'm discussing what beliefs people have and thus how they use language.

Does that make sense?

--Ember--