To Limit the Divine

An excellent shrine from Pagan artist Marcel Gomes

OK, am I little cranky this morning? Perhaps. This is one of those general statements of things-I-think, whorth exactly what its worth...

I tend to doubt cliché wisdom. Much of what passes for common-or-garden, bar-stool spirituality isn’t worth a crap, really. “All is One” So fucking what – hammer that nail with this cheese. “The Universe is mental – my mind makes reality”. Look out for that bus... One oft-recited nostrum is that one cannot or must not “limit the divine”. Allow me to dissect…

My first assertion is that limitation is absolutely required for real existence. Limitation is identical with definition. It is the edges that define – the limits. That might be band-width limits, conceptual limits or material limits, but all things, material or ideational are describable and definable because they are limited. If there could be things not describable or definable, we don’t (couldn’t) know of them.

My second assertion is that the divine, or spirit-world, is a part of the natural system, a segment of the whole cosmos. I expect the spiritual to reflect the material, and vice versa – as above, so below, etc. Thus I expect real divine things to have limitation, boundary and definition. Since I dismiss the notion of ‘one God’ I can dismiss several philosophical quandaries that come with it. As a polytheist it makes sense to me that the divine part of nature contains many persons, many beings, each defined by their limitation (or limited by their definition, as ya like). Odin isn’t Aphrodite isn’t Orpheus – the gods are the gods.

Let’s look at limitation in another way. One of the most reliable means of increasing power is through limitation. If you want that water to turn a wheel you must limit it to a channel cut in the earth. If you want those electrons to flip a switch you must limit them in a properly-connected wire. Even were one to posit some oceanic all-consciousness-style godhead, it would have to take more limited form in order to be at all present in the world. Even in monistic religions (not in monotheistic ones) the divine manifests as the many persons of the gods. 

So, when a modern Pagan undertakes to make real contact with the divine in the person of one of the gods it is reasonable for us to approach the god in a clearly delimited and focused way. This is the merit of using a formal shrine, of making a throne, a specific locale in which you ask and expect the power of the god to manifest. This is why it is valuable to make sacred space – to say “this space is different, separate, and specific”. The essential mechanism of formal theurgy is the manifestation of divine power in the idols and tools of the magician’s shrine. This is made possible by the creation of a narrow channel – by the skillful application of limitation. The proper image, properly-colored gear, proper offerings and incense, all create a narrow symbolic channel through which the divine power enters the material world.

So I would say that the work of limiting the divine is central to really knowing the divine. Like any real knowledge, some knowledge of the spiritual world must be acquired a piece at a time, one being at a time. To know the forest is to know each of the trees. We set ourselves to meet the god and spirits through our efforts, counting on their good will and our good method to allow the meeting. By providing a limited channel for the divine, we make it real in the real world, and greatly increase our chances of generating real blessing.