by Magi The nature of deity could be said to fall into the following models: Transcendent Divinity which is what modern Christians believe. That is, a transcendent god exists purely outside the world on some heavenly astral plane. The universe is his puppet show, and he pulls the strings from somewhere far away. A transcendent god is unreachable, faceless, and so huge that our relationship with him is almost always one of awe, fear and distance. Everything that happens, no matter how bad, is ascribed to the "will of god". Immanent Divinity. An immanent deity has a distinct form, whether human or animal, and exists in the world rather than outside it. The Greek pantheon, for example. The Greek gods love, hate, have petty rivalries and grand schemes. In a purely immanent pantheon, humans are often viewed as incidental to the intrigues of the gods, and we can be swept up into their dramas whether or not we want to. Some pantheons combine the two models. The Hindu gods are looked on primarily as immanent, with their own lives and histories lived out in the universe. Yet, at the same time, all gods are considered expressions of the greater force known as Brahman, who is essentially transcendent and unknowable. This way of viewing the divine, or no-thing, is basically the way a ceremonial magician sees it, with 'knowable' aspects of the divine manifesting on lower spheres on the Tree of Life, all being aspects of the divine In order to have a relationship (I'll use that instead of worship) with a god, that god would have to be immanent. A knowable, gigantic force is a bit difficult to relate too! But the problem is, by naming a god is to limit it to our own standards by making him/her smaller and less powerful; giving him/her human attributes. There are many debates about all of this within Pagan groups, but it is possible that the problem lies with our previous conditioning. We try to think of the God and Goddess in the same way we thought of Jehovah or Allah instead of rebuilding our concept of the divine from the ground up. We forget that the Wiccan view of the universe is fundamentally different from the one we grew up with. In the Judeo-Christian view of the universe, God created the world as apart from himself, with humans in His own image, and is not usually thought of as being part of either. There is a fundamental separation in those sects between the divine and the mortal realm, and the word of God is handed down through intermediaries such as priests and prophets. Even in the immanent version of God, He is still separate from us, watching us and hearing our prayers from somewhere else. In the usual Wiccan worldview, deity exists in everything, around everything, and as everything. Nothing is outside of or away from the divine. Everything is sacred. Deity can't be pigeonholed into inside or outside; not wholly immanent, not wholly transcendent, yet more than both - manifest. But, this concept of manifest deity is an intellectual contradiction. How can a god be everywhere and right here at the same time? The true nature of spirituality, however, is not intellectual and only a totally new way of looking at deity can satisfy the spirit in a world full of magick. Deity is all things, all places and all times, but because we are human and limited, we cannot have a full understanding of that. Therefore, we create images for our gods to inhabit and faces and names and natures that we can grasp. The divine force that permeates the universe can then enter into those symbols, and for us, they become real. Because the Lord and Lady love us, because They are love made manifest as all things, They wear whatever forms we can best relate to so that we can interact. But these are emblems we have created, not the totality of Goddess and God. The totality is made up of everything in the universe ad its interactions. Looking at deity in this way, it's impossible to think of any other religion as wrong. They are just different ways of arriving at the same conclusions. So why worship through ritual, prayer and other stuff? We don't live in a world that is conducive to experiencing manifest divinity. We are disconnected from our own sacred selves, splitting reality into the false dichotomy of mind and matter. We forget. Religious practise is a way to remember. Ritual and prayer help us to reforge the connection to what is sacred in the world and ourselves. | 
