Polytheism and you

I'm used to the typical discussions about religion where they happen; after all religion and politics are the two things not to be discussed in polite company. In most cases some people may be sitting around a table and drift onto some "out there topic" which gets tied into religion and peoples opinions on God. That is usually it, monotheism by default. "Are you religious ?" is code for "what church do you belong to?". So unless you are a visible minority (in which case Jew, Muslim, Hindu or Buddhist), the default assumption is some denomination of Christian. Even in the off chance that one extends the discussion to include non-believers, the discussion is couched in terms of monotheism. "Oh, you're not a Christian, so why don't you believe in God?" is something I have been asked on several occasions.

The either/or dichotomy, and the defacto monotheistic perspective are facts of life for those living in western cultures, I understand that. I get that a lot of people do not spend absorbent amounts of time contemplating the divine, and if they do, it is a contemplation of the nature of the Abrahamaic god. Understanding this however, does little to soothe my ire at having any discussion, be they layman or scholarly, couched in terms of a monotheistic conception of deity. There are other options, and for someone who is a dyed in the wool polytheist, it gets old. So most of the interfaith discussions I wind up contributing to are among pagans or other polytheists.

However, something amazing occurred today. I was in my ethics class, and the instructor was lecturing about how to make a strong argument, and got to talking about making an argument without facts. Someone asked what sort of arguments one could make without facts, and she replied, "well, arguing for the existence of a god...." My ears perked up, had I heard right? Maybe I had, for the remainder of the class I had that statement gnawing at the back of my mind. After class I approached the instructor and asked her why she worded her statement that way. She looked at me with a kind of flustered look, unsure of what to say, then simply said "some people believe in more than one god." Elation! I found out shortly after, that she had been concerned that she had somehow offended me by stating her phrase just so.

Why does this matter at all? Well that little "a" makes all the difference. For all of the times I have ever discussed religion, or the nature of deity, unless I was speaking to another polytheist I was always the one mentioning that there were perspectives other than monotheism. That someone who is not a polytheist (as far as I know) casually stated her argument to the class as "a god" and not just "God", makes all the difference. It means, in some small way, that people (who are not polytheists) are actually accepting that polytheism is a valid way of understanding deity.

Thoughts?

Gorm.

The "illumination" of Fír?

Fír is one of the central concepts of the Fálachus tradition, approximately it relates to way in which one best lives their life according to the natural order of the cosmos. It is derived from the fír flaithemon, that is "rulers truth", as mentioned in the wisdom text, Audacht Morainn. It is a concept which posits that a king needs to behave in such a way, that upholds the function of his position, and by doing so maintains the proper ordering of the cosmos, enabling him to rule justly. The fír of an individual then is going to differ from person to person. I have read, and participated in, conversations where fír has been compared to possible cognates of other cultures; I have seen it compared to dharma, wyrd/ørlǫg, and fate. The modern Irish word for fate/destiny is cinniúint, but I have not come across much on the subject of cinniúint among GRP's (if anyone would care to enlighten me...) There is however a tendency to try and "square peg" culturally specific ideas into general molds, and while there may be benefit to cross cultural comparison, trying to understand the concept from within is better.

How then does one come to know their own fír? For myself it has become evident through a number of recent decisions as to where my life was going vs the direction I expected it to go in. The strangest, and definitely most UPG based, aspect of this has been akin to a literal emotion occurring before/during/after choices were made. It has often happened spontaneously, a thought comes into my head accompanied by a specific feeling (to try and describe it, semi euphoric and warm) and an intense urge to act on that thought; the resulting action results in a change, which upon further reflection or speaking with others, was oddly (almost frighteningly) a seeming inevitability.

I'll give you an example which occurred to me today actually: I am returning to school in a weeks time, to pursue a career in Funeral Directing, but needing to pay off my current debt, decided to leave my job as a clerk in a book store and landscape for the summer, as the pay is much better (though the work much harder). I had originally planned to work until the 3rd of September, but then a few things came up which I needed to sort out before I went back to school on the 7th, so I informed my boss that September 1st would be my last day; I did this last week. Today, however I suddenly "got it in my head" that today should be my last day on the job; I was not sure why exactly, only that the urge to no longer work for the company (which was a good company, and a decent enough job) was overwhelming. I made up my mind, called my boss and informed him of my choice. We had an amicable exchange and he sort of chuckled. I asked why he was laughing, to which he replied, "Well it's weird, I was actually going to call you this evening and ask if this could have been your last day." This threw me for a bit of a loop, not that I couldn't understand why he would have asked that (aside from myself, another fellow returning to school next week was also working, though he was working until the 3rd, and my boss had recently hired two new employees, so it did not make a lot of sense to pay an extra guy to work for two more days when he  was notl really needed), but that it so perfectly coincided with my inexplicable (and sudden) urge to quit.

Recently, these "sudden urges" have been occurring more frequently, and with similar coincides, to the point where I have begun to suspect that they are no longer mere coincidence. I find it a very odd state of affairs, as I have been a considerably skeptical person all my life, and have brushed off other people's experiences as coincidence or "selective seeing"; but then again I also used to be an atheist, and until I experienced the presence of a deity for the first time, such a notion was laughable to my mind. Once again however, I find myself faced with an experience my skeptical mind is unable to simply explain away. I have looked over a number of terms and concepts, and so far, fír seems to be the best choice. If anyone else has had similar experiences or can think of a better concept to understand my upg, I would be most grateful to learn of it.

Gorm.