There are many pantheons in Paganism which is an overwhelmingly polytheistic religion. But amongst Pagans there are two main directions of belief and practice. One is nature-based such as Druidry and Wicca and the deities are the way they interact with nature and the environment without necessarily attributing ontological reality to them – this is soft polytheism. Reconstructionists, looking to restore pre-Christian beliefs and practices tend more to see their Gods as having a real, independent existence – this is hard polytheism.

Summary

Polytheism is often defined by Scholars as an earth-based and nature-worshipping religion or, actually, a set of religions. But there are many Gods and Goddesses in Paganism. There is a form of Polytheism that is quite prevalent in Paganism but not all Pagans and forms of Paganism actually see the Gods and Goddesses, the divine, in the same exact way. And one quite helpful way of distinguishing the two main approaches to deities that Pagans engage with is the distinction between hard and soft Polytheism and this is going to be the topic of our video.

Hello everyone. I’m Dr Angela Puca and welcome to my Symposium. I am a PhD and a Religious Studies Scholar and this is your online resource for the academic study of Magick, Paganism, Shamanism, Esotericism and all things occult.

There is already a video on my Youtube channel on Demons in Paganism which is actually quite popular and I thought that even though in other videos I have addressed, in different ways, whereby Pagans engage with the divine and with deities and how Pagans see deities and I have also mentioned in passing the difference between hard and soft Polytheism, I have never quite addressed it in one specific video. And I thought this might be helpful for you guys and perhaps it could be more searchable for those Pagans who want to have a specific answer to different ways whereby Pagans engage with the divine (Hutton, 1995; Harvey, 2000; Harvey 2004, York, 2005; Pizza and Lewis, 2009; Calico, 2018). So, of course, as a Religious Studies Scholar, I know that in Paganism you have very different ways and you have a level of individuality that is quite prevalent in Paganism So you have especially the eclectic Pagans tend to individually tailor their practices and as a consequence, even when it comes to the divine and how they work with deities, that can really differ from Pagan to Pagan and from Practitioner to Practitioner.

However, since Scholars tend to study, not really, what every single individual does but rather the patterns emerging from the community and since in Social Science we know that individual behaviour is highly unpredictable but group behaviour tends to be more predictable, meaning that people that are within a community of any sort start to follow certain patterns of behaviour. As a consequence, studying the patterns emerging from communities is quite informative and even though it’s never going to be a hundred per cent accurate when it comes to every single Practitioner, it still gives you the most accurate knowledge on the religious, in this case, a religious phenomenon that you can get. So speaking of patterns, I think that to understand how Pagans interact with the divine, with the Gods and Goddesses, it is useful to make a distinction between two main forms of Paganism I would say.

So the first one would be what is, perhaps, most popular among contemporary Pagans and that is a form of contemporary Paganism that has been massively influenced by Wicca and it also includes Wiccan-based or Wiccan-inspired traditions and groups, eclectic Pagans or eclectic Practitioners even eclectic Magic-Practitioners that are influenced by a very Wiccan-like form of Paganism, Pagan Witchcraft and religious Druidry. These tend to be forms of Paganism that are very based on the practice, they are focused on the practice, whether it be the Magic practice or also the experience that the Pagan has and they tend to be more attached to the idea of nature-worshipping. And nature-worshipping is also often misunderstood when it comes to Paganism because it’s not worshipping in a Monotheistic sense it is more the acknowledgement that the divine is immanent so it is imbued in everything in the manifested world. And as a consequence by connecting with the natural world, with the manifested world, with everything that exists, there is a level of connection and a spiritual experience that comes from it. So we could see that we have this, sort of, the first form of Paganism that tends to be more focused on the practice, on the experience, tends to be more eclectic, more based on the experience of the Pagan and the connection with nature and it tends to be, as well, individually tailored.

Then we have another form of Paganism which we can call polytheistic Reconstructionism where we find Pagan traditions such as Heathenry or, you know, forms of Reconstructionism such as Hellenic Reconstructionism. (Suggested video: Heathenry, Seidr magic, Asatru, Odinism with Dr Jefferson Calico) So you have these forms of Paganism where they are trying to reconstruct pre-Christian beliefs and pre-Christian ways of worship. Now one of the big differences between polytheistic Reconstructionism and a more nature-based Pagan Witchcraft is that in polytheistic Reconstructionism you have more of a focus on the worship with deities and you have more the sense that working with the Gods and with very specific Gods with very specific characteristics is extremely important to them. It is more core to their practice that for instance magic practices or the connection to nature which appears to be more central in the first form of Paganism that we have just described.

So now we can come to the concept of or rather the difference between soft Polytheism and hard Polytheism this is a distinction that came from the reconstructionism side of Paganism and in some cases, it has been used to sort of highlight that they are the true Polytheists because they are the hard Polytheists. But I, along with other Scholars find it to be still quite useful in, sort of, understanding different ways of engaging with the divine on the part of Pagans and it doesn’t necessarily imply, you know, any derogatory connotation when it comes to soft Polytheism.

The idea here is that soft Polytheism is the idea that Gods are not ontologically real. So ontology is the branch of philosophy that studies what would exist and what is objectively existent outside of our perception of it. So for a soft Polytheist Gods and Goddesses are, for instance, archetypes – parts of our subconscious or they could be forces of nature or they could be representations of, you know, our psyche. So soft Polytheism tends to see the Gods and Goddesses as, in a way, dependent on the Practitioner. So their existence tends to be seen in relation to the Practitioner. So, depending on you, the specific God or the specific Goddess can represent something different. So, as we said, this is a form of Paganism that tends to be more individually tailored because soft Paganism is more associated with the, let’s call it Pagan Witchcraft, Wiccan-inspired side of Paganism. Whereas the Reconstructionism side of Paganism they tend to have more what is called hard Polytheism which means that they believe that Gods are objectively existent they, are ontologically real, we would say in philosophy. And since they are ontologically real or even outside of our interaction with them, it means that for hard Polytheists it is more important to stick to certain traditional ways of seeing that specific entity, that specific deity but also to interact with that specific deity. Whereas in a soft polytheistic approach, you have more of the sense that you can, for instance, worship one deity from one pantheon and another deity from another pantheon. In a hard-polytheistic approach, you don’t really have that and hard polytheists tend to stick to one pantheon as well and that is because in a soft polytheistic approach, you have more of a sense of eclecticism. So soft Polytheists tend to be more eclectic in their practice and of course, in the way they perceive their deities, the Gods and Goddesses.

Whereas in hard Polytheism you have more of the sense that you should really stick to the traditional way of working and seeing and perceiving a certain deity and you also don’t have the tendency to mix different pantheons or associating one specific deity with another one from a different culture.

So as a consequence, I would say that another difference between soft Polytheism and hard Polytheism is that soft Polytheism is more trans-cultural. This is a term that I have also used in previous videos when it comes to Shamanism, so in Shamanism you have transcultural forms of Shamanism that are not linked to a specific context, to a specific culture, to a specific lineage, the focus is more on the technique, on the practice and then you can utilize, employ that practice in an individually tailored manner that suits you, as a Practitioner, across different cultures. So you can use the technique in Italy or in England or in the US and you’re supposed to get the same exact results. Whereas in a more cultural-sensitive, context-sensitive, traditional-sensitive, and more based on a certain lineage or a certain tradition you don’t really have that sense, you don’t have the sense that you can just focus on the specific technique and then adapt it to your personal worldview. You have more of the sense that you, as the Practitioner, should adapt to, whether it is a specific tradition or a specific initiatory path or in this case a specific way of working with the divine or working with a specific pantheon or with a specific cultural polytheistic framework. And when it comes to the worldview or the belief system underlying the eclectic Paganism on one hand and the polytheistic Reconstructionism, on the other hand, we can see that in a soft polytheistic approach, you have two underlying philosophical underpinnings which are quite interesting and those are Perennialism and Platonism, I would say.

Perennialism is the idea that there is an underlying truth that goes beyond cultural differences. So it is the perception that truth goes beyond the cultural differences, that it is there is one underlying truth and all the elements that are linked to traditions or to context or to culture are more than different vests that the truth is presenting itself into but actually, the truth is still there. And so Perennialists tend to see, for instance, different deities from different pantheons as being representative of the same exact force or the same exact archetype because, for a Perennialist, what matters is the truth that is beneath an underlying and beyond any cultural-specific elements which are, sort of, not universal and as a consequence they cannot really be the truth. So you have to find the universal seed underlying all of these cultural differences so that you can sort of see and discover and acknowledge what the truth actually is. It has to be beyond all of those veils that are just fleeting and transient and culturally specific whereas the truth is universal. So you have to find that universal, perennial, perpetual core that is concealed, underlying and beyond all of these cultural and time-specific elements.

And this is also linked to Platonism, a Platonic way of seeing the truth and in this case, also seeing the divine and deity. So when in Wicca they often say that all the Goddesses are one Goddess and all the Gods are one God in that kind of duodeistic view of the divine, that you find in Wicca, that is very Platonic because it’s the concept that you have in the world of ideal forms in Plato. So the idea is that every single chair that manifests in the world is actually a reflection of the ideal form of the chair-ness that is found in the world of the ideal forms. So there is this kind of link between perhaps Perennialism and a Platonic understanding of the divine and a Platonic way of living one’s Paganism. On the other hand, with hard Polytheism, which we saw that it is a concept that we find with polytheistic Reconstructionism you have, as an underlying philosophy, a form of theism that is more based on the deities, on working with the deities and they are quite core to the Pagan experience of the polytheistic Reconstructionists. And they would definitely not see different deities from different pantheons as being interchangeable or as being representations of the same force of nature or representative of the same archetype or the same aspect of our psyche. They wouldn’t, they wouldn’t say that at all because as we saw in hard Paganism there is the belief that every single God and every single Goddess, they are ontologically existent in their own right, with their own specific traits, just as every individual is. And so this kind of understanding of deities will not really allow for combining different entities or different deities from different pantheons because it is not really responding to what the underlying perception of the divine is and what the underlying way of engaging with deities on the part of the polytheistic Reconstructionists represent and manifest.

So to sum it up, in Paganism you have mainly two forms of Paganism. You have an eclectic Paganism or Pagan Witchcraft and you have the polytheistic Reconstructionism. The eclectic Paganism tends to lean towards a form of soft Polytheism where deities are not seen as necessarily ontologically existent or objectively real but rather more as representations of archetypes or forces of nature. Whereas in the other form of Paganism, which we can call polytheistic Reconstructionism you have more the idea of hard Polytheism which means that they believe that Gods and Goddesses are ontologically real, they objectively exist they have their own traits and as a consequence, you cannot really mix and match different pantheons or you cannot associate one God or one Goddess to another one from a different culture, a different time and a different place because every single deity is their own. Just as I, as Angela, I’m not another woman or another Italian or another, anything that has some kind of trait in common with me.

I hope that this video was helpful to you guys and I hope that it was somehow useful to know the difference between soft Polytheism and hard Polytheism. I definitely look forward to reading the comment section and I hope that you can relate to the information that has been provided in this video and let me know what you think. Whether you think that you know there’s something missing here or what was the favourite part of this video for you.

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REFERENCES
Calico, J.F. 2018. Being Viking: Heathenism in Contemporary America. Bristol: Equinox Publishing Ltd.

Harvey, G. 2000. Contemporary Paganism: Listening People, Speaking Earth. NYU Press.

Harvey, G. 2004. The Paganism Reader 1st edition. (C. Clifton, ed.). London ; New York: Routledge.

Hutton, R. 1995. The Triumph of the Moon: A History of Modern Pagan Witchcraft New Ed edition. Oxford: Oxford University Press, U.S.A.

Pizza, M. and Lewis, J.R. (eds.). 2009. Handbook of Contemporary Paganism. Leiden-Boston: Brill.

York, M. 2005. Pagan Theology: Paganism as a World Religion. New York: New York University Press.

First uploaded 17 Apr 2022