Do the gods "intervene?"

[Quintessence]

In another thread somewhere, it was suggested that most gods are interventionist. Given most gods throughout human history have been natural (aka, deification has primarily been an expression of sacred relationships between humans and the greater-than-human world - the various natural forces from storms to winds to the sun and the earth itself), how are we to understand gods being interventionist in this context? What does it mean for the wind to "intervene" in human lives? What does it mean for the sun to "intervene" in human lives? Or for the land to "intervene" in human lives? Is that really how it works?

Comments from fellow polytheists, animists, and pantheists are especially welcome. I don't typically think of the gods as "intervening" in my life as that is kind of a weird way of putting it in my view, but maybe I'm not thinking about this in the right way.

 

[Jayhawker Soule]

How would one know?

 

[JustGeorge]

It was one of those freezing Iowa days... where its just about too cold to snow. I was at a gas pump, wind blowing. I was feeling terrible emotionally, cold to the bone physically.

It felt like a hand was twisting its fingers through my hair. A searing, hot hand. Just playing in my hair... a loving touch. I had a feeling of Surya, encouraging me from afar...

Yes. That's a simple example, but yes. I do think they do. Often.

I have many other small stories, and a couple big ones. These interventions are probably a large part of what keeps me going.

 

[Quintessence]

How would one know?

A useful and important question.

The same way one would know anything, I suppose - by trusting in one's faculties and practicing discernment. We're not left with much else as a species on an epistemological front, other than trusting in someone else's faculties and heeding someone else's discernment in place of our own.

 

[VoidCat]

I consider cats gods. But they dont really intervene they just drop onto a person's doorstep sometimes like my home now I'll hang with you now...the cat distribution system is interesting. Usually strikes when you dont need another cat or wanting one.

 

[JustGeorge]

I consider cats gods. But they dont really intervene they just drop onto a person's doorstep sometimes like my home now I'll hang with you now...the cat distribution system is interesting. Usually strikes when you dont need another cat or was wanting one.

That's why there's ten here...

 

[VoidCat]

That's why there's ten here...

Exactly. For some reason the cat distribution system really likes certain people...

 

[VoidCat]

@JustGeorge

It also has a sense of humor

 

[Quintessence]

It was one of those freezing Iowa days... where its just about too cold to snow. I was at a gas pump, wind blowing. I was feeling terrible emotionally, cold to the bone physically.

It felt like a hand was twisting its fingers through my hair. A searing, hot hand. Just playing in my hair... a loving touch. I had a feeling of Surya, encouraging me from afar...

Yes. That's a simple example, but yes. I do think they do. Often.

I have many other small stories, and a couple big ones. These interventions are probably a large part of what keeps me going.

I suspect my hangup with this is a difficulty I have in believing the gods "care" about (or even particularly notice) humans. There are notable exceptions to this in my experience - tales for another time, perhaps - but on the whole the gods feel so fundamentally different from humans that "care" feels like a bit of an anthropomorphism.

Then there was this chapter I read in a book the other moon that got me thinking about this again. It invited the reader to ask themselves the following: how do you tell when a human cares about you? Pretend for a moment that you don't share the same language and can't communicate with each other directly. What behaviors and actions do we consider indicative of care? What does care look like, beyond the artifice of language and words? It's been on my mind ever since. I scoffed at the idea. And yet...

 

[JustGeorge]

I suspect my hangup with this is a difficulty I have in believing the gods "care" about (or even particularly notice) humans. There are notable exceptions to this in my experience - tales for another time, perhaps - but on the whole the gods feel so fundamentally different from humans that "care" feels like a bit of an anthropomorphism.

I think it might be worth investigating why you have difficulty believing that Gods care.

Looking through mythologies, I see Gods having complex relationships with each other, humans, and all sorts of other species. Some Gods love some people/animals/things, and hate other people/animals/things. Some are neutral, some are invested. I'm unable to imagine the Gods anymore of a uniform group than people are(or, any other species, or even mineral).

Perhaps their 'care' is different than a person's... but does that automatically mean they don't?

Then there was this chapter I read in a book the other moon that got me thinking about this again. It invited the reader to ask themselves the following: how do you tell when a human cares about you? Pretend for a moment that you don't share the same language and can't communicate with each other directly. What behaviors and actions do we consider indicative of care? What does care look like, beyond the artifice of language and words? It's been on my mind ever since. I scoffed at the idea. And yet...

I think its worth examining.

 

[Tamino]

I think that yes, deities intervene. And when they do, it's a very personal thing - in my life at least.
I have had few, but important, instances in my life that I interprete as divine intervention.
One of them felt like a random touch of good will (getting healed in the temple of Dendera), another instance saved my life when I was depressed and suicidal.

In my interpretation, most deities are not super interested in humans, let alone individual humans. They may sometimes intervene spontaneously, for their own reasons. But most of the times you need to actively try and get their attention with ritual and offerings.

That does not mean that they are completely removed... but when I feel close to deities, they are usually not doing anything special. Like, at sunrise, I may feel Ra's touch in the first rays, but He is not paying attention to me, He is just going about his daily business.

Oh, and another thing I would like to mention: the ancients for sure didn't WANT the intervention of a god at all times. When you hold festivals for Sekhmet, to calm the goddess, you do it to keep Her and Her arrows away from your home...
One of my profs at uni also offered an interesting perspective on rites for dead ancestors as well. He said, if you make a nice tomb for your mother in law, out in the western desert - with a stela and a false door and leave offerings... that's also a way of telling the dead person:"now that you have this nice home out in the desert, why don't you stay here, and don't come bother us living folk in the village, alright? 'Cause you're dead and kinda scary now, no offense"
So, yeah, just throwing out there that humans might want to avoid divine intervention, not just invite it.

 

[beenherebeforeagain]

As I've noted before, I don't do deities....

However...

My experience has been that my interactions with the other-than-human kin in my community are often or almost always subtle and not particularly noticeable for others. They are also not so much regular or reliable as intermittent. It is interactions between them and me, alone, or so it seems to me...

One of the defining traits of spirit, in my understanding, is the presence of volition...that is, that which is/has spirit is to some degree capable of engaging in interactions, at least sometimes, with the persons (human or otherwise) in their environment...including me. I have volition, they have volition...

True story: One of my earliest experiences that had any 'spiritual' significance for me, was the day in 6th grade when from breakfast on I felt worse and worse. I went home for lunch (a tenth of a mile on my bicycle...and didn't eat), and called Dad to see if I could stay home. He left it up to me. I decided that I would go back to school--after all, the worst it would be would be me throwing up, or so I thought. After returning to school, I started to feel much better, and by the end of school I was making plans to head over to a friend's house...

I was on crossing-guard duty that day...it was normal...a couple of kids told the crossing guard that they were able to push her car (yeah, two maybe 70-pound kids were pushing a '56 Chevy...Anyway, Mrs. Ray went to reset her parking break...next thing I know, there's a loud noise and screaming kids and I'm trying to push back against the front of a '56 Chevy from REALLY CLOSE UP...then I wake up, probably only seconds later, pinned in place and yelling for help...I realized that wasn't useful, so I stopped. Within minutes, several men had lifted the Chevy up so that others could pull the six of us kids from underneath. One little girl died; I was the worst injured after her: broken leg, separated collar bone, bruises and scrapes and contusions all over...I spend six days, including my birthday, in the hospital. And more than a month of recuperating at home before I could return to school...

My take: the spirits were subtly suggesting to me that morning that I needed to stay home. I chose different. I'm glad I survived.

There have been lots more interactions like that in my life, none of them as dramatic...But at least I pay attention and consider the intervention I seem to be getting, and acknowledge and adjust my behavior accordingly...

 

[JustGeorge]

As I've noted before, I don't do deities....

However...

My experience has been that my interactions with the other-than-human kin in my community are often or almost always subtle and not particularly noticeable for others. They are also not so much regular or reliable as intermittent. It is interactions between them and me, alone, or so it seems to me...

One of the defining traits of spirit, in my understanding, is the presence of volition...that is, that which is/has spirit is to some degree capable of engaging in interactions, at least sometimes, with the persons (human or otherwise) in their environment...including me. I have volition, they have volition...

True story: One of my earliest experiences that had any 'spiritual' significance for me, was the day in 6th grade when from breakfast on I felt worse and worse. I went home for lunch (a tenth of a mile on my bicycle...and didn't eat), and called Dad to see if I could stay home. He left it up to me. I decided that I would go back to school--after all, the worst it would be would be me throwing up, or so I thought. After returning to school, I started to feel much better, and by the end of school I was making plans to head over to a friend's house...

I was on crossing-guard duty that day...it was normal...a couple of kids told the crossing guard that they were able to push her car (yeah, two maybe 70-pound kids were pushing a '56 Chevy...Anyway, Mrs. Ray went to reset her parking break...next thing I know, there's a loud noise and screaming kids and I'm trying to push back against the front of a '56 Chevy from REALLY CLOSE UP...then I wake up, probably only seconds later, pinned in place and yelling for help...I realized that wasn't useful, so I stopped. Within minutes, several men had lifted the Chevy up so that others could pull the six of us kids from underneath. One little girl died; I was the worst injured after her: broken leg, separated collar bone, bruises and scrapes and contusions all over...I spend six days, including my birthday, in the hospital. And more than a month of recuperating at home before I could return to school...

My take: the spirits were subtly suggesting to me that morning that I needed to stay home. I chose different. I'm glad I survived.

There have been lots more interactions like that in my life, none of them as dramatic...But at least I pay attention and consider the intervention I seem to be getting, and acknowledge and adjust my behavior accordingly...

A heart for the bulk of the message, but a winner for the end...

 

[Secret Chief]

I consider cats gods. But they dont really intervene they just drop onto a person's doorstep sometimes like my home now I'll hang with you now...the cat distribution system is interesting.

So... there was this cat - it's easier to refer to him as a cat - that lived on the moon; living on a diet of blueberry muffins. Then one day he decided to build himself a space rocket so that he could come to Earth, in order to enjoy chicken suppers and luxuriate in his own bespoke salon pampering sessions. Probably best if I stop there.

 

[Eddi]

I'm not sure if there is a division between the divine and reality as the notion "intervention" would imply

 

[Tamino]

I'm not sure if there is a division between the divine and reality as the notion "intervention" would imply

Good point. What if we simply call it "interaction"?

 

[Eddi]

Good point. What if we simply call it "interaction"?

Yes!

Good thinking

 

[Ostronomos]

In another thread somewhere, it was suggested that most gods are interventionist. Given most gods throughout human history have been natural (aka, deification has primarily been an expression of sacred relationships between humans and the greater-than-human world - the various natural forces from storms to winds to the sun and the earth itself), how are we to understand gods being interventionist in this context? What does it mean for the wind to "intervene" in human lives? What does it mean for the sun to "intervene" in human lives? Or for the land to "intervene" in human lives? Is that really how it works?

Comments from fellow polytheists, animists, and pantheists are especially welcome. I don't typically think of the gods as "intervening" in my life as that is kind of a weird way of putting it in my view, but maybe I'm not thinking about this in the right way.

All logical conclusions point to a self-simulative universe.

The gods exist outside of time and space. The only way they can intervene is through a conduit. Or individual who experiences mind expansion whereby the mind occupies all realities including that of the gods.

 

[Ostronomos]

I'm not sure if there is a division between the divine and reality as the notion "intervention" would imply

God can become both non-existence and can become non-absent as well. But it requires the conduit or observer to summon Him. God's entry into our world is dependent on the observer.

 

[Jayhawker Soule]

The same way one would know anything, I suppose - by trusting in one's faculties and practicing discernment.

Try again.