When I was growing up I played a lot of Dungeons & Dragons. I would entertain myself with mini adventures almost every day. There was one source book that fascinated me called Deities and Demigods. It had a list of various gods from many of the world’s more famous pantheons. Each god had a description and a set of powers and most importantly hit points. Everyone in that book could be “killed” if my character was powerful enough. It was an amazing primer on the divine and one of the reasons my worldview is as syncretic as it is. Over the years I have done more rigorous study of other people’s gods and my syncretism has become far more informed and significantly less chaotic. I have a sort of positive syncretism that always runs in the background of my mind whenever I discuss some particular view of the divine with a person who is more convinced that they have all the “right” answers than I do. Old gods and old ways have value and I try to remind people of that. Truth is complicated and I remind people of that too.
16 June 2023
Latter Day Sinner 