The good things from Monotheist heritage

From my older blog post

I don’t truly know how to make catholicism and polytheism work together. Probably the “official” church will consider us heretics or apostates anyway.
For personal belief, it works. It’s hard to resign from acknowledging the ancient Gods if you have experienced them and want to “have them around” and give them honor.
For me, being in a church, fortunately is not a family issue; I have no living relatives to struggle with about that. Friends are understanding and they respect my choices in religion, whatever they might be. But it’s about my personal faith and understanding “how the things work” in the universe. It’s a desperate wish not to suffer in hell just for holding somewhat wrong beliefs. This christian mindset, fear of hell punishment not for your actions, but just for your beliefs (if they turn out to be non-mainstream and heretical), is probably the main trouble.

Some good christian may say “But why do you need to honor/work with “pagan gods” even if they exist? Christ is the only one you must love as a road for our salvation”.
This is question of personal experience too. This thing “Look how much Jesus suffered for us, He loves you so you must love Him” doesn’t truly work. Being in Christian church (first in Russian Orthodox, then in Catholic) i never had truly personal love feelings to Jesus. There were respect and compassion, prayers and feels of gratitude. But no feelings of God as my “close friend”.
I studied the dogmas and heresies for many years. I hardened the basics of my christian beliefs around the Nycene Creed. It is the core. Anything else, such as position of the Catholic Church about LGBTQ+ issues or divorce, are not principal pillars of faith.
The Creed does not say that there are no other gods. It’s not like ten commandments. It explains the mystery of the Trinity (Father-Son-Holy Spirit), Christ’s incarnation and resurrection.

Gnostic texts are sometimes very messy and dark ones. Instead of clearing things, they make them ever more confusing, and probably might lead one away from good relationships with God and Gods. So our one difference: Gnosticism never works for me. Hermeticism, however, does. For me, accepting the model of universe as it’s described in Corpus Hermeticum, and sharing the hermetic philosophy & viewpoints, right now is the best way to make my Catholic-rooted faith and living experience of working with Netjer to “work together”.
Even if hardcore catholics will call me apostate “for polytheism”, it’s better than nothing. My beliefs are gradually coming into harmony, and it’s better to have peace in heart, than immense fear of hell.
May be this is a path not for everyone. Millions of catholics are okay with not having “pagan deities” in their lives. But if I feel called, I want to respond to the call.
The divine hierarchy works for me. Just recently we were chatting about these issues with one of my good friends, who is a freemason. (S)he expressed the understanding of the “supreme architect of the Universe” under the name of the egyptian Atum. And it corresponds with my understanding too. The names for the supreme creator may just be different. I sometimes refer to Him as “Netjer-Netjeru”, the formula from one egyptian offering table. “God of Gods”.
We may understand Him as the divine triad of Atum-Ptah-Ra working together (probably I will post a quote from memphite Cosmogony soon; I like it very much). We may see the same God manifesting Himself in the revelation of Divine Pymander for Hermes Trismegistus (here I mean the human author of the hermetic texts, and not the god Thoth-Hermes).
(Old Testament is more controversial indeed, and it’s intended for jewish people, so I’d leave this aside).

So… I don’t fit into strict frames of current catholic dogma already. I hold the faith in God, who has many names. And I honor the Netjeru who are separate divine beings with their own free will; and sometimes they can me “syncretized” one with other. Divine things work in more complicated ways than we sometimes can understand. The ancients knew better how syncretism works.
I continue my path for knowledge, and hopefully fulfilling my vocation…

I think some of the good things I learned from my monotheistic heritage is I learned how to build my own practice and how to do research on what I learned instead of just accepting it. It taught me that not everyone has the same religious experiences, so while I'm definitely jealous of some people's experiences, I know I will have my own and that they will be different. It also showed me that the gods will not answer my every prayer. I was only a monotheist for about 4 years but it had a significant impact on my life for sure.

Heh... I was raised Catholic and God was always so distant from me. When I prayed, it was like talking into a dead phone. But the Virgin? Yeah. She still comes around sometimes when I'm stressed out, just to comfort me. And my patron saint, oddly enough. I have *great* relationships with them. They're quite awesome. And very cool with the fact that I'm no longer Catholic, oddly enough.

I think I once wrote you about this on Tumblr.
For me, "Giftmas" works very well. because during the soviet times, the Christmas traditions were absorbed into New Year celebration.
The New year had it all: the gifts, the decorated tree, waiting for the midnight, lots of fun and parties. Gifts are brought not by Santa Claus, but by Grandfather Frost (russian folklore character), sometimes accompanied by his daughter/granddaughter (Snegurochka) and staff of helpers (snowmans and forest animals).
So, the winter holidays for us (the generation of people grown in Soviet Union)  always were secular, without any real religious baggage, and that's in fact great. "Happy new Year" wishes don't offend anyone's religious feelings :)

It's interesting that even when I learned about Christmas traditions, the decorated tree & stuff did not start having religious meaning for me. It's all a part of New Year.
And because russians are weird, most of us celebrate New year twice: according to modern (gregorian) calendar, and according to old (Julian) calendar, which was in use before the Revolution (and still in use in Orthodox Church).
So, 14th january is an unofficial holiday of "Old New Year" (=New Year according to Old Calendar) and usually russian people do not remove the decorated tree at least until 14th january.
Just a reason to have more fun :)

I was raised in a mixed Protestant-Catholic household (we attended various Protestant churches, but school and home were decided Catholic in faith and tradition). My unorthodox Catholic background has given me a number of things that I proudly carry forward, including the idea of a home worship.

My grandmothers both had small shrine to the Virgin set up at home, separate from the orthodox faith they practiced at church (one grandmother, during the Vietnam war, had monthly novenas that all the draft boards in the country would burn down that she prayed in her home practice). This does make me infinitely more comfortable with developing my own home practices, as I have distinct practices to draw on and develop from.

I'm Irish American and my family, generally speaking, draws heavily on the saints. While theological arguments can be had on both sides of the aisle, this is a boon, in my book, toward my personal, intimate understanding of the spiritual world.

I deeply, deeply appreciate the part of leftist Catholicism that I was raised with that ties my religious beliefs to social action and political movement. Social justice is spiritual for me and I am proud to carry that through to polytheism (which, in my personal experience, in the leftist political sphere is heavily tied to the far right/white nationalism and I would love to change that).