Combining abrahamic faiths with paganism

I'm definitely that pagan with Christian-y bits, and it certainly gives a lot more space, though to be honest, Christianity is more diverse than most people think. Anyway, I also identify the Heavenly Mother with Asherah, plus I see Mary Magdalene as Divine Daughter, and worship Lilith and Eve as lovers. I go around like "lol look how much of a heretic I am," but I go to a Unitarian Universalist church, so they like me.

I've spent too much time fighting against far right-wing fundamentalist Christian religious conditioning to spend too much time and energy on worrying on what others think is "acceptable" to do in my religious practice as a matter of doctrine; I believe that introducing control and power into religion is the root of all the toxic and oppressive elements of any social structure, and religion is no exception.

HOWEVER, as members of the dominant, and therefore privileged, religon in most places, we do have a responsibility to be respectful of the history of the religions in question and the social climate surrounding them that still exists.

Quoting my recent posts about the topic of combining polytheism with dogmatised Christianity:

The catholic definitions indeed divide honor (dulia) and worship (latria).
You can only worship God (in catholic/orthodox and most branches of mainstream Christianity). You can also honor Saints, Angels, and Mary.
In fact, the line between worship (latria), dulia and hyperdulia (extreme adoration) is a little blurry, because human expressions of worship and veneration are VERY similar anyway.

You pray to God/Gods, you pray to Angels and Saints. You give offerings to Gods - you bring items to the church and dedicate them to God/Angels/Saints (this is very much legit practice. You may not call it offering but technically it’s very similar. For example you can bring flowers and decorate statues with them. You can bring pieces of fine cloth to decorate icons. You can bring precious jewelry and donate them for decorations of icons (at least in Orthodox church, for sure. You even use the same words here. In russian, the word for “donating” and “making an offering/sacrifice” can be expressed with the same word. When I donated jewelry, I used the same word. So it could be translated from russian both ways “Can I donate this jewelry to Mary?” and “Can I make this jewelry an offering to Mary”?.)

But indeed if we will look into theology, catholic catechism strictly forbids polytheism and strictly forbids giving worship (Latria) to anyone but God/The Trinity.

All Christopagans enter the very grey area. It’s difficult path. You can’t reconcile polytheism with catholic or orthodox dogmas without becoming an apostate. You are not even ALLOWED to believe other Gods exist, if you are catholic or orthodox. =(

You may come up with some theory that they are some powerful spiritual beings and you can honor them, but only give worship to The Trinity.
For some people it works well. For some not. Anyway, a polytheist will not be a christian “in a good standing”; and, their relationship with multiple Gods may be their own. We are not the authority to judge. May be the Gods will be okay having a devotee who regularly repeats “oh I’m only honoring you” but doing devotional things that are part of worship anyway. =)

For me, the Latria started with actual admitting of status of Gods - “worthy of worship” of the Netjeru; admitting that They are Gods is already leaving the “good” christian grounds.
However, without being chained by official dogmas of Christianity as we have it in XXIst century, but looking into the ways of ancients, we can find many ways how the ancestors reconciled christianity with their polytheism. How they were able to accept the divinity of Jesus alongside with other Gods.
And developing personal christo-pagan theology is possible. But critics will be always ready to attack those who choose this difficult path.

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I was not *raised* catholic, but joined russian orthodox church at 15 y. (being baptised there as a child) and spent 10 years as actively practicing Orthodox Christian, and then about 7 years as actively practicing Catholic.
It took me several years to just start overcoming the guilt and fears of hell; this healing is very difficult process. It just takes time.
The book of Bart Ehrman “Jesus, Interrupted” was very useful for me.

A friend once told to me, when we had interfaith discussion “You are not obliged to be christian. There are billions of GOOD people on Earth who are not christians”.
It was simple, but very important and very liberating, and helped me to make choices about religious path I really wanted to follow, and not just felt obliged to follow because of cultural/ancestral heritage…

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Did I “reconcile”? Only in certain sense, because to mainstream christianity polytheism is indeed an apostasy and heresy.
However if we would look at the history of Christianity, we could see that polytheism wasn’t always dogmatically forbidden.
And while “God of Old Testament” is “jealous” and doesn’t let people, who entered his covenant, to worship other Gods
– Jesus never actually forbids polytheism, himself.

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Catholic Church forbids polytheism and in the catechism there’s said that there are NO other Gods, at all.
This little problem makes us apostates, or heretics, but, it is still good to be “culturally catholic”: respond to all cultural codes, keep connection with saints and festivals, keep loving music, art, church architecture, certain books, prayers, etc.

The catholic dogma about other Gods non-existing is indeed restrictive.
It’s much happier and better life when we can have ALL - with loving heart.

For me, studying hermetic texts and philosophy really helped to reconcile christian ideas with ancient polytheism.
But I guess I passed the point of “no return” regarding restrictive monotheism. :)
… Did Jesus ever said that other Gods do NOT exist? =) The Gospels don’t condemn polytheism, just don’t touch the topic.

The apostles condemn idolatry, but as I understand the term idolatry, it’s metaphor for worship of something which obviously is false/doesn’t have divine status at all. Revering sacred images in catholicism and Orthodoxy exist, and it’s not “latria” of images.

And I think with our limited perception we can’t really say if God is only one, manifesting in many forms, or there are many who never overlap. We don’t have enough proper words or knowledge to truly define these things… but we can experience, compare and trust our feelings.

Jesus especially says that he is sent to “Lost sheep of Israel” first (and he even tries to shun away the chanaanite woman who wants healing, and wonders about power of her faith).
He was sent to “lost sheep of Israel”, - and by that time a lot of people were driowning in all these misconceptions, misunderstandings, political agendas promoted as Will-of-God, and the letters of the “Law” for many were above the Love of God. This is why, I believe, Jesus has come: because it was definitely necessary
(but people know how to fuck up the good things, anyway :)

Jesys confirms the commandement in such way, however:
(Matthew 4:10) Jesus said to him, “Away from me, Satan! For it is written: ‘Worship the Lord your God, and serve him only.’

I want to point here that this is, first, a response to temptator who is NOT a God and definitely not to be worshipped - in this contect of the story.
And second, we may make an accent on the word “your”: if we would test this saying as applicable to us or not, “Worship the Lord your God” may as well mean not “God of Abraham”, but another God someone worships.

As I personally see, the problem of idolatry is worshiping something that is obviously NOT a deity, not ever close to it, and obviously fake.
Such as in the case of Golden Calf, if we’d follow the Bible story:
People want to worship “something” and ask Aaron “Make us a god”. Then Aaron makes that golden calf and announces “This is your god, Israel, one who led you from Egypt”.
But from the entire story we know that it is not true. They were not led from Egypt (in the story) by bull deity. If Aaron would have said it differently, such as “Let this calf be a symbol of our God” (…and explain why this symbol is chosen), it could have been less problem.
Instead, the people started literally worship soulless statue, and this was wrong
(However I don’t think they deserved to be killed, as Moses ordered when he discovered the calf worship).
The moral of the story, anyway: not to worship anything that is fake. Not to worship anything that’s not to be worshipped. And, regarding veneration of images (icons, idols, statues, murti, however we may call them), keep in mind that the image itself is NOT a God, but only representation of them, and may be “just a portrait and nothing more”, also may contain some power/divine energy because of God’a blessing a lot of miraculous icons in Orthodoxy; miracle-making statues in Catholicism as well); but it’s important to remember that not the image itself is the source of miracles (healing, etc), but the deity or other advanced divine being who acted through it.

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It’s possible if you accept the fact that you will NOT be a “christian in good standing” according to orthodox/catholic dogma. Just not trying to sit on two chairs…
But it’s possible to accept the divinity of Jesus and existence of the Netjeru and that they are “Gods-worthy-of-worship”, also ignoring the Old Testament commandments “worship only me, me, me, the Jealous!!11 God”, that were made not to us gentiles, but to very specfiic tribe in very specific moment of history.
So I'm not a good christian in terms of being loyal to dogmas and Catechism; … Christian apostate, who recognizes the polytheistic nature of universe, perhaps, and tries to live with it.

Not forcing these beliefs unto anyone, just… living. Living in Maat, doing the good things :) Because “Love is the whole of the Law; law under the will”, too.

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About the unpardonable sin, it's relatively easy to understand. First remember that Jesus sometimes speaks in an odd way. I'm close to him and he has manifested himself to me, and in the way he usually talks he is a bit of a man who can't speak so well, at least that's how you think at first. I believe he was like a disabled person on Earth, having trouble with speaking and crying and weeping while speaking, that sort of thing. But the disability is not like a sickness, it is about his love for man, his mercy and his passion for us.

Now about the sin, Jesus stood for forgiveness. And his enemies the pharisees actively and satanically hated Jesus for that and wanted to kill him to end his major plan to offer himself for mankind's forgiveness. But Jesus is greater than them and when he died on the cross he forgave these people their sins too and so it came that they got saved too (after their death). But between when they started to hate and persecute Jesus and the Cross that he revealed as a love offering that covered even our sins, there was a time when what the pharisees did with their hate against forgiveness was threatening Christ's mission of speaking forgiveness to as many people as he could.

And that was really bad for Jesus so he decided to pull out his judgment card and said, I forgive the others, but not you, not even in the coming age will I bother with you. It was playing out his forgiveness against their hatred and unforgiveness. Remember that Jesus also said we needed to forgive others if we wanted to find forgiveness too. It's not a rule of law again, it is true that Jesus cancelled the law in the bible. It's making forgiveness follow the right steps that we can receive it fully and also get the holy gifts of God that accompany forgiveness, such as being fully cleansed of unjust and evil deeds that we have committed.

With the NT words of Jesus you must be a little careful. Remember my words about Jesus' disability. He is not some nobleman or philosopher who wants the perfect and becomes vain in himself and adorns himself and all that. You can find images of Christ where this shines through, where Jesus looks like a white man from the last centuries. But if you meet the real Jesus it's like meeting a wanderer from the Sinti or Roma g-y-p-s-i-e-s (sorry the word check gets in the way). Back in Israel he didn't always wash himself. He healed people in ways we might find icky today, such as when he used dirt and spit to heal someone's eyes. Jesus is really like not from this world somehow.

About paganism and christianity, remember Jesus' being visited by the three Magi from the East. In terms of the Gospel time when they were written, a Magi was no magician but instead a wise man, a scholar probably, someone who had set out on exploring the divine things and everything mystical in the world. They're much about enlightenment. And that meant in this case of the three Magi, they were people who probably knew about many religions, and so they had found out through astrological research that something was happening in Judea, Yahweh was acting again. And Yahweh being a very big God in the Middle East this meant that they would listen and go and visit Judea to see what was going on.

This connection for me means, Jesus was knowledgeable about other gods and actually did not deny them, but his mission in his earthly life was centered on Judea. And given the society of the Jews was strictly monotheistic Jesus could not bring about some age of multireligious enlightenment. That was not his mission, he had to gather Israel and make it ready for another age that came up and to offer a love sacrifice for man and to end the reign of the law of sin and death in religion (and that part was meant rather universal imho). Jesus and later his disciples came up again with the very old teaching that God is Spirit. This was something people of his time did not always understand. Spirit means the second substance of the Cosmos, something that, to use hebrew scripture, flutters over matter. It is God's presence in the ENTIRE COSMOS, and in fact God himself, the God the monotheists seek but rarely find, is the Spirit of the Cosmos.

That is how monotheism and polytheism can meet in my understanding, that there is something what Greeks and Indians, both being polytheists normally, call The One, the Prime Mover, the Brahman that pervades everything. In a way it is not right to call this God. Zeus is a God, Odin is a God, Osiris is a God. They are real persons and they have plans and goals and a heart which has the capacity for many emotions. The Spirit now can be like a person too, I speak in tongues and when no deity is knocking at my door I talk with the Spirit most of the time who knows everything too. But not only persons can speak, a stone can speak to you, a sunset, a tree or a bird, a gust of wind, a painting too. This is Spirit and he is talking but in the same time he is also like a feeling. Like a sight. It subsumes personality but in effect he is also different, transpersonal.

And Jesus preached the Spirit as God, but in Hebrew terms. The gods of antiquity all exist, but they had to be understood by the Spirit that was in them. And this Spirit, and that is Jesus' major renewal in religion, preaches not the law of sin and death but instead truth and grace. We learn how all Gods are benevolent, that they are mighty but not almighty in the absolute understanding, that they love us and also need us for their work, that they desire children and not just servants.

So Christ in a way had two missions, to prepare Judea for the messianic age that was coming up (btw there is an odd theology among the Jews that Messiah doesn't refer to persons but to ages), and to preach the Spirit, the spiritual access to the Gods that up to then only a few wise and self-learned people like the Magi from the East had.