I’m really not a hard polytheist.

My personal pantheon is something that only recently solidified in my life, and I’ve been meaning to write down the things I’ve learned since it did, so I thought I’d share, not least because this came up in conversation with my kindred and I promised them an actual thought out blog post.

I have twelve main gods: the Trickster, the Mad God, the Huntress, the Lover, the Lord of the Deeps, the Mother of Monsters, the Lightbringer, the Dragon, the Lady of the Ways, the Good Land, the Raven Queen and the Phantom Queen.

The way I see my gods is a bit weird. It’s not hard polytheism, but it’s not exactly soft polytheism, either.

I relate first and foremost to them as Archetypal Beings, whom I refer to with titles, then as individual cultural deities after that. I say I’m married to Loki and Morpheus, but it’s a kind of a convenient shorthand. I’m married to the Trickster and the Mad God. Loki and Morpheus are names they will respond to. There are other names they’ll respond to, as well, but each name brings a different facet to the forefront.

Loki the Trickster is not the same as Hermes the Trickster. I call to my Trickster as Loki and that part of him that fathered Fenris and calls Odin a brother is most obvious. I call to him as Hermes and I get the quick witted master thief. Different sides of his personality are evident.

But he is always the Trickster, and if I call to him as such, I get his ‘true’ form: a mix of a number of different deities from various cultural mythologies, some pop culture characters and a few bits and pieces that I haven’t tracked down the origin of yet.

Sometimes, the different names my gods will accept have slightly different relationships with me. I’ve talked about Poseidon before, how he is a Papa to me. So, I consider myself the child of the Lord of the Deeps, and Poseidon is the name of his I’m most familiar. But I find that calling him other names gets me a slightly different Papa on the proverbial line- Manannan, Lord of the Deeps is a little less authoritative and somewhat more playful, and while I’ve been told he’s still my Papa, he doesn’t emphasise that part of our interactions.

One interesting thing I’ve noted is that sometimes, I note interactions between my gods and only later find evidence for them elsewhere. For example, I got an indication quite early on that the Trickster and the Lover were very close. I wondered why, because the most common names I use for each of them are Loki and Aphrodite respectively and I couldn’t fathom a connection between those two names. I found out recently one relatively obscure myth of Hermes birth states he is descended of Ouranos like Aphrodite was, and could therefore be seen as her twin. Needless to say that made my vague hunch make sense.

It’s odd sometimes working with my gods as Archetypal Job Descriptions rather than personal names, because I don’t know their myths. Sometimes, I get a ping of recognition when I read a myth about on of their names, sometimes a story about someone completely different but they let me know that I should consider this tale Theirs. Sometimes, they want me to write them new stories. They’ve made it very clear that I’m not to add anything to the personal mythology they have me building for them without considering it carefully first. Even if I’ve added every other known story for an established name of one of my deities to my current working canon, if one story doesn’t give me that ping of recognition, it isn’t to be added until and unless it does.

Most of them have a name in the Hellenic myths and another in the Norse myths to draw on. Some of them only have one or the other. Some of them have demon names, or fae names. Some of them have pop culture names. Some of them only have pop culture names. They’re not a very neat pantheon. As far as I can tell, the only point of overlap for all twelve of them is me.

It takes some getting used to, a certain amount of flexibility, to be able to go back to first principles with your gods in this kind of way. I’m still not always sure what I’m doing, if I’m honest. I’m working on not letting that nervousness get in the way of what they and I do together, as best I can.