I would like to ask the forum if they believe local deities could be created.
There are inner contacts that are deep ancient combinations of human, deity, and land power. These contacts are usually tied to a specific area and mediate the power of a particular force, such as a volcano…they probably started out as a human who worked intensively with the land and the faery/land beings connected with to the site. Upon their death…the land or faery being will have merged with the human as they work from the realm of death. Slowly, over the years, the working union creates a merged form, which then presents as a local deity.
Ref:The Magical Knowledge Trilogy by Josephine McCarthy
If bits of deities can be bound, do you think one could be (willingly) bound to create a local deity? With the cooperation of various dead /ancestral / land spirits?
Well, all you would need to do to start the process is to tap into a local source of power and pull it into a creation, a servitor, with a given task of watching that area. If it’s a place of local lore or a prominent feature, it likely already has a spirit being created by the people’s visits and thoughts on it. This could be imprinted upon or additional energy gathered to strengthen it into a self-aware entity.
The local Fae queen said if she were to do it, she’d tap into a natural source and then supplement with her energy to further grow it. She said they’d coexist and continue to teach it until it was self-sufficient and hinted it was a similar process as rearing a child.
@norse900 That makes me wonder if that’s what the Egyptians did when they merged some of the deities into each other like Amun-Ra for example. Unless that was just name changing to fit locality.
@Mythopoeia speaking of Egypt… Your question already had me thinking of Egypt when you asked it (though I didn’t have an answer so didn’t respond at the time).
Outside mine too. It just sparked the thought that had me wondering.
Add: @norse900 maybe if the topic ever comes up again and you remember you could ask about it. Probably won’t though. If not it’s not a big enough deal to broach it again since it is Ancient History after all (pun not intended).
As I wrote it I realized there might be a bad pun in saying ancient history but left it with comment of not intending it to be a pun cuz I didn’t know another way to say it.
Josephine McCarthy suggests that human priests learned how to shape and bind their deities, shaping them from primal forces to powers that represented their interests (storm gods become war gods, etc).
Hmm personally I doubt this. Traditionally, it is not even seen as possible to bring the Gods down to the material world (but, I believe there were mixed views on this, but I don’t think it was entirely seen as bringing the Gods down to the material world).
It also assumes that the Gods are dependant on humans, with humans (and the material world) being higher than the Gods, which is a by-product of the dominant materialist world-view. But, this view seems highly unlikely to be accurate to reality.
There were also some people on the previous forum who tried to bind Angels in the style of Goetic magick. This did not end well for them. How much moreso would it be of the Gods? Although some kind of harmonious binding can be argued for.
But this idea of the changeability of the Gods assigns impermanance to the Spirit and Soul. Which, also does not seen to be the case.
Not just those two. Sometimes the structure, the elements that make it up underneath the surface can imbue a place with power. Even dead volcanoes, like those on Oahu, still carry power in their components and in the structures of their landscape.
There are community stones that have become places of specific power where it can be felt, but that’s the communal sort. If they were built over places that also had latent power, I could see the two mixing into a local egregore. It would take a while, though, if not deliberate. I’ve been to some of them and have felt it, but didn’t consider them full spirits. They didn’t feel like one.
Yes @norse900 makes a very good point. It can be observed that all things are imbued with spirit. In my view, every place can be used as a place of power, according to the nature of the magick you are performing.
Certainly, when an area is unified in its spiritual nature, that place is all the more powerful for a working of the same nature. That can be described as a great place of power.
