Polytheism Dot Info

~ kaye

I bought the domain name polytheism.info because I learned that it was available.

The page now contains a basic definition of polytheism. I tried to keep the nuance minimal. Feel free to link to this definition if you are talking to others about polytheism and searching for a summary that could be skimmed in an elevator.

While creating the page, I resisted my librarian tendency to create a long bibliography; instead, I did the (milder) librarian thing of providing a list of search terms so people who visit the page feel empowered to do their own research. The basic definition of polytheism hides so much diversity within polytheistic religions — differences that become so readily apparent when one looks for schools of thought within religions that seem so uniform to outsiders.

This basic site satisfies its raison d’être to be a basic website about polytheism. As a bonus, it is not run by evangelical Christians who say that polytheism is devoid of deep meaning and fulfillment (their polytheism-dot-net site ranks high in search results). Polytheism is many Gods, and every God is good.

💛 Enjoy. 💛

Published by kaye

Aspiring poet-contemplative. I go by Kaye Boesme, and I've written a primer on polytheism called THE SOUL'S INNER STATUES (free, online/pdf/ebook) and a chapbook of religious poetry called ACTS OF SPEECH. I've been blogging for a really long time.

9 thoughts on “Polytheism Dot Info”

  1. Pingback: Polytheism Dot Info — KALLISTI – rotwork

    1. Great suggestion! I just added it in a roundabout way. Despite having been dazzled into the stratosphere by reading Hermias and veering into Platonism and making fun graphics of the EVERY GOD IS GOOD SOBER UP thing from the Oracles, with great power comes great responsibility! I’m worried that there may be some polytheistic religions (or philosophical schools) that wouldn’t frame this in precisely that manner, so I’m trying to stay vague-yet-firm.

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      1. I know I don’t subscribe to the ‘every God is good’ approach, though I do think every God is worthy of worship. So I appreciate this!

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      2. In Shinto, kami are not necessarily “good”: evil things can be kami. As Motoori Norinaga says,

        In this way, kami are of manifold varieties, some noble and some base, some strong and some weak, some good and some evil, each being immediately in accord with its own mind and behavior.

        That said, Shinto might not count as polytheism anyway, as kami are not exactly the same as gods, and also it’s said that all kami are also part of one kami.

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      3. Yes, my uncertainty was specifically related to kami because I’m not familiar with the system, but have read something similar in what I have encountered. The comment about using cultural terms was alluding to that “kami are not exactly the same as Gods” bit, as it is theologically important in many religions to use distinct divinity-terms because terminology for the divine does not have a precise crosswalk into other languages. Based on what I have read, kami seems like a term that encompasses divinities ranging from what may be equivalent to Gods to angeloi, daimones, and heroes. I’d also say the same for what I know of the Yoruba religion.

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      4. “what may be equivalent to Gods to angeloi, daimones, and heroes”: yes I think so, but also natural phenomena. This is a pretty good essay on the kami concept.

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