Oct
To Know or Know About
On one of the email lists I moderate, I had cause to respond to a very Heathen question. I ended my response with the statement: It is better to know the Gods than know about the Gods.
That pretty much sums up the idea of Heathenism as an experiential thing. Direct experience is always preferable to a view from a distance. The Gods can be experienced. The trick is no trick at all. Let us use an historical person as an example. Many people know about General Patton. They have read books and used other second-hand sources. Such people might think that they really know Patton. Actually, they do not. They only know about him. How much better it would be to actually know him directly by meeting Patton and spending time with him. Having known Patton as a friend is far more powerful than having read about him without ever meeting him.
I am reminded of an incident from many years ago. My so-called parents had put me in schools run by their church. During religious classes, the clergy talked about “God”. They knew all sorts of technical things derived from their religion’s dogma. However, I sensed that something was missing. There seemed to be a gap somewhere, because their religion was a lot of rules but no heart.
While I was in the Army, I met a Chinese man who spoke of “divinity” and of other spiritual concepts. He spoke with a certainty that was lacking in the words of the religious teachers of my youth. It was then I realized something that intrigued me. The Chinese man spoke of something he had actually experienced. He spoke from direct contact with divinity. The church people spoke from second-hand information. They had never had a direct connection. Obviously, this incident led me to take a broader view of spirituality.
That brings us to today. We do not need to make a dogma of old lore. What we need is to live deliberately. By living with purpose, we come to know the Gods directly. Rather than being intellectual abstractions gleaned from vestiges of old myths and legends, we know the Gods through our own direct experiences with them.
This is how we can know the Gods rather than merely knowing about the Gods.
