Question by Lady Morgana: Pagans: do you believe the gods and goddesses are sentient beings, archetypes, or other?
Also, do you believe in the existence of the Summerlands? Do you believe that your consciousness continues to exist after you die?
just FYI, I am a pagan, a pantheist, and a non-Wiccan Witch, and I am interested in the beliefs of my fellow pagans. Blessings, LM
Best answer:
Answer by Auntie Christosaur »rawr!«
Eclectic pagan here… I’m a pantheist who believes that gods and goddesses are archetypal manifestations of specific energies. By giving them names, and making them a part of our mythologies, we make them meaningful and relevant to our lives. It’s that way for me, but definitely different for others.
I don’t believe in the concept of the Summerlands, leaning more towards reincarnation as my afterlife speculation of choice. It makes more sense to me.
Know better? Leave your own answer in the comments!
im not pagan because I believe in god, but in a different way. i think that gods and goddeses were mostly other beings from space. Like the aztecs worshipping a upright reptile god. Yea i believe that we keep are consciousness because everybody has god energy and knowledge.
an after life be it summerland or reincarnation…yes….life and consciousness continues and returns in circle upon circle….the gods and goddesses are very real to me in every way
Some branches of Wicca view the God and Goddess as the masculine and feminine aspects of the force that brought the universe into being.
Most Pagans do believe in some form of afterlife, and a lot of us believe that the soul is reincarnated as another human being after resting in the Otherworld (also referred to as Hades, Summerland, etc.) for an indeterminate period of time.
I recognize all Gods/Goddesses as separate and distinct. However, I choose to follow only the Gods of my ancestors.
I believe we rest a time in the Otherworld before reincarnation.
answer: separate individuals. I’m not one for archetypes.
I believe Summerland exists for some pagans and Wiccans, for others it’s whatever their religion teaches – for me: Asgard, Vanaheim or a peaceful part of Hella’s Realm.
I believe the majority of the soul goes onto an afterlife. Part of the soul reincarnates back into the family line or that of someone close to the family.
Life continues life after life after life. Gods and goddesses may have been real at one time according to Sumer history. Since then, they have become Archetypes, stored energies that can be accessed when and if needed. Notice how Summerland is similar to Sumer land? Hmmm.
Actually myself and most of the pagans I know believe that there is one god/goddess. The various names are representations of the various aspects. The god/goddess is a spiritual being that exist in and outside of everything and everyone. I like to look at it as a energy that exists in all aspects of this world and the spiritual world.
As for the Summerlands and consciousness after death. I have experienced short term death and then being revived, a couple of times. After years, I still cannot fully communicate the experience in physical world terms. I had full awareness as to my situation. I have seen this world along with my body laying beneath me on occasion, but at other times I was in a totally different place of existence. Although I did not want to return to this world, I was told that I must because there are things that I must do. When I was returned to the body, my first word on two occasions was, “sh*t”. I am handicapped, disabled U.S.Veteran and outside of the body, there was no pain, but then, I had no body. It just felt good. If that is your interpretation of the Summerlands, then yes.
Blessed Be &
Bright Blessings
My Paganism doesn’t involve deities. I’m also a pantheist, but a naturalistic one.
I believe they are real, individual beings, not archtypes. I’m not much of a believer in the Summerlands or in reincarnation or other life after death. The simple fact is I don’t believe in things I don’t have evidence of. Since I don’t remember any past lives, and because I clearly haven’t gone to a permanent afterlife yet, I have no evidence pointing in those directions.
I could be happily wrong, however.
I am a Priestess of Cybele, the Anatolian Great
Mother Goddess. I believe that the Goddess is a
sentient being, who is both seperate from and
above the universe, and also alive and living within
each of us. It’s a sort of limited panenthiesm.
As far as death, I believe that we are meant to
return to the Goddess, there to find peace, but
not consciously… so there’s no Summerland, or
heaven or hell… and no reincarnation.
Greetings!
We Honor the Spirits of Place, the Ancestors, and the Unknown Ones that are beyond our Understanding.
Modern Physics holds that there are many different Planes that intersect, perhaps one could be The SummerLand? Perhaps in one, they raise Bees and Cows?
And, we believe that the Great Mystery is something everyone gets to explore, regardless of the Way we tread here on this World.
Many are the Ways of this World, and of the Next.
/!
They are real and seperate. They are our ancestors. Our Elder Kin.
I believe the summerlands might exist I suppose. It doesn’t apply to my tradition. We go to the mound and hang out with the rest of our ancestors. A few chosen go to Odin and possibly some to Freyja but that’s about it.
I believe it does in a sense but not into an afterlife persay. The concept of what a soul is is complex in Heathenry.
The gods are real and separate, that is my experience with them. I am not one for archetypes or all gods are but faces of one god or any other view.
I have no afterlife experience, so I am quite undecided on the matter. My suspicion is that we may sort of divide up and part our consciousness might reincarnate, part might rejoin a collective consciousness, and part might go somewhere else. I really don’t know. I also suspect that whatever you think happens might happen. I’d really like to think there is an afterlife of some kind – that would make me happy to think that I would get to see loved ones again. But I just don’t know and it’s not something I think about very often.
Both . . . but deity *preceeds* archetype; the godhs came FIRST and their interactions with us created archetypal representations of themselves within our collective psyche. *G*
I don’t believe or disbelieve in the “Summerlands,” as they do not apply to reconstructionist heathenry and historically, the grave mound and the folds of one’s ancestry has always been considered my Folk’s “afterlife destination.”
My Luck will linger with my bones, as strictly speaking, I don’t believe in a duality of body and spirit/mind or a separable soul anymore than my early ancestors did—in my Folkway, the dead are simply part of the community of the living and the dead, the seen and the unseen, and continue to be so until they pass from living memory.
“Modular” or “compartmentalized” religions—ones which can be interchanged without greatly impacting core worldview, because they stay in their little boxes—all tend to have the same basic features and expectations: soul, afterlife, personal relationship with deity, heavenly realms, that sort of thing. Ancient heathenry was a good bit less complicated and a great deal more all-encompassing—there was no word for religion, only *die Sitte* (the way we do things here). Some of us are trying to get back to that now.
As a Heathen I believe the Gods are as individual as every person on the planet. They are far from archetypes; they are violent, short tempered, often cheats and promiscuous, not very perfect but very human.
Summerlands, like all afterlife is wishful thinking, unless I die in battle my consciousness will sleep with my body in my grave otherwise some part of me (conscious or otherwise) will join Oðinn and Freya’s warriors. I am very dubious that my consciousness will go to Hel’s realm. I trust I will create enough Dom from my Lof to allow my memory to live on for many generations.