Gods Among the Stars

When I was an atheist, I had a lot more convenient answers to big questions than I do now as a polytheist. As a staunch materialist, everything was based on matter and the interactions of matter; the question of “what is a soul?” can be challenging and multifaceted for theists, but simple for materialists like I was, who simply said, “there is no such thing — just electrical signals in the brain.”

Sometimes I have theological questions that gnaw at the back of my mind, and even though they don’t directly impact my actual practice, they still bug me. I’ve had one for a while that I had considered, and tried to find resources on (we need more polytheistic theology textbooks!), but wasn’t finding an answer.

Finally I got frustrated and couldn’t help but directly ask the source. I asked Wepwawet, “are you and the other gods of Earth revered on other planets?”

I got the distinct impression of a mischievous grin with the response: “why don’t we go find out?”

This answer was infuriating. My “godphone” is extraordinarily weak, and I almost never “hear” anything approaching full sentences from Them, so to finally receive communication on a topic that meant so much to me only to have it answered so flippantly seemed dismissive or mean-spirited. We’re probably a few centuries away from interstellar travel, so no, I couldn’t go find out. 

Crop from a recent piece of mine, where Sobek swims through the primordial chaos. Print available here.

Possibilities

After sleeping on it, I reluctantly admitted that there were a few ways of interpreting His suggestion.

First, He may not have been being literal. Over the last year or so, I have been toying with the idea of how Paganism and polytheism would evolve once humans started spreading out through the stars. Would we find new gods in the cold moons, territorial spirits lurking in dangerous asteroid fields? And would our worship of river gods change if we’re in a hermetically-sealed space shuttle filled with recirculated water, for example? I’ve thought about writing science fiction short stories about these, but my self-confidence in my fiction writing skills has been too weak to pursue it. Maybe He’s gently nudging me on; I’m not sure. I also create a lot of space-themed artwork featuring the gods, I’ve come to realize…

Second, it’s possible He could have been referring to reincarnation, and that perhaps I will find out my answer in some other lifetime. Surprisingly, I hope that isn’t the case. I know plenty of Kemetics (and many, many of my ADF friends) believe in reincarnation, but it is not part of my personal theology. Full disclosure: I find the thought of reincarnation to be terrifying, as though we’re stuck in an endless Groundhog Day loop. I would much rather spend my afterlife on the Barque of Millions of Years, fighting Apep alongside Ra, rather than being born over and over again.

Or perhaps He meant “we” as a more collective “we,” referring to humanity in general. I like that option, even if it means I won’t be around to see it. Or maybe He wanted me to take this idea a little farther.

Probabilities

But is there even life outside Earth at all?

My gut says yes, that it would be arrogant to assume that Earth was the only special planet out of countless millions or billions. But then there’s the Fermi Paradox, which is “the apparent contradiction between the lack of evidence for extraterrestrial civilizations and various high estimates for their probability.” That is, there are a lot of logically sound reasons why there should be life outside Earth — but we haven’t come across a shred of evidence. Wikipedia currently lists 23 possible answers to the Fermi Paradox, some dire (“it is the nature of intelligent life to destroy itself”) and some more hopeful (“human beings have not existed long enough”).

But is it possible that life exists outside our solar system? I think so. And this got me to thinking about a probabilistic vs. deterministic universe.

One of the bedrocks to my personal worldview, my “personal myth,” is that the world is probabilistic. John Beckett explains it well in his most recent book:

“The world is probabilistic, not deterministic. Einstein famously said, “God does not play dice.” Stephen Hawking responded, “Not only does God play dice, sometimes he throws them where they can’t be seen.” In a probabilistic universe, anything is possible. But some things are so likely they’re practically certain, while other things are so unlikely they’re practically impossible. Because the world is probabilistic, there is always hope, and the more we do to move the odds in our favor, the more likely we are to get a favorable outcome.”

Beckett, J. (2019). Paganism In Depth. Woodbury, MN: Llewellyn Worldwide, LTD. Kindle Edition.

With determinism, in contrast, randomness and chance is removed, and every action has a single possible result; from the moment of the Big Bang, every event was already set in stone. As explained by Hawking:

“[19th Century French physicist Marquis de] Laplace suggested that there should be a set of scientific laws that would allow us to predict everything that would happen in the universe, if only we knew the complete state of the universe at one time. For example, if we knew the positions and speeds of the sun and the planets at one time, then we could use Newton’s laws to calculate the state of the Solar System at any other time. Determinism seems fairly obvious in this case, but Laplace went further to assume that there were similar laws governing everything else, including human behavior.”

Hawking, S. (1988). A Brief History of Time. New York, NY: Random House Publishing Group. Kindle Edition.

Determinism therefore seems to imply a lack of human agency or free will, and that is uncomfortably reminiscent of Calvinism to me.

Crop from an older image I made of Khonsu in His form of a celestial falcon. Prints available here.

My personal myth

But just because determinism makes me uncomfortable does not mean it must be untrue — that’s bad logic. It looks like the jury is still out when it comes to the debate between a deterministic vs. probabilistic universe, or perhaps a third option. (It’s easy to go down a rabbit hole here, looking into hidden variables, Bell Theorem and quantum mechanics, and other topics way over my head. The most advanced physics class I took at university was Geophysics, which didn’t touch any of this material!)

In the absence of a consensus, I therefore choose the probabilistic model because it makes the most sense to me, but again, this is my personal myth — that is, a story I live by, a narrative that provides meaning and helps inform how I go about my life. (I’ve been thinking more about my personal myth since taking Beckett’s excellent class on “Building a New Myth,” which I plan on providing a review of later.)

It’s possible that my assumptions are wrong. It’s possible that the universe is deterministic rather than probabilistic, but that brings the implication of the nonexistence of free will. A probabilistic universe allows me to live my life in a more meaningful way, and provides more hope and comfort. If it is one day confirmed that the universe is indeed unquestionably deterministic, I will have to reevaluate my personal myth, but for now, I choose to live by the thought that there’s always a chance, that we always have agency to some degree. 

And to be completely honest, a probabilistic universe just seems more interesting to me. A universe with the possibility of randomness is more enticing to me than one without it, and the existence of magic seems more likely under a probabilistic model. Personally I don’t practice magic outside of petitioning my gods for assistance, but I still like the option of magic being real, even if it ends up being primarily psychological programming.

The Opener of the Way

Probabilistic thinking is also ingrained in my personal religious practice. My primary deity is Wepwawet, the Opener of the Way, the Jackal Who breaks down barriers and makes things possible. I think of Him whenever I roll the dice, whenever I submit a job application, whenever I step through a door — and any other time where there’s a sense of possibilities or randomness or uncertainty or hope. (I also think there are times where They nudge the odds in our (or Their) favor, but that’s a separate post!)

Even with something as simple as when I’m painting with watercolors, dropping pigment and salt onto the damp paper can spread in all sorts of unexpected directions based on countless variables (saturation, draftiness in the room, angle of the paper), and there’s a level of joy and excitement in not knowing exactly where the paint will go or what patterns it will create.

Another crop of Wepwawet leading the way for the Voyager spacecraft. Print available here.

It’s hard to articulate why, but I find randomness to be a lot more comforting than a completely predetermined path, whether that’s predetermined by physics or by the God of the Calvinists. Anything can happen at any time; we haven’t got it all figured out.

Wepwawet reminds me that there’s always a chance, there’s always hope, just keep moving and changing the odds, and you might be surprised — for good or for ill. And He reminds me that there are no easy answers to big questions; I’ve got to come up with a conclusion on my own. Even when I directly ask (or perhaps especially when I ask), He’s not going to provide a tidy answer, but He will come along with me for the ride. As He said earlier — “Why don’t we go find out?”

And if anyone else has thoughts on the role of our deities outside our solar system, I’d love to hear about it!