I've seen this question arise a few times over the years and sometimes someone might even be too worried that they'll offend a deity to even ask this so I'm going to address it in this post. This is concerning being contacted in one way or another by a deity you may not know much about, that you might be afraid of working with or have doubts about for other reasons. People assume when they get on a pagan path that any deity that reaches out to them, they HAVE to accept because there's a "reason" for it. There may very well be a reason but no, you NEVER have to accept when a deity calls. Do you think by not working with them, that you'll offend them? This is not the case at all. As long as you're respectful in your declining their offer to work with you, it's perfectly ok. You can tell them, "I don't have enough information on who you are and what you're about, to make my decision right now." You could say, "I'm not ready to work with you at this moment." You can also say "I appreciate your contacting me but I need time to think things through before I will work with you; I appreciate your contact and I'm honored but I need time." Any of these will be just fine. I myself have also been contacted before by a deity that I wasn't prepared for and from the information I had available at the time, I'll be honest, I was quite scared to work with this deity; so I asked the deity to give me time to learn about them, which I did. I researched the hell out of them, I asked others who I knew honored her, what their experiences had been since working with this deity, I researched youtube from knowledgeable pagans who had information I could use and then I took all of the information, experiences and so forth and made my OWN conclusion. This meant that I realized I had something to learn from this deity and I was willing to work with her slowly; I made no promises I knew I couldn't keep and I kept my words as true as I could, so that I wouldn't overstep what I was willing to do for this deity and how much I was willing to work with them.
Your situation might be different; you might learn about a deity that's calling to you and you're completely not ready to work with them and that's ok! Let them know this and who knows, you might work with them in the future. The point is, deities are not harsh and masterful- beating you down if you don't say "yes" right away. They would like you to work with them not FOR them and there's a big difference. If you work with a deity simply out of fear of offending them or getting a harsh retribution, that's not a real partnership; that's fear mongering and you're making offerings, doing things out of fear of being hurt in some way by them. But if you research them, learn about them and say, "you know what, I would like to work with you; you have a lot I could learn." and you make reasonable statements of what you're prepared to do and don't make promises you can't or won't keep, they'll love that a great deal more and you will also get a hell of a lot more out of it.
The pagan path is a much different one from what many were raised in and I'll be honest, I did believe in a form of the Christian God before I became Wiccan but I NEVER believed in a vengeful wrathful God like is depicted in the Bible because the Bible was written by human beings who had their own motives, their own agendas and by creating fear, it was much easier to have many people fall into line. But the point is, many were raised believing that if you didn't do such and such at just a specific point in time or day, that you'd be struck by lightning or someone in your home would die, etc and let's be honest. No matter how little you really bought into that line of thinking, that's still in the back of your mind when you're going on your own path which in and of itself is a scary thing. It's scary to follow a path that isn't taught in a special building weekly, that doesn't really have a specific book with all the supposed answers and this can also magnify the fear you might have when you think about other deities. I'm here to let you know that no one alive or dead has all the answers about any deity, no matter what name that deity is given, what culture that deity is from so do your research, get many different points of view and most importantly form your OWN opinion of how you see a deity. Then choose whether you're ok to work with them or not. This is YOUR path and yours alone; don't let fear dictate what road you take and don't let misconceptions stop you from attaining that which you're meant to be.
Thank you,Mike Sexton
