Hello! I'm really curious about what your thoughts are on the term 'deity work' instead of 'deity worship'. In my opinion you use the term deity work when you are collaborating on something with the Netjeru but deity worship is what happens most commonly. I think the problem with the term deity work is that lots of new Pagans forget that deities are part of a religion, you need to have faith and some people don't worship them in any way when 'working with them' Just curious about your thoughts.
I wrote some thoughts about why i use “work with” over worship a long long long time ago. On the by and large, I still stand by what I said, though I’d probably inject more nuance now that I’ve had, uh, 8 years to reflect on this since I wrote that post.
I personally think that people should use whatever terminology or language works best for them. As I’ve gotten older, I’ve kinda found that it really does depend on how our brains interpret words, read words, and ingest everything that comes along with those words (aka baggage). I think I get why some people can’t bring themselves to use “work with”, perhaps reminding them of the awful conditions our bosses and work put us through on the by and large.
And, if I’m being real, my original statements of “no imagery of tools, hammers, nails, etc. It’s just me and them coming together cooperatively to get stuff done” is so entirely inaccurate to what my relationship with many of the NTRW evolved into that I can’t barely read it without laughing because its just. So wrong.
The irony of the discussion regarding this phrase in 2012, is that it mostly was disliked because “you’re rendering a god down into a tool”, but in fact, all I did was render myself down into a tool. When I was mulling on how to respond to your post, I know that one of the biggest things I kept repeating to myself was how I use the phrase “work with” because that’s how I’m treated -- an item to be utilized, and then put back in the cupboard when no longer needed.
And so while everyone was worried that I was thinking gods were tools -- well, jokes on all of us, because sometimes that’s not actually what’s going on.
Similarly, I get why worship is off-putting to a lot of people as well. The inferred subservience that our culture ascribes to the word. The inferred lack of self, the suggestion that you’r lesser, below, and by extension -- the abuse that often is perpetuated in those situations. These are all of the things I find rattling in my head when I think of “worshiping” a deity -- partially borne of cultural associations and partially borne of trauma.
In regards to your concerns about how “ new Pagans forget that deities are part of a religion “ I personally don’t think the phrasing really makes or breaks that happening. I know plenty of non-Kemetics who “worship” (their own words) Egyptian deities within any of their original Egyptian context in place. I don’t think the way a person describes their relationship with their gods is going to absolutely inform their inclusion (or lack thereof) of the larger religious structure that the god is tied to. I think that really comes from how you view the gods in general, and what role you internally see them playing in your life.
I expect that this internally-viewed role will inform the language you use to describe it, but since its all personal, its really hard to put down blanket statements of “if you use X to describe your relationship, that absolutely means you’re seeing the gods as Y” because as seen with the “working with” situation above -- sometimes the hot take is just not that accurate.
Further, even working with gods takes a lot of faith, imo. I put myself out there into a lot of uncomfortable positions, took on a lot of stress and hell all on the hope that I was helping these non-physical beings that I can’t prove are real. I think interacting in this sort setting (paganism) requires faith from the get go. Even if all you’re doing is invoking a deity in a spell or ritual working. In our modern era, it often feels weird or stupid when you first start out, because there is no way to prove any of this is 100000% real and so much of our culture has spent its time telling us that most of this (paganism/polytheism/anything-not-christian) can’t be real. So for me, faith is its own category separate of labeling.
Overall, I guess what I’m trying to say is that we have a lot of issues in our community, and this isn’t the hill to die on imo. So long as someone isn’t using slurs or other damaging language in their descriptions of their relationship with the gods, I really fee like we’ve got bigger fish to fry.
Besides, if the gods don’t like it, and they’re real autonomous beings as we all claim them to be -- I still stand by their ability to tell a person to knock it off. So for me, if its not harming humans, I tend to leave it be.
