Connection

So, the connection to the divine is an internal thing. We express it outwardly just as we express all of our inner self to the world, and because we are social creatures, we seek to express these things in concert with others. We call this religious ritual. That external connection to the divine is a social one, we seek to establish a connection between our societies and cultures and the divine we know exists through our inner connection.

But the inner connection is an individual thing. We all have it, even if we interpret it differently, and nature itself provides us with a variety of such connections to itself, giving us instinct, but the divine connection is different because our connections to nature are an absolute necessity. We have to be connected to nature because we are part of that nature. What about the connection to the divine? If we are connected to the Gods in this internal and fundamental way, does this mean we are also part of the divine nature?

You would think such questions would be fairly basic, but if you know me, either from reading this site or from interacting with me on the Hellenist sites (or other places) you also know that I am a firm believer in the mortality of man. If our connection to the divine, however, implies that we are also divine in some way, then I have to re-examine a great deal of what I believe with regard to human mortality. And if you know me at all you also know how hard that is for me. I tend to be stubborn, but I made myself a promise, and that is that I would follow through with this exploration of the divine connection within myself, even if it means turning myself inside out and my beliefs upside down.

So, the connection is there. There is no denying that at this point, and the Gods often make their will known to us through that connection. But what is that connection?

I find that I can only answer that question by asking more questions of myself, and then seeking to answer those before returning to the original question.

• If I have a connection to the divine in this matter, and I am part of nature (a given) then does not every other living thing have the same connection?
• Is that connection one of trillions, or is there but one connection shared by all life? This has fundamental repercussions for me, because this would imply, if a single connection, that all life, here and in the rest of the universe, is part of a whole (or perhaps each planet is a whole, which could make sense to me)
• This one may seem a bit off, but here we go, is the connection to the divine part of an adversarial nature between the human spark of divinity and that of the Gods? Mortal versus immortal? Olympian versus Titan? (I am going to go into this one a bit after this list)
• How should the exploration of this connection affect the way I connect to the outer world? This may seem rather easy to answer, but it can actually be a very complex question because we live in societies that demand certain things from us, and as a religion, we Hellenists do not have the same kind of support for the ascetic as do Hindus, for example.

So, the third one I mentioned sparked something in me, something that is not an original thought by any means, but which brings up something that may be important to me as I proceed.

According to one myth, the God Dionysos was killed by "Titans" and they consumed him. Enraged, Zeus destroys the Titans in a flash of lightning and from the ashes the heart of the God is rescued and the ashes are used to form mankind. This story illustrates that man kind is composed of two distinct divine essences, the Titanic and the Dionysian, which is Olympian by nature. Now, the Gods are, in my world view, eternal and the Titans of myth are, in my opinion, just other forms of the same Gods (as are all Gods as seen by all people) but this myth would seem to indicate that man came into being at the turn of things, when the Titanic world shaping aspects of the Gods were waning and the Olympian aspects were on the rise. The one essentially destroys the other, but because they are the same, the two remain and live on in us. Both the Titanic and the Olympian are immortal essences, and the earth, of which the ash itself plays symbol here, is not.

So, I am, we all are, partly divine in the same way that Adam is divine in Genesis by virtue not so much of his being created by God, but by God breathing his essence into him. We are divine not by virtue of being created by the Gods, or divine nature, but because we partake of their essence through the mixture of the titanic and Olympian in us.

If that is so, then mankind's connection to the divine is a in to mankind's connection to the tree, the grass, the deer, and the lion. We are a different order of life from the gods, but we are part of the greater whole that encompasses us all.

In reference to this, the question of how the connection works may also become clear if I understand myself not so much as an individual, but as a single cog in a vast machine. Physics, believe it or not, answers this nicely.

We are three dimensional beings living in a ten dimensional universe (twelve dimensional if you count the Olympian and the Chthonic as the two polar dimensions encompassing the whole cosmos) but even as three dimensional, living in the third dimension, we experience the second and first dimensions as well as the fourth (time), so we must be part not just of these dimensions, but essential of all of them because we are part of the totality.

Here is the connection, it transcends the dimensional perceptions we have, because they are necessary to our survival, and gives us an ability to look beyond the our experiences to a larger world, perhaps our very consciousness is a result of this connection sparking it to grow.

But there is a problem. This does not necessarily satisfy. It makes us all a little too unimportant, and how human would I be if I didn't think of myself as part of the best and greatest of all species? (oy vey)

My humble act aside, the connection seems more than that. Why would nature allow such a connection if it is not intrinsically necessary to our survival?

As I ask myself many questions I keep coming back to a conclusion I don't really like, an which needs to be further explored, and that is that nature allows the connection because we have an immortal soul that requires it.

Uh oh!