There’s a reason I am a hard polytheist, and that reason is that hard polytheism is the lens through which I (as in me, personally, as an individual) see the gods most clearly.
I make no claims as to whether each and every god is indeed and in fact a separate entity. I don’t know that. What I do know is that, both historically and in my personal experience, they have manifested as separate. And I figure there must be a a reason for that. Maybe the reason is simply that they are indeed separate entities; maybe it’s not. I don’t feel the need to know that level of information, especially when I already have a point of view that makes good, solid sense to me in a way nothing else has.
What also makes sense to me, though, is that the lines between what is separate can be pretty fuzzy and/or pretty thin, and they don’t have to provide a watertight seal. And they don’t have to be the same lines in the same places all the time.
(See upcoming post on polyvalence and ambiguity. :))
