On Deities: A Lived Perspective

After decades of direct engagement, my understanding of deities is more experiential than theoretical.

I do not experience deities as ideas, symbols, or psychological projections alone. I experience them as intelligences that exist on a plane of reality that is deity—a level of existence distinct from the human, with its own rules, structures, and forms of agency.

This plane, in my experience, is not moralized in the way human religion often attempts to make it. It is not divided neatly into good and evil, light and dark, worthy and unworthy. It is complex, differentiated, and alive.

Deity as a Plane of Being

From my perspective, deities are evolved beings—but not evolved in a linear, human sense. They are not “better people,” nor are they ascended humans polished into perfection.

They are intelligences that operate at different octaves of being.

Some feel vast and slow, like tectonic forces.

Others feel precise, relational, and immediate.

Some carry maternal or generative currents. Others carry destructive, initiatory, or boundary-setting ones.

These differences are not flaws or contradictions. They are expressions of a realm that contains multiplicity rather than uniformity.

A deity is not defined by purity. A deity is defined by coherence at its own level of existence.

Deities and Angels Are Not the Same

In my experience, angels are not deities.

They are powerful, yes—but they operate differently.

Angelic intelligences tend to function within fixed roles, functions, or mandates.

Their presence is often precise, task-oriented, and structured. There is a sense of alignment to an overarching order over personal autonomy or will.

Deities, by contrast, exhibit:

• autonomy

• personality

• preference

• relationship

• continuity over time

They appear to have their own lives, trajectories, and agendas—some of which intersect with human lives, and many of which do not.

This does not make them unreliable. It makes them alive.

Relationship, Not Universal Fit

One of the most important things I have learned is this: not everyone resonates with every deity—and that is not a failure.

Just as humans have affinities, temperaments, and relational chemistry, so too do deities.

We are drawn to certain intelligences:

• sometimes because of innate tendencies

• sometimes because of ancestry or cultural memory

• sometimes because of where we are on our path at a particular moment

These relationships can change over time. A deity who is present during one phase of life may recede during another—not as rejection, but as timing.

Connection is not guaranteed. Nor is it required.

Beyond Human Moral Frames

I have come to believe that deities exist outside our human moral categories.

They are not purely light. They are not purely dark.

They contain both—often simultaneously.

Much of the fear surrounding deities, especially those labeled “dark,” comes from attempts to force them into simplified ethical frameworks that do not belong to their realm.

In my experience, the Roman and Greek pantheons reflect this complexity more honestly than many later traditions. Their gods are relational, flawed, creative, destructive, loyal, capricious, nurturing, and severe—not because they are “less evolved,” but because they are more accurately portrayed.

They are not symbols of perfection. They are expressions of power, pattern, and consequence.

A Deity Is a Deity Is a Deity

I do not divide deities into hierarchies of legitimacy.

I do not believe some are “real” while others are psychological or inferior.

A deity is a deity is a deity.

The names change. The masks shift. The cultural stories differ.

But the underlying reality—the plane of intelligence they arise from—remains.

My work is grounded in relationship, consent, and discernment, and in the understanding that contact with this realm is not about purity or transcendence, but about orientation, respect, and the ability to remain coherent in the presence of something larger than oneself.