The Way of Devotion

Professor Cannon’s description of the Way of Devotion is as follows:

Cultivation of a personal relationship to “ultimate reality” (Cannon’s nondenomational term for God-or-what-have-you) of wholehearted adoration, devotional surrender to its transforming grace, and trust in its providential care, anticipating in return an influx of sustaining energy, hope, and a sense of affirming presence or at-onement. It may involve a conversion experience and/or emotional purgation.

(Note: All direct quotes from Six Ways of Being Religious are in bold type.)

The Way of Devotion is very new to modern Paganism, and as of now very few Pagan groups focus on it; it is mostly practiced as a solitary path. The exceptions are a handful of “mystery cults” dedicated to specific deities. Many Pagans are distrustful of this path, seeing it as “irrational” or “only for overemotional crystal-waving fluffy bunnies”, as one acquaintance put it. Others have stated their objections more succinctly, saying that this path gives over too much power to one’s deity or religious path, and forces one into a position of supplication that they find too vulnerable. In some groups, the question of whether or not to kneel to the Gods is debated, and those who feel that kneeling is too much subjugation of the independent human spirit are often on the front lines of disapproval of the Path of Devotion.

On the other hand, there are many solitary Pagans who speak of and write about their devotion to their deities; some may be part of a Pagan religious group but their devotional activities remain strictly private. Not every Pagan is chosen by a patron deity – many simply revere their Gods as a group – and of those who are, many do not have strong devotional/emotional relationships with them. But as someone who works for a small Pagan church press, we’ve seen a great influx in the last decade of devotional books dedicated to specific Gods, offered by their devotees. Some are straightforward descriptions of the deity complete with rituals and some poetry; others overflow with emotional praise, yearning, and heart-opening. This was not common in the Paganism of decades ago; devotion is a new discovery for many of us.

“The core of devotional practice is interiority. There is a whole literature in Christian mysticism that discusses this (most notably Teresa of Avila’s work, St. John the Divine, certain Rhine mystics, Meister Eckhart, et al.). Having read a substantial amount of Sufi poetry, I suspect the same holds true in Islam. We have tantalizing hints from various polytheistic traditions, but in many cases whatever written texts there might have been did not come down to us, and many of our ancestral traditions were predominantly oral, which means this wouldn’t have been written down in the first place. One would learn from elders, from the community, from peers organically and by osmosis. One of the things that we sorely lack in contemporary polytheisms is the inter-generational means of culture and knowledge transmission. So we have to do things a little more self-consciously; hence books like this.”


– Galina Krasskova, from Devotional Polytheism. 

We also read of the Way of Devotion in the writings of Pagans who are in AA or its offshoots. The injunction to give one’s self to God for assistance in extracting one’s self from addiction sometimes leads to a devotional path for Pagans as well as non-Pagans. Since at least half of modern Pagans these days are converts, many write of having to overcome suspicion around the idea of devotion because it was presented to them in an unsavory way in the religion they left. This idea is part of a larger problem in the Pagan demographic, which has a large percentage of converts who came to our faith not just as seekers, but with a history of bad experiences and possibly abuse from the religious leaders and organizations of their upbringing. This tends to lead to a reflexive distrust of anything that looks even remotely like what “those people” do, and many perfectly good babies get thrown out with the dirty bathwater. Those who have had “finding a personal relationship with Jesus” or something similar forced on them as a weapon of conformity or disapproval may need a long period of internal work before they can cleanly look at the Way of Devotion.

Unlike – for example – the Way of Sacred Rite, where what you do is more important than your beliefs, and where emotion is supposed to come over time with your ceremonial actions, the Way of Devotion is completely bound up with human emotion. The Hindu term for this path is bhakti yoga, and it has been described as “falling in love with God.” As many of us are polytheists or pantheists, it is quite possible to fall in love with more than one deity, or more than one face of Deity, depending on how you see that theologically.

Following the Way of Devotion is to put your complete trust in a deity, and to allow yourself to deeply love them. This is characterized differently depending on the unique pairing of each human/Divine relationship. Some of these bonds are conceived as the deity as Divine Lover, and there is a sexual aspect, with the Divine Lover making love to the mortal half while they are in a mild trance state. Some Pagans marry their Divine Lovers and take on the title of “god-spouse”. This includes Pagans of any gender, and as nonheterosexuality is completely acceptable theologically in Paganism, some may choose a same-sex divine marriage. To be a god-spouse is also to be a (usually lifelong) priest or priestess of that deity; some take mortal lovers or spouses as well, while others remain “celibate” except for their Divine Lover.

On the other hand, not every deity comes as a lover. Other Pagans find that their patron deity comes to them as Mother or Father in a parent/child relationship, perhaps healing old wounds from childhood insufficiency. If there is more than one deeply devotional relationship going on, having two Divine Parents is not uncommon. Deities can also come as the Divine Friend, a more mature version of the “invisible friend” from childhood, or as the Divine Teacher in a close and loving mentor relationship. It’s said in my own tradition that the “deity of affinity” will come in the guise that you most need. In some rare cases, a deity can even come as the Divine Child, bringing joy, irreverence, innocence, love, and mischief, evoking a parental love in the devotee. In Hinduism, the child-gods Krishna and Ganesha often fulfill this role. In Paganism, I’ve heard devotees of Sigyn, Persephone, and Aphrodite tell of how their deities came to them as children, giving those devotees a different understanding of the natures of their Gods.

(Note: For each of the Six Ways of Being Religious, Dale Cannon lists key ways that they can be performed skillfully or unskillfully. Thus, for each path, we will be exploring competence, incompetence and the shadow side of competence; the balance of finitude and infinitude; and the balance of selflessness and egoism.)

Competence

In touch with deeper feelings (one’s own as well as others’); discerning of feelings; fully acquainted with the processes of personal conversion and devotional surrender, what occasions them, and how they should be guided; master of the art of pastoral counseling.

The Way of Devotion changes you emotionally, slowly and gently or with breathtaking, cathartic intensity. Only a small number of modern Pagans seem to have it as part of a conversion experience; the majority seem to convert for more general reasons of “this seems like the right path” and a specific relationship with a deity may come later. A small percentage, of course, show up hesitantly in Pagan groups or on the (possibly virtual) doorstep of a Pagan elder saying, “This Pagan God/dess is talking to me! What do I do?” It’s generally accepted that if a deity reaches out to you when you are not even inside the religion, and perhaps know nothing about it, that this will be your patron. (The exception is if it is one of a handful of Gods who are known to be “initiators” or “gateway Gods” who bring human souls in and then pass them off to the appropriate patron deity later.)

On the other hand, Pagans who have been inside the religion for years (and perhaps were even raised Pagan) may suddenly have a “God/dess experience” that brings them to the Way of Devotion and feels like a kind of conversion. As one friend of mine related, “My religious affiliation didn’t change, but I feel like a whole different kind of Pagan now! It changed how I worship, how I believe, how I handle everything in my life!”

Over time, close quarters with a God/dess changes someone. Sometimes devotees are given specific disciplines or instructions to help clear them out so they can evolve emotionally and be more self-aware. Sometimes simply being gently inundated with that divine energy can change someone into a more compassionate and stable being, someone who is more at home with their feelings and has no need to prove anything to anyone.

“It takes courage to do this work. This is all the more so because there is an inherent and often terrifying vulnerability in devotion. Part of what it entails, what’s really at its core, is opening oneself up to the experience of the Gods. The way we experience our Gods may be different for each of us, but devotional work is rooted in the desire for that ongoing connection and that can at times be terrifying. Our ancestors understood this. They understood – on a visceral level that we moderns lack – that the sacred always goes hand in hand with terror. That’s why religious scholars like Rudolf Otto, in looking at the experience of the divine presence(s), termed it the numinous “mysterium tremendum et fascinams” and philosophers talk about “fear and trembling” before the Gods.

I don’t believe that we should approach the Holy Powers with fear, though. Respect and joy, love and a desire to be in right relationship are so much better for the relationships that you are nurturing. Still, there are times where the experience of the divine can be terrifying and that’s okay. It doesn’t mean that you’ve done anything wrong. It means that you have encountered a Presence that by its very nature is other-than-human, bigger, older, and incredibly powerful … Devotional experiences can shake and shatter the world, move the ground from beneath our feet, open us up in ways we never, ever conceived of and that is the nature of devotion. It is a good and blessed thing in that it leads to more authenticity of self, and a deeper connection to our Gods and ancestors.”


– Galina Krasskova, from Devotional Polytheism.

Even in mainstream religions, however, the Way of Devotion is not necessarily associated with pastoral counseling. In Paganism, this is doubly the case. Most modern Pagans who go into ministry do it from a place of being a ritual leader or desiring community service. One doesn’t necessarily become a good counselor just because one has a personal relationship with one’s deities. Instead, the truth seems to be somewhere along the lines that if one must do a great deal of pastoral counseling for one’s chosen calling, the devotion connection is what keeps one from the danger of burnout. No one is an effective counselor when they are close to burnout, and a strong personal deity connection of divine love and joy can stave that off and give someone new reserves of compassion and energy to give.

Incompetence

Out of touch with one’s own feelings (or “having no feelings”); fickle, inconstant, changeable, capricious; caught up with superficial feelings of devotion but not yet given over to deep surrender; distrustful of feeling or of devotional surrender; pastorally responsible for others but unempathic and insensitive to others’ feelings; lacking understanding of the processes of personal conversion and devotional surrender.

In some Hindu traditions, it’s said that one can talk or read about bhakti, and one can pursue it on one’s own, but the best way to learn it is to be in the presence of a bhakti yogi. Something about just being in the physical presence of someone whose life is dedicated wholly to the Way of Devotion passes something on through the person’s energy which helps others to find their way along that path, if it’s right for them.

However, because of the circumstances under which modern Paganism has developed, very few of the people who are dedicated to the Way of Devotion hold any kind of leadership positions in our demographic. It is seen as something private that should not be thrust upon others, and most leaders tend to come out of the Way of Sacred Rite, which is less challenging to people’s emotions. Since so many Pagans – or, perhaps, so many of the loudest Pagans – are struggling with reactions to the religious upbringing of their youth, and so many were attracted to modern Paganism because it is so different from those, Pagans with these issues tend to see anything associated with “surrender” – whether that word is used or not – as associated with a dictatorial religious context that discourages questioning anything one is told. “Trusting the Divine” ends up in the same category as sexual restrictions, religious TV shows, and paying one’s clergyperson.

On the other hand, you can also find the kind of naïve semi-devotion, usually among other newcomers, which many Pagans deride as “fluffy bunny worship”. The stereotype is of a bright-eyed innocent bubbling about a Barbie-and-Ken-like deity pair who are always kind and dispense favors like a gumball machine, usually with a lot of unicorns, crystals, and pointless talk about “love and light”. This shallow and superficial approximation of the path has acquired enough bad press that it affects the overall perception of deity-devotion in the Pagan demographic. Since the Way of Devotion does actually involve Love as a mainstay emotion, with Joy as a close second, from a distance it can resemble something fairly fluffy bunny, especially in the early stages. Many followers of the Way of Devotion either keep it all entirely private or feel the need to apologize for the “fluffy-bunny”-ness of using the word “love”.

Shadow Side of Competence

(Note: This is not the same as incompetence, which is listed above. It is when a person who is otherwise competent in their chosen path becomes blinded to any other options than that path, not only for themselves but for anyone else in the world.)

Ready to treat all problems as solvable through devotional surrender to the providential grace of “ultimate reality”; unreflectively trustful of one’s emotions; passive.

We’ve also encountered Pagans who, when exposed to someone’s serious struggles with a difficult decision, simply blithely say, “Why don’t you just ask the Gods?” as if it was so easy for every person. While this naïvete also makes an appearance in the shadow side of the Way of Shamanic Mediation, in this case it is someone who does not understand that not everyone’s spiritual destiny is meant to be blind faith in one’s patron deity. Some may not even have one, and some may find more value in a serious inner struggle and a decision coming from their own center.

At the moment in modern Paganism – and it’s possible that in a couple of years these words will be outdated – some followers of the Way of Devotion have spoken of feeling that their particular path is under siege. Some of this is, of course, the problem that this whole document is attempting to solve – a lack of understanding that all of these paths are meaningful, and no one of them is more spiritually worthy than any other. This, coupled with the general lack of public support for this path, can create a perception that this path is devalued by the general mass of Pagans. At the same time, Paganism has always had a certain percentage of atheists among its members – individuals who are drawn to reverence of the Earth and body, appreciate the Pagan spiritual aesthetic, and find meaning in the images of the Gods as sacred archetypes. For obvious reasons, those on the path of devotion are the first to clash with non-theistic Pagans; for someone who is wholly dedicated to this path, the idea of Pagan religion without the reality of deity is incredulous. It will be interesting to see how modern Paganism manages to grow a valued and balanced space for both sides of that equation.On yet another side of the equation, the path of devotion can seem ambivalent for other reasons to Pagans who are walking other paths. I give classes in the Pagan demographic based on this article, and hardly a class has gone by without people coming up and the end and thanking me because they feared that whichever path they were drawn to was somehow unworthy, and almost every one had been accused of “doing it wrong” by followers of another path. While the sources and direction of the comments were all over the map, several of them stood out to me on the same theme: “Thank you for telling me that being on a path other than devotion does not mean that the Gods don’t love or value me as much, or that I can’t be just as close to them by doing this other path.” It seemed to me that both sides were overreacting fearfully from implications rather than thinking things through. One can hope that as Paganism grows as a faith – or set of faiths – it can settle into a place where multiple ways of doing religion can all be appreciated, and feel that appreciation.

Balance of Finitude and Infinitude

(Note: These words are Professor Cannon’s chosen terminology for the balance of the practical details with the numinous energy we are opening to experience.)

Love of “ultimate reality” coupled with appropriate, penultimate care for finite duties and finite realities; simply trustful of Providence (ready to “let go and let God”) coupled with a readiness to do what is in one’s power; inwardly devotionally surrendered coupled with outward autonomy; at ease with the whole range of feelings and able to help others be at ease with feelings, yet not wholly subject to the sway of feelings; sensible to what is  important and what is not, what is deep and what is only on the surface.

Modern Paganism is generally polytheistic or pantheistic, and we are an immanent rather than a transcendent religion, meaning that we see the sacred in this world as much as in any other. This does give us a good theological push toward balancing one’s physical duties with one’s spiritual yearnings, perhaps more so than many transcendent faiths. Since having sex with one’s partner or enjoying good food or sitting out in Nature are not considered to be “less spiritual” activities, we are hopefully less likely to put them aside. In addition, since there are many Gods who embody the sacredness of “ordinary” ways of being in the world, it’s not hard at all to make any mundane activity into an offering to one of them. Paying the rent or mortgage can become an offering to the Gods and spirits of the home hearth fire, as can cleaning and doing the dishes; making sure that one has health insurance can be an offering to a healing deity; taking out the garbage can be dedicated to the Gods of death and rot. Where we do tend to find obstacles, like all flawed humans, is in surrendering not just to what we believe the Gods want of us, but to the process of exploring our emotions in depth and allowing divine love to penetrate and change us.

“The Way of Devotion starts at the heart, and the heart is the tool that is used to master it and become skilled at it. If the heart is wounded, closed off, or dysfunctional, the tool is affected and it’s hard to move down the path. It is crucial to be willing to allow the Gods to get in there and muck around with one’s wounded heart and heal it, even if that healing takes a long time and is painful. Like everyone else, I’m good at getting in the way of that healing. I withdraw because I’m not willing to endure divine contact when it involves pain and discomfort. I want to receive divine love; I’m willing to give love to the divine; but I resist the process that is integral to this path: reshaping the heart to be a better tool in all ways. I want devotion but I don’t want it to be about my heart, maybe because I know how damaged my heart is. The idea that my heart is the key, that terrifies and embarrasses me. But then I take a breath and remind myself that my Gods can fix it if I let them in fully. Of course, sometimes I then go into a tailspin because I’m frightened of what I might become if I let them fix me. But then next step is to breathe again and say, I give myself to your will.”

-Suki Moyne, eclectic Pagan.

Imbalance: Loss of Finitude

(Loss of a realistic understanding of the practical details of the path.)

Passionate in an intense, otherworldly way that eclipses into insignificance or devalues all mundane concerns and the importance of others’ feelings; failing to distinguish powerful feelings of “ultimate reality” from “ultimate reality” itself; wholly subject to the sway of powerful religious emotions.

The most popular negative view in outer society of the Way of Devotion is a glassy-eyed, smiling individual with a thousand-yard stare, parroting some cultlike phrases, not paying their rent, and not remembering to eat or bathe. It’s true that dedicating yourself wholly to a devotional path can, for some people, lead to being “devoured” by the focus of that path. Symptoms of being “devoured” include putting aside any activities in one’s life that are not directly wound up with worship, and often putting aside the people in one’s life if they are not also willing to make that worship the center of their own existences. People have abandoned spouses and children who insisted on being their own stubborn independent selves, left jobs, lost housing, and ignored medical problems in order to follow their “bliss”.

Ideally, a devotional path should strengthen and support a person’s ability to care for themselves and others in the world. This is especially true in Paganism, which is an earth-centered and often body-centered faith and sees the physical as just as sacred as the nonphysical. Rather than thinking that caring for one’s health, for example, is nonessential next to religious activities, it’s more appropriate to remember that your body is made of Earth, a sacred object given to you by the Mother in order to experience this plane.

Additionally, there is the challenge of remembering that the feelings of other people count and make a difference. According to Hindu and Hindu-derived writers who explore bhakti, this path should ideally help one to be more understanding and tolerant of even the annoying and irrational emotions of others, because if it is done right, it slowly opens the heart, and a “tell” for doing it unskillfully is being open only to the divine while using other people in a closed-hearted, callous way. This indicates that the heart is not actually fully open to the divine, and that the individual is holding back in some major way, usually out of fear.

Another “tell” for walking this path unskillfully is when risky offerings or actions are made to one’s personal Divine Relationship impulsively, without due thought about the potential negative consequences. Sometimes this comes out of an urge to “impress” one’s Holy Powers with how big and crazy a gift you are willing to give, as if they were human beings who would be impressed by self-destructive stunts. It can also come from the desperation of fearing one’s sincere emotions and wanting to offer substitutes instead of the actual heart.

Imbalance: Loss of Infinitude

(Loss of a real connection to the Divine/Universe/All That Is, however you see that.)

Overly sentimental and emotional; enamored with cultivating feelings for their own sake (at the expense of theological depth or breadth) with little or no connection to “ultimate reality”; imitating secondhand feelings and the appearance of devotional surrender, without genuineness or substance.

Since the Way of Devotion in modern Paganism is generally done as a solitary practice and rarely in group ritual, we don’t have as many instances of individuals making a great show of how devoted they are, with lavish and overstated offerings and rituals, but it does happen – and the more popular the Way of Devotion becomes, the more of this we’ll be likely to see. One problematic situation that we do see is enthusiastic individuals who connect spiritually with a particular deity, fall madly in love, and then go about singing the praises of their God/dess without looking at the entirety of who and what that deity is – including the dark and difficult parts – in a thoughtful way; nor do they look at the reality of the Way of Devotion and what it may do to them emotionally in the service of clearing their hearts. It’s a shallow relationship, akin to what practitioners of polyamory refer to as “Shiny New Lover Syndrome”, and it often ends in a year or so in disillusion when things get rough. 

“When I first got married to my patron deity, I was madly in love and did all the silly things that one does when madly in love with a human being. I bought bagfuls of trinkets to lay on the multiplying altars to Him. I watched movies, asking Him if He liked them, inviting Him to watch with me and comment. I enthused on the Internet about how wonderful He was. At the same time, I downplayed – OK, let’s be honest, ignored – the difficult parts of His nature, and also what he might expect of me. He was gentle, but eventually there came a time when He pushed me to evolve in ways I had hoped would never be on the table, and I rebelled, feeling betrayed. What I’d betrayed, though, was my own ideas of what being married to Him would be like, and those ideas were incorrect. The day I found that He had set up a painful situation deliberately in order to force me to look at what I was in denial about, I flew into a rage. How could He do this to me? It was a turning point, and I eventually realized that this self-transformation was going to be part of the deal – in fact, it was a way He showed his love to me, in making me into a less screwed-up person whether I wanted that or not.”

-Rachael Signy, California Pagan god-spouse.

Selflessness

(Note: This is not suggesting we should always be selfless, but that there will be times on each path when we need to give of ourselves freely and generously.)

Sincere of heart; committed to ongoing personal transformation through surrender to the providential grace of “ultimate reality”; possessed of a “generosity of soul” that includes and welcomes others in its circle of friendship; compassionate and sympathetic toward others; appropriately responsive to others’ feelings; a good listener; able to let others have their own feelings.

The act of allowing the Gods to polish one’s heart is never entirely done, as the quote below points out. Ongoing personal transformation is necessary or this path will stagnate. Moving through the process does eventually bring one into a space of more “generosity of soul”, but one has to be willing to “partner” with the Gods in one’s own emotional self-transformation.

“There are a lot more devotionals to gods being written these days, which is great. There’s a lot more talk about devotion in general … but it’s all talk about how great it is, how great this god or that goddess is. There’s very little talk in neopaganism about how to do devotion besides putting down offerings or doing rituals. I’m talking about the science of devotion, I’m talking about the hard stuff – the part when you want to scream and tell your patron deity to screw off, the part where you hurt too much to open yourself. I’d like to see Pagan leaders talking about, “I didn’t speak to my patron deity for five years because I was so angry and hurt that my child died. And this is human, and this is how I got over it and surrendered again, and this is how it healed me and opened my heart.” That’s what really makes the difference, that’s what helps people to not abandon this way of worship, not just going on about how great the gods are. People are out there saying, “Surrender!” but no one is talking about how surrendering is not something you do once. It’s something you do all over again every day, for the rest of your life. You never just surrender and you’re done – you do it over and over again, through harder and harder obstacles, and the temptation to withdraw is always there. No one here is talking about how to do that when it’s hard, because we’re all afraid of our emotions, and I’d like to see that happen.”

-Elle Latimer, solitary Pagan.

The process of devotion also allows one to develop more healthy boundaries – “healthy” meaning boundaries set before one is depleted into a negative state, but not done out of fear or anger or frustration; boundaries set calmly and with compassion for the needs of others. Once this point has been reached, it’s much easier to allow people to have their own feelings, even if they are difficult, and to see behind them to their simple flawed humanity, which we all share.

“I can set good boundaries now. Not doing it too soon out of self-protectiveness, not doing it too late and reacting with rage. I can do it out of altruism, because I can see that allowing you to hurt me damages your karma/wyrd/built-up negativity, and the most loving act I can do for you is to kindly prevent you from doing that, before I’m too far gone to be badly affected by your needs or your damage. The road of devotion taught me that.”


– Shelley Griffon, eclectic Pagan

Egoism

Insincere of heart; self-centered; insensitive to the feelings and emotional struggles of others; manipulative of religious affections (whether one’s own or others’) to promote egoistic motives or material advantage. 

“I know how much you love your patron deity. Wouldn’t she want you to help out with this project?”

“We both love the same God so much. Wouldn’t he want you to lend me money, just until I’m in a better place?”

“I’m married to my patron deity, so of course I know more about them than you do. I’ll be happy to pass on messages from them.”

“If you’re having trouble in your life, it’s probably because you don’t love the Gods enough, or do enough for them.”

Resources for the Way of Devotion