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A few brief thoughts occasioned by recent discussions in the polytheist community. I tweeted this material, but decided to post it here in a stand-alone form, in advance of compiling an archive.
I think that symbolic exegesis is not given enough weight and respect in the pagan community; it is not a "merely human" activity. Hermeneutics, exegesis, and yes, philosophy, do not share the structural characteristics of revelation, but they are still theophanic. If my Gods told me to slay my neighbor, I would interpret it symbolically, and so too if they asked me to slay a pig, or a rooster. Indeed, I would do so even if they asked me for a peach. I could not *help* but do so, because the “literal” is itself symbolic. Even if I gave my Gods "literally" what they asked for, an exegesis would have been performed, because the item offered could not *be* the exact individual requested. The "exact item” is always already a substitution. There is no eliminating my decision and my interpretation from the act, no foreclosing the ethical space that opens in the act of offering. A command cannot foreclose this space. The Gods are real, and so am I. They demand I use all of my faculties, for they are all from Them. These faculties are divine, even though they do not function like revelation, but rather exist symbiotically with it. Revelation is that which demands interpretation, this is constitutive for theophany.
I think that symbolic exegesis is not given enough weight and respect in the pagan community; it is not a "merely human" activity. Hermeneutics, exegesis, and yes, philosophy, do not share the structural characteristics of revelation, but they are still theophanic. If my Gods told me to slay my neighbor, I would interpret it symbolically, and so too if they asked me to slay a pig, or a rooster. Indeed, I would do so even if they asked me for a peach. I could not *help* but do so, because the “literal” is itself symbolic. Even if I gave my Gods "literally" what they asked for, an exegesis would have been performed, because the item offered could not *be* the exact individual requested. The "exact item” is always already a substitution. There is no eliminating my decision and my interpretation from the act, no foreclosing the ethical space that opens in the act of offering. A command cannot foreclose this space. The Gods are real, and so am I. They demand I use all of my faculties, for they are all from Them. These faculties are divine, even though they do not function like revelation, but rather exist symbiotically with it. Revelation is that which demands interpretation, this is constitutive for theophany.
