Lenses of divinity
Connection to the divine is a major focus for spiritworkers, magical practitioners, and many general paganfolk, but opinions on why and how we communicate with gods are diverse and complicated. It's no surprise it's a thorny issue. Gods are, by almost any definition, deeply significant entities, which gives extra weight to the prospect of forming relationships with Them. This means that it's at least good to have a clear expectation of the shape of a relationship, before entering into it. In my work with the Wanderers, I've found myself using three different perspectives on divine relationships, which I've come to call 'lenses'. I refer to these as the Companion, Presence, and Endless. The lens I'm using might shift from one moment to another, depending on what I and the gods need out of our connection, but I've found that every lens has potential to deepen my understanding of and relationship with each of my deities.
My first forays into relating to my deities used the Companion lens, which seems natural to me, and I only discovered later that it's relatively uncommon in many pagan spaces. It always came naturally to me to reach out to my Gods as folk with whom I could have a casual conversation and personal connection. As soon as I had a sense of the Dancer-Between, I found myself wanting to meet with Them, not elevating myself to Their level, nor diminishing Them to mine, but trying to find a middle ground. This was a bit tricky for a god who never speaks in words, but we found a way, senses of presence and shared feeling bringing us closer. I've been around pagan discourse enough to know that some folks will see this as outside the nature of gods as they know Them. And yet, personal encounters with deities are far from uncommon in paleo-pagan lore. The dalliances of Zeus and Dionysus are well-documented, and Odin is famous for giving direct but oblique aid to heroes, and disguising himself as a mortal to test mortal hospitality. Of course, those interactions are more corporeal (and often less mutualistic) than my connection with the Wanderers, but suffice it to say that I believe a deity who is unconcerned with our world is barely worthy of the title.
All that being said, I attribute my tendency toward this sort of divine relationship not to polytheistic scholarship, but oddly enough to my upbringing within monotheism. I was raised in the moderate Protestant Christian denominations of the 90's, where the phrase "close personal relationship with Jesus" was thrown around a lot, and I internalized that with more than a little autistic literalness. Where other folks deploy this purported relationship as a shield against criticism of their behavior, I found it a great comfort in times when I struggled to connect with other corporeal people. The twee art of blond-haired blue-eyed Jesus standing just to the side of a group of kids going through their lives helped me hope that there was someone who cared for me. Even as I came to understand how those depictions are often deployed as tools of shame and restriction, I still sought to redeem the idea of gods who could be a source of comfort and support. I feel fortunate that I've found that in the gods I'm close to now, who are willing to just walk with me, play with me, talk with me, and call me out when I can do better (usually gently, but not-so-gently when I need it).
I came to know the Presence lens better in my structured study of pagan ritual and magic. Presence feels more powerful and yet more diffuse than companionship: the god is within a space, an object, or a person, often for a specific purpose. The setting is usually centered around Them, whether it's for a particular purpose, or just for Them to share a message that needs to be known. This is the foundation of most deity-focussed magic, where the god's presence brings the space in alignment with Their purview, and it's the intent of divine aspecting and possession. Regardless of what a god is present in, Presence is the lens that focuses on how They can act in the world, whether through the resonance of the space, or the actions of an inspired individual.
I also find that divine presence works in both directions. My experience of deities is that they are in a sense congruent with their own areas of concern. That means that not only can we ask them to be more present to help with something They care about, but also doing something They care about makes them more present. The Player-with-Light is a deity concerned with color, self-expression, and revelation, so when I go out in the world in an outfit that draws attention toward me being a distinct queer creature, I feel myself doing Their work, and I feel Their presence. This is also why it can help for rituals to have things associated with a deity around, even if you're not calling that deity directly, and it can also suggest additional things to account for when assessing how a ritual goes. Divine presence tracks the theme, not the intent, so it's important to keep in mind what you're doing, and who that might make present. For instance, when I am warding a room, I keep in mind that I'm not just bringing in the Sculptor-of-Pieces (concerned with structure and safety) but also the Painter-in-Rust (boundaries and division). The austere vibe of the latter deity is an important thing to account for, both to make the ritual more effective, and to keep it from being too effective.
The third lens is one that I've only recently been exploring. When I describe an Endless experience of a deity, I find that other folks either know exactly what I mean, or have never thought of it. Experiencing a god as endless goes far beyond feeling Them present in the room or in myself. It's expansive, transcendent, experiencing the whole universe as if it's part of Them, or in terms of the things They care about. For me, this is a semi-sensory experience that's intrinsically hard to put into words. The Endless Dancer-Between is something like unfolding petals and mantles of impossible color, an endless enfolding and unfolding liminality. The Endless Singer-in-Silence is the experience of message in every sense, hearing, reading, feeling, and more, understood clearly even though it flies through a blinding blizzard that might otherwise be a total distraction. It seems I can't even talk about these without sounding rather psychedelic.
To look at a deity from an endless perspective is to try to understand Them on Their own terms, a task that feels as impossible as truly-knowing anyone, multiplied by the impossibility of stretching one's mind to a cosmic viewpoint. But I find the effort is still valuable, because the part of it which I do comprehend still connects me to Them, not so that we can accomplish something together, but just so that we can be, and I can come away with some sense of what it might feel like to be Them. This is where I get closest to that common pagan/occultist mystic goal: "finding the divine within". If the Dancer in some sense is liminality, and if Their endless perspective finds the liminality in everything, then that liminality is within me as well, and that helps connect me more deeply to Them.
It's hard to hold multiples of these perspectives at once, but it's important to me to be able to know they're all there, and to move between them. Each one has a purpose in my life, from the intimate to the ineffable. To deny a god one of these expressions (or any others that I or you might find) is not just denying a part of Them, it's closing off a possible new avenue for understanding Them, and understanding all that matters to them. I've found a lot of value both in defining what works for me, and in staying curious about what I may have yet to discover.