"Many individuals stand up and declare an idea that is "destined to be a movement". Many of these individuals end up just sitting back down. A few begin showing signs of a movement, but turn around and sit back down as well. Out of those many, a couple will succeed on their mission. They will demonstrate a level of enginuity, and enthusiasm to make their idea a movement. " Rev. Eric T. Schuetz

Are you a dreamer or a visionary? Do you live your dreams or do your dream live you? Everyone has thoughts about what life could, should and would be and it´s important to ponder these things because from these we get new ideas and life no longer follows the same old boring patterns. If our dreams become visions which then reach out into life and transform it we become visionaries! But then we can forget the grounding of life, we get lost in our dreams, the insubstantial misty thoughts that are anything we want them to be except real!

One symbol that I find inspirational for this is the pentacle, in the obverse. I have five words or "IN´s" for each element, so earth is Instinct, water is Intuition, air is Intellect, Fire is Intent and Spirit is Inspiration. There are two more "In´s" that I shall describe later.
Usually the pentacle is point up, spirit reaches into heaven, air and water reach out the sides and fire and earth reach down. But I find this to be ungrounded because here heaven and earth are separated into dualistic thinking. But that´s the problem of many religions and spiritualities, they seek "God", heaven, meaning or truth outside of mundane life. This is for unhealthy, unreal dreamers, not visionaries.

Taking the pentacle again we can put the spirit point down, bury it in the ground. This means to me that dreams or Inspiration are grounded, that they have real expression, they are not delusions that lead us away from the vitality tha is life. At its sides are Intellect and Intuition tthat support it like struts either side. Then there is Instinct and Intent, these are raised toheaven where they commune with "higher" realities. The sixth "In" is the Individual which lays within the pentagram at the centre, where it is sustained, supported and protected by the other "IN´s".

In some schools of thought this symbol is often seen with a horned animals head. We humans are just animals with basic animal needs, food, air etc. Now the mouth "feeds" off of Inspiration but only when it is grounded in the Earth. The ears of the animal are Intellect and Intuition, they are our tools of perception. Then the animals horns, Instinct and Intent are raised to the heaven´s fending off useless pipe-dreams. Here is the balanced and healthy human animal, where heaven and earth are married and not separated. This gives us our seventh "IN", Integrity. A life with Integrity in a healthy, happy and balanced one.

Here we have an image to help us make our dreams and give them reality and meaning. If we feed ourselves only with the basic necessities of life we become empty shells, devoid of meaning and if we forget these in favour of dreams then we become nothing more than empty visions. But if we can align these two, seek Integrity then life becomes something good and healthy.

But what´s important isn´t the symbol, I was just using that to convey a point (or five ;) ), so I leave you with this thought,

May Instinct sustain you and not constrict you,
May Intuition guide you and not confuse you,
May Intellect give you sense and not ignorance,
May Intent be strong and not burn you,
May Inspiration manifest potential and not empty images
And may Integrity flow through the Individual in health and balance.

“Human beings think of the gods as havng been born, wearing clothes, speaking and having bodies like their own. Ethiopians say the gods are black with snub-noses. Thracians say they have blue eyes and red hair. If cows and horses had hands they would draw pictures of the gods looking like cows and horses!” Xenophanes

“Personality is a limitation; therefore God as we understand Him has no personality. Prayer is our address to God. How can we address someone who has no personality? I address God as if He were a person, though I know that he is not.” Tolstoy

What happens when impersonal objects are given a human form and personality? What happens when a mountain, river, ocean, famine or art are given the history of a human life?

Humans are naturally a species that creates and follows reason. Within the habitat of the human mind values and meaning are as real as the flesh and bones that contain them. But outside of the human mind there are no values or reasons for anything, they just are and anything from stars to atoms, chromosomes to computers, mythology to science are all subject to the same callously indifferent laws of creation, evolution and destruction.

But humans are still persistent in finding out what makes the universe tick, the whats, whys and hows of things. These details are important because they are part of what make us human and give us a unique advantage over our environment. Of course, in the past when logic could not read all the information humans had to fill in the gaps with things more easly understood, like human nature. Winds became cheeks that blow, celestial objects were born and died cyclically and ancestor spirits spirits lived on throught the landscape.

We now have gods that govern human activities like healing, art, industry, law, cooking, cleaning etc and more wild gods for the landscape, seasons, fertility and so on. Human gods, those that govern human culture and civilisation are easy to understand as their realms are in the human domain and so represent human conventions easily.

More wild divinities that represent qualities throughout Nature and Cosmos are beyond human conventions and so when they are given human form their images are unconventional, insane and even sinister. Their actions can be alien, their intent fickle and illogical. Perhaps a mountain shelters and nurtures a tribe but then it spews forth hot lava that wipes out a village. Or maybe another tribe suffers from drought, and then they are given rain which quenches their thirst but then they might be drowned. The gods, the Forces of Nature can seem more like temperamental children than sophisticaed intelligences.

Some religions may admit that their gods are as limited in understanding and ability as humans, they themselves may be just as fallible and mortal as us. But other religions will argue that their God or gods are infinitely all-loving and infallible which a limited human mind would not grasp. Logically speaking this may be possible as the finite human mind can only percieve reality in fragments, so anything infinite will not be percieved so a personal, infinite Being could be justified no matter the atrocities of the world since their actons would be beyond any models of human logic thrown at it.

That aside, to me the gods are symbols of reality that represent anything we need representing. The human mind is equipped to understand some things and not others, so sometimes we need artficial ´delusions´ like the ones religion gives us to placate an unsettled mind. In the mean time we need not be constricted by these ideas but should try our best to use them as spring boards so that help us to grow and evolve.

May the gods, God, Goddess, symbols, archetypes, ancestors, forces of nature, demons, angels, art, science, Truth, Love and Life BLESS YOU!!! :)