Yes, I suppose that is technically true. Our relationship with the gods is usually reciprocal, not transactional (though some people do engage with certain gods more transactionally, and there are plenty of examples of that). There isn’t a magical number of offerings that will guarantee that a specific wish will be granted (in fact, there really isn’t a way to guarantee anything in life), and approaching a devotional relationship like that can be… less than helpful in one’s practice.
But.
I see that thrown around like a thought terminating cliché. “Something really bad happened and the gods didn’t help me despite my prayers, and now I’m having a crisis of faith” → “The gods aren’t trained dogs or genies.” “They are not your pets.” “They’re not there to give you whatever you want in life.” “So entitled.”
Perhaps this isn’t the kindest way to phrase it to someone who looks like they’ve just gone through something traumatic, but this is a common reaction to a lot of such posts, and some of those quotes are lifted verbatim and the others are only lightly paraphrased.
Here I want to focus on the thought-terminating aspect of it, because I think it’s interesting. Yes, it is technically correct that the gods aren’t cosmic vending machines but it is interesting that that thought is the first instinctual reply, fully-formed and ready to press send, in response to someone saying “why did the gods not help me”. Why do so many of us go to dogs, genies, and vending machines? Is the cliché revealing something about how we think and believe?
Is it just the nature of the internet?
The subreddit this was originally posted to (r/paganism) is a public forum with tens of thousands of members. Lots of people come and go, and lots of people ask the same questions. It’s easy to get frustrated at the same question over and over. (I sure do, whenever someone asks “How do I get started?” → “Read the Getting Started guide.”) So we coalesce the cumulative statements of previous posters (“The gods didn’t help me!” “Why do the gods allow bad things to happen?” “I’m leaving Paganism.”) into pattern recognition (“Oh, that kind of post again.”) and into our usual responses, which get more and more curt the more people ask these questions.
Are we experiencing discomfort and struggle in our own beliefs?
I (and presumably many of you) pour my heart and soul into my relationship with my deities. I make offerings to my goddess not because I want something in return, but because I want to. She inspires me and She is someone whom I’m continuously grateful to have in my life, and it’s a way of expressing how much that connection and relationship means to me. She’s been there for me in many difficult moments and has changed my life immeasurably. Of course I’m going to make offerings and devotional acts. She means the world to me.
But, let’s imagine a scenario.
You go to a god you are devoted to and with whom you’ve built a relationship over a long time. There’s something really important in life, maybe life-or-death or maybe just life-changing, that you want to go right. You pray that it goes right. It doesn’t go right. In fact, it goes catastrophically wrong. What do you feel?
Stop. Put your vending machine down. I’m not asking about that. Right now, in this moment, towards your gods, towards your faith, towards yourself, what do you feel?
I’d feel kinda crummy. I could have a ton of other feelings. I could feel betrayed. I could feel desperate, or frustrated. I could feel guilty. (Someone who comes from certain forms of Christianity, who was raised to believe that the Christian God will grant them every wish if they ask hard enough, that there is a deity who is all-powerful and can intercede in all ways physical and nonphysical, might be particularly prone to that.)
Those feelings are not wrong. They’re just feelings. We feel things as a result of who we are and the totality of our experiences. They are informed by our worldviews. I believe the Gods understand that.
So how do we process those feelings?
That’s a hard question, but I don’t think it’s particularly helpful to turn that inward (or on the person who experiences that frustration). I think coming to a worldview where we acknowledge that bad things still happen to good people, or a worldview where the gods are not all powerful, or a worldview where the gods don’t intercede at all in human-level affairs and only work on grand, cosmic scales, or a worldview in which we trust that our deities are our allies and they are there for us in some way or another even if it isn’t in the direct, physical sense — essentially, the kinds of worldviews where trauma and injustice aren’t the result of some capricious divinity but things of this world, some of which are inevitable but most of which can be made better through collective action towards justice — I think that leads to a healthier relationship with the divine and with our own mundane world. But I also think that’s hard, and that shift can only happen if we are kinder to ourselves and those who experience those struggles.
Do we believe we are deserving of anything?
“I deserve to have a home. I deserve to have food on the table and medicine in my cabinet. I deserve to have a comfortable life.”
How you react to those sentences reveals a whole lot about your worldview.
I believe that yes, everyone is deserving of all of those things, unconditionally. But if you believe you only deserve it if you’ve worked hard enough or suffered long enough… let’s just say you and I won’t see eye to eye on many things. If you believe those statements are entitled, hoo boy…
If someone asks the gods for something, and then it isn’t granted, and then they are disappointed that it isn’t granted, where have they gone wrong? What was their mistake?
Maybe they shouldn’t have asked? Maybe it was in how they asked — did they ask reverently and propitiatingly, or did they demand? Maybe they didn’t build enough of a relationship first? Maybe they should have managed their expectations? Or maybe they didn’t do anything wrong except in the final step, when they blamed the gods for things not going right?
Once again, which one of these you go to first reveals a lot about your worldview.
Some say you shouldn’t really ask at all; that the gods don’t build personal relationships with us and they have greater, cosmic concerns than individual human lives. Some say that you can ask, but that prayer is part of a cycle of giving; there needs to be mutual reciprocity. And some say that you can’t keep asking and demanding; that maybe you should show a bit more reverence; that maybe you shouldn’t build a relationship with the expectation that you’ll get something material out of it.
Are we offering enough in our divine relationships?
On Reddit, people accuse each other of not giving enough in their relationships to the gods, and of demanding too much in return.
On Discord it’s the opposite. It seems that a lot of people are hesitant to ask for almost anything, worried that they haven’t done enough to deserve the boons of a divine relationship, and others are encouraging them that it’s, in fact, ok to ask.
This is nominally the same community (r/paganism and their official Discord server) and yet the attitudes are wildly different. My pet theory is that on Reddit, we only see the post the person makes, we only see the moment of crisis and not, potentially, the details of the relationship and all the things the person does in their practice. Also, how many people make Reddit posts saying “I’m too hesitant to ask the gods for anything”? That’s Discord talk. We’re strangers on Reddit.
To the people who have asked and haven’t gotten
You asked the gods for something, and they didn’t give it to you. And now you’re upset at them.
Are you sure they didn’t intervene and prevent something even worse from happening?
Do you see the gods as all powerful, or not all powerful? Maybe they can’t change the laws of physics.
Did you ask for something they can help with? I’ve had a lot more success with asking “help me make the right decisions to get this thing” than “give me this thing”.
Did you build a relationship first?
But why am I assuming that you did something wrong? Maybe you did nothing wrong, which is, after all, the point of the post. Maybe the people who have asked and haven’t gotten, who are now upset, didn’t do anything wrong.
Except, perhaps, in the final step, when they assume that the gods purposefully and deliberately betrayed them, that they didn’t grant something that could have been given, and who now are the lightning rod for the feelings of injustice that are as valid as they are in need of processing.
“The Gods aren’t your pets.”
I would argue that a worldview in which trauma and difficult things are put in the hands of the gods, where the gods are to blame if they don’t fully protect you, isn’t making the gods too small. It’s making yourself too small. We are not without agency in this world. The protection we seek doesn’t have to directly come from the gods; it can come from ourselves, and we can build relationships with the gods to come into our full power. We can channel the gods’ energies for protection, or boons, or other changes in this world. (That’s another post for another day.)
It’s not your fault for experiencing hardship or trauma. But it’s also not the gods’ fault. Sometimes it’s nobody’s fault… and sometimes it’s the fault of those in power, who’ve made society a shithole rife with inequality and injustice, against whom we must resist, and in which struggle the Gods are most definitely our allies. (The Storm Goddess, The Morrigan, Hekate, Inanna, all are names that come forth easily when we think about working towards justice and empowerment.)
What is reciprocity?
In a friendship, I would hope you don’t keep score around how many times has each of you done a favor for the other… at least not with spreadsheets and little numerical values to be tallied up at the end of each week. But if you give, give, give, and never receive anything back, you’ll start wondering whether you’re the one putting an unfair amount into the relationship. Same goes the other way.
In close, reciprocal relationships, energy flows freely between you. Freely and bidirectionally. A devotional relationship where you only ask, ask, ask, that’s not really a relationship at all. But a relationship in which you only give, give, give, and get nothing in return… that’s on shaky ground, too.
When I make an offering to the Storm Goddess, sometimes I feel the appreciation and acceptance of that offering. Sometimes I feel the joy of doing something for someone I love. Sometimes I feel a connection, an alignment of energies. And sometimes I feel very little other than a smile on my face that I’ve done yet another thing to weave into the fabric of my practice and into my devotion towards someone who matters so much to me.
But She’s also part of my life in other ways. She gives me energy when I need it most; She helps me with difficult things, either through advice or by being there for me. She has shaped me into the person I am today. I strive to live Her values because Her values inspire me, and in return for living Her values I get the inherent boons of being a stronger, more confident, and more empowered person.
Reciprocity is an energy that flows freely and bidirectionally.
When I made my oaths to the Storm Goddess, I had neglected to ask for much in return. I gave a lot… but didn’t ask for much. I didn’t think it was my place to ask for it. She would not accept those oaths until I asked for more.
This goes into deep practice, but we are so often obsessed about people who seem to ask too much that we sometimes forget the damage being done when we see ourselves as so little that we are afraid to ask for anything at all.
I believe a healthy worldview is one in which we make sense of our relationships beyond the surface level. Why do you worship? Why do you pray? Why do you ask for things (or not ask for things)? And what happens when the expectations of those outcomes aren’t being met?
I would hope that the answers are more interesting than dogs and vending machines.