Hi,
I am trying to get more perspective and more information on what some Pagans refer to as 'Hard Polytheism'.
How could there be more than One God? I can't quite wrap my head around the idea that there should be more than One divine source.
I've come to grip with notion of 'Soft Polytheism', that All Gods are ultimately One God, as the Hindus view it and which makes sense I think but how can there be multiple divine sources, distinct form of beings and not actually part of a Whole?
For me, I have trouble coming to grips with the opposite: how in the world can there be
only one when scientifically speaking, this is a universe of multiple physical forces working together?
However, one thing that might help is that the Gods aren't necessarily "divine
sources". Woden/Odin, for instance, is titled Allfather (among many other things), but before Him, that title belong to Tiw/Tyr. In the surviving Norse "Creation Myth", the source of all things really seems to more or less just be random chance. For me, personally, the Mother of All Things and Sole Eternal Being is ... Death. I don't worship her as a Goddess, either, but rather treat her (and her firstborn, whom I call Weaver) similar to how one ought to treat the fictional Lady of Pain from the Planescape D&D setting. Short version, don't **** with her, and if you see her, run.
Incidentally, the word "Tiw" (Old Norse Tyr) was effectively replaced in English
by the word God for some reason. Consider Greek Zeus, Latin Deus, Irish Dia, Welsh Duw, and the Modern English word "deity", all with the proto-Germanic word *Tiwaz. (In linguistics, a * means the word is reconstructed; i.e., there's no direct attestation of it but rather it is our current best educated guess as to what the word might have been based on certain linguistic evolutionary patterns).
The Gods aren't seen as "divine sources", but rather oversee certain domains, not all of which appear to line up at first. Woden oversees warfare, magic, poetry, death, alcohol, and wisdom. Thunor/Thor isn't first and foremost "God of Thunder"(though that is one of his domains), but is rather the Friend of Humanity before anything else. He also oversees Oak Trees (and thus would probably be a fultrui, also called a "Patron" in certain other contexts, of the Germanic equivalent of Druids), strength, companionship, fertility, loyalty, honor...
Some Gods even share domains. Freya shares a lot with Woden, for example, but also oversees passion, sex, fun, indulgence, loss, grief, and comfort.