One of the nicest things about Pagans is that in
general we do not get into hot arguments about theology.  What unites our smaller communities are
common practices, not common beliefs. 
We are little worried if others are not Wiccans or Heathens or Celtic
Reconstructionists or devotees to Orishas or whatever, because we do not believe our own tradition is
necessary for salvation.  Indeed,
we do not believe in the need for salvation at all.

“Getting the theology right” simply isn’t an issue for
nearly all Pagans.  Thank the Gods.

But some of us like theology any way – trying to make a
reliable road map of how our own world fits into spiritual reality.  It is this vein that I want to make
some arguments as to why Monism is likely a more satisfactory picture of
spiritual reality than hard polytheism, as a dear friend who is one put it.

But before I get into this issue, I want to make two
preliminary points.  First, and
most importantly, in my view it does not matter in terms of our practice or
relations with our Gods whether we are hard, soft, variegated, or simply
confused polytheists.  Second, that
is a Really Good Thing.  Really
Good.

As a practice, I think hard polytheism is just fine.  Whether a person is or is not a monist
or hard polytheist is simply irrelevant on this most important dimension,  No one can attend to all dimensions of
the super human.  My own practice
is somewhere between 99% and 100% polytheistic.  But as a philosophy I think it suffers from two serious
drawbacks.

The first drawback is that any spiritual philosophy that
focuses on our experience of the divine in the world needs to be able to take
into consideration all reasonably reliable experiences of that reality.  Throughout history, at least when
people began thinking about these issues and writing their thoughts down,
people have reported mystical experiences of a One that is the Source of all
things or a NonDual more real than the world of “illusion.”  This has been true of Pagan thought
from at least the time of Greece. 
Similar experiences have been reported world wide, and over
millennia.    This is the
biggest drawback – it seems as arbitrary as the hard monotheists, if not quite
so lethal in its implications for nonconformists.

And this leads to the second drawback.  Putting it broadly, almost all the
world’s spiritual traditions fall into three categories: Polytheist,
Monotheist, and NonDual.  The
monistic framework makes it possible to respect all these dimensions of
practice on their own terms while denying
any one of them ultimate validity or a theological last word.  This is more than simply good
neighborliness, although it is that.

There is one issue that will give many Pagans pause.  Doesn’t Monism subtly devalue our Gods
and our world?  Certainly some
philosophies have taken that view. 
But I think this does not follow.

We know a photon can appear as a particle or a wave,
depending on the questions asked through experiments.  Why should we expect Spiritual reality to be less
paradoxical to our minds than a photon? 
It can manifest to us in one way, another person with a different make
up would find it manifesting another way. 
Ultimate Reality is not Polytheistic or NonDual or One, it is all of
them.