A Mess of Gods

I have not as yet been able to discover the reason for these properties of gravity from phenomena, and I do not feign hypotheses. For whatever is not deduced from the phenomena must be called a hypothesis; and hypotheses, whether metaphysical or physical, or based on occult qualities, or mechanical, have no place in experimental philosophy. In this philosophy particular propositions are inferred from the phenomena, and afterwards rendered general by induction.^[1]

OK:  I am walking my way through the process of seeing if there is something to the idea of magic.

I am coming to the conclusion that taking magic out for a spin is going to be a lot more difficult than what I thought.  It isn't like learning to drive, nosiree.  I think that if there were a handbook of learning to drive a car written like people try to teach magic, the first couple of lines, written in straightforward prose would be:

       Step One:  Build the car
       Step Two:  Sit behind the steering wheel

One of the big issue I am having is the tacit understanding that there are God(s) out there and the magic is somehow (wave hands around here)  dependent/operant via their existence.  I have no problem with this.  My problem is that I know nothing about it/them and it/they don't appear to have motivations and/or activities that I can understand.

I kinda reject monotheism across the board.  It neither makes a lick of sense or appeals to me in any manner.  It may well be true, I have no means of ever deciding.  The idea of a polytheistic approach is similar.  Are their multiple gods having different areas of specialization?  This appears to be the consensus opinion.  John Michael described Chaos magic recently as being relatively God-free, but when you look at the idea of the Sigils used, I can't figure out the effective difference between a Sigil and a God.

John Michael got me into all this...I am blaming/thanking him, but it is a kinda thoughtful, grateful thing.  So I toss down coins for another of his books discussing polytheism (go here to buy your own).

All I gotta say at the end of this process, I am obviously on a long road.  Plowing through the book on polytheism, I am learning good things, and some ideas are starting to gel, but mostly I am reminded of a line from Terry Pratchett:

'I don’t hold with paddlin’ with the occult," said Granny firmly.  ‘Once you start paddlin’ with the occult you start believing in spirits, and when you start believing in spirits you start believing in demons, and then before you know where you are you’re believing in gods. And then you’re in trouble.’

‘But all them things exist,’ said Nanny Ogg.

‘That’s no call to go around believing in them. It only encourages ‘em.'