Do You Choose Your Gods,
Or Do They Choose You?

My particular path believes all gods are one God, so there aren't individual gods but simply aspects of a single Deity. So whether you work with Isis or the Morrigan, it's the same God-- just different aspects. But we do choose which aspects of God that we work with, and sometimes God chooses to present different aspects to us to encourage us to work with those aspects. So the answer to "Do you choose your Gods or do they choose you?" is . . . both! But we do have the final choice.

We have a tendency to be drawn to certain "gods" (NOTE: I use the terms "god", "goddess", and "gods" meaning masculine/feminine/and other aspects of a single Deity-- I have an article on "polytheistic monotheism" here, and it explains this concept in greater detail). As someone who considers herself a warrior, I feel a strong kinship with the Morrigan. This kinship creates a desire in me to work with her, learn about her, and makes me more receptive to any lessons she wishes to teach me. If someone considers a god's reputation undesirable, then they aren't going to attempt to learn about and work with that god. Using the Morrigan as an example again, some people refuse to work with her because she has the warrior mythos of being a killer and a "trickster". Some might even say that you could not be "Wiccan" and follow this goddess (how can one be a warrior and yet "harm none"). So no matter how much this goddess tried to get someone's attention, if they felt that her "teachings" were undersirable, they would not listen.

But, the "gods" often do "pick us" when they have lessons they wish to teach us or feel that we could benefit from working with them. When I began studying paganism, I was drawn to the Morrigan and began to work exclusively with her. Isis, however, had other plans, and made repeated attempts to get my attention (from sending a cat named Osiris to break my heart, to a statue of Isis that went unnoticed by me at an antique store until she fell on my foot). Eventually, I did catch on and begin studying and working with Isis. But I really felt that she did "pick me," because initially, I really hadn't even considered working with her and knew almost nothing about her. But, in the end, it's still me choosing her, because I chose to accept that she was trying to get my attention. I could have chosen to ignore her hints.

This brings up a larger question: "Can you ignore a god that has picked you?" Do you really have a choice in the end? I think so. I believe that if you were truly unwilling to make that final "leap of faith" and pick a god that had been trying to contact you, then the god will let you be.

I had the experience of "not choosing" with the goddess Oya. She kept popping up in my life, and I knew nothing about her. When I began to research her, I discovered that she was a goddess of Yoruba (I'm not sure if that's the correct spelling), which means she is a "voodoo" goddess. I spoke with practitioners, and found it a system with practices that didn't fit with my belief system. So I started ignoring her. The next few months were the most tumultous of my entire life (I went from working a dead end job, to having to choose whether to uproot my family for a job making more money than I've ever dreamed, to making the decision to move only to end up being downsized). I'm guessing is what she was contacting me about (she is the goddess of drastic change). So maybe if I had listened when she "picked me", I might have been prepared for what was to come. But I decided not to listen, and I haven't seen signs of her since (and my life is blissfully quiet).

So although the gods do sometimes pick us, we have the final choice. We can choose to pay attention or ignore the signs. We have the freedom to pick our "gods" and choose who we will work with and learn from.

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