A note at the outset; we'll start here:
What I actually expected from talking (praying, etc.) to God, was that God would love me and care about me, and that His Holy concern would be manifest in many different ways in my life, albeit never unambiguous ways because - you know - God works in mysterious ways (and other excuses).
Honestly, I wish getting paragraphs like these wasn't so much like pulling teeth; these are the paragraphs that help people understand what you're talking about. And, yes, the polymer generality about your descriptions leaves all sorts of question marks¹, but in our moment, yes, this is actually useful information. Indeed, it points us back toward what I describe as your idol, or the God you need. And toward that, please consider that your inquiries about four notions of talking to God make a great deal of sense in the context of the Christendom you describe, but the answers attend different ideas of divinity that work in different ways, and thus the question of talking to God has different meaning.
I don't know a lot about witchcraft. You talk to an idol? And it talks back to you? How does that work, exactly? Or, if it doesn't talk back, how do you know there's something in the idol that isn't you?
To a certain degree, it depends on the witch; most don't have an actual goddess idol, as far as I know, but there are a few really classic ones to pick from, so, sure, one can easily find comfort in objects of art. The Goddess is the moon, the Hunter is the Sun, and one can, if so inclined, see the pentacle as a symbol of their joining.
But how does it work, talking to the Goddess?
Like I said
over a decade ago↗, I could easily claim I've been in the presence of divinity, but I also think it's important to consider what those experiences were. You'll find postgarnderian Craft doesn't tend toward the balbutive, postchristianistic pseudoliteralism you're so anxious to tack to the shed.
While it is possible to find that kind of believer among Wiccans and associated pagans, it's not normal. That is, you'll also find a lot of postgardnerian Craft is very deliberate, so it doesn't quite work like your disdain expects.² One can ask the Goddess, or try to demand, but for the most part spells and other such utterances are considered acts of will, a witch's own pronouncements unto the world. In literature and among covens, it is easy to build ritual, but after working with the symbols enough, many regard the rituals and even the Goddess as symbols.
Generally speaking, if the Goddess talks back to you,
it's important to consider what those experiences are. Dreams? Psychedelia? Yes, that makes perfect sense. Many people find extraordinary significance in dreams, and psychedelic pursuit of spirituality is an old, old practice.
Regardless of whether She talks back, how does one know there is something in the Goddess that is not oneself? It's postgardnerian witchcraft in the age of the Spiral Dance, so pretty much everything about it is self.
But, for the most part, witches don't weep and cower and grovel and beg the Goddess. It's generally not helpful. This is, of course, a different relationship between the faithful and divine than we see in Christianity. In certain ways, it is supposed to be; to the other, there are reasons why postgardnerian witchcraft is not an uncommon waypoint for people falling away from their Christian experience.
2.
Talking to anything - even the "empty air" now counts as talking to God? How does one know God is there listening?
To answer each in turn: Not quite, and that's not how it works.
More usefully, it's not some question of what "counts" as talking to God; rather, it's an argumentative outcome. Remember,
monotheism into panentheism. To reiterate:
The thing is, what makes it talking to God or not is entirely up to the individual. Inasmuch as you find this notion of God not very useful, I really do wish you would pick up on the obvious implication, whereupon it can become very useful to you.
But in the moment, the simple part is that true monotheism requires panentheism, at which point, simply talking means your words are encountering the godhead. It's not a matter of what counts as talking to God, but a result of panentheism.³ In this case, it is for each entirely their own whether they think of it as talking to God. But, here again, we're considering something other than the object of your inquisition, and this time the implication regarding the question of whether God is listening is to observe the answer is as inherently affirmative as it is irrelevant.
3.
You're right. This makes no sense to me, unless its an obscure reference to attending a place of worship. How does one know that God is at the house, or that you've got the right house?
It's part of a doctrinal dispute said to have resulted in schism, and it probably did, right up there with the drinking and gambling and insubordination and subversion.
But a question about The One being incarnate is pretty straightforward: What happens to God when that mortal vessel achieves mortality? Since in this doctrine, God is not some distal mystery, one logical consequence jolts toward a weird sort of anthropological entheism.⁴ Actually, because of particular sexism preceding a proposition of revolutionary labor division, it becomes
manentheism. Inasmuch as men and women are both divine in their particular ways, and men claimed The One, yes, if I happen to know one of these, I can call God on the phone, or even go over to his house, and ask him if he wants to go get a drink, or play cards, or something. And even though I'm not especially fluent in the language, it's not nearly so incomprehensible as Angelic.
And, actually, to get ahead of ourselves a little, yes, God talks to himself a lot. And talks back.
But neither will he waste his time answering for your idol; that part is too obvious. Your manner of inquiry about God talks about something else. Generally speaking, as these people describe their corner of a religion as not being a religion, but, rather, a way of life, the theology is more dynamic than your inquiry generally permits. It's not quite mostly harmless, but its main purpose is something else, which only gets complicated.
And part of me says it should be number four, but it's true, I had to remember that one later, so:
4.
Talking to yourself counts as talking to God, now? And if you answer yourself back, that's God answering back, too, I guess. Convenient, but just a tad self-aggrandising, don't you think?
Well, that's the tricky part, isn't it?
This one is nearly as useful as panentheism.
Think of polishing the mirror like a trick question; try it this way:
Polish the mirror until you can see what cannot be seen. And while that might make certain sense in physics, this is theology. For instance, you already know that the monotheistic godhead cannot be directly countenanced. So, just think it through, for a minute.
Has it occurred to you that one can polish the mirror until there is nothing left? If you see nothing in the reflection because you have scrubbed it all away, I cannot promise that is the wrong answer.
That is to say, there is a possibility that when you talk to God in this context, you are talking to nothing at all. It's like pursuing Zen; it's also threaded through that mysterious futility about Jesus' ministry if we read him according to the nihilism of a pissy revolutionary bastard.
And in the strangest of ways, there it is. I mean, none of this is
new, so if there is a lot that goes here, much of it is review. But please observe a basic comparison, that a certain amount of what does or doesn't make sense to you about what I'm saying depends entirely on hewing to your inquisition against a mysterious but generally Christianist theology.
____________________
Notes:
¹ The diversity of what certain generalizations can mean within Christianity leaves your descriptions vague enough that, while we can generally grasp what you're after, there isn't much to be said for specific response because it remains unclear what some things mean; e.g., doing the "God thing 'properly'" can have any number of meanings.
² There is a line that can go here, having to do with Anarchism, and for our purposes, if the Craft seeks to transform the dominion of the human mind, as such, it is not a direct response to Goldman, but, rather, an easy enough coincidence between revolutionary pretenses of history and divinity.
³ Yes, there is the part about God being essentially and integrally omnipresent meaning mere thought encounters the godhead, but we can skip that one, for the moment, because it's both messy and extraneous.
⁴ Don't start; the actual doctrine remains inchoate, so just roll with it.
[(cont.)]
