Summer is almost over, dear reader, but what a summer it was. No exotic trips, or unforgettable moments in the sun. It was a lot of work, actually, with coordinating, juggling, managing, all through a jam packed semester–though with only two weeks left. But, for all of that, it was a time of self-confrontation, destruction, and renewal, and for that, this will always be that summer. The one where I found my spark again, skidding across the sky.

I have a few pieces I’d like to share in the upcoming weeks. Short works I did for my courses that I think will be of interest. But I actually wanted to touch on the last theme I wrote on before taking my periodic flight from society.

Returning to this site, and reviewing my last posts, something occurred to me. It appears that the concept of ‘each’ is collative, inherently: each what? Each who? Formality, generality, structure–these seem inescapably part of ‘each’. A boundary is drawn around those intended. There is a definiteness to the domain, or extension. Not just anything gets to count as one of the each referred to, only those meeting the qualifications (even if those are exceptionlessly universal).

It follows, then, that to speak of ‘each God’ is to speak of them relationally. In fact, any talk of any plurality at all collates.

So?

Well, then, philosophically, the deepest way to express or articulate Polytheism; to theorize about it, does not seem to be at the level of ‘each’, but even deeper. The roots of Polytheism seem to extend even further than ‘each’, into a completely non-collative state.

It is not that there is this one thing–say, absolute supremacy, solitude, or some such–that is subsequently true of each. There is no each, no collation. There is Poseidon. There is Ra. And there is nothing more to say.

Put another way, one of the deepest ways to articulate Polytheism does not seem to affirm anything positive, such as that there are many Gods, or even that each God is real–though these are true. Rather it just refuses to acknowledge that any God could be the only God. Without any metaphysical machinery in place to collate Gods, and then cap their limit such as at one, a true oppeness obtains in which Monotheism simply makes no sense.

In a way, then, Polytheism as many Gods or each God is the logical consequence of a deeper meta-level concept. Or, its core is that meta-level concept. But how best to express it? I’m not sure there is a best.

In any case, I hope your summer went well, and that if it did not, you come out better for it all the same.