Magic 501: The Fluidity of God

In vodou, we say god is the all for several reasons, but most often in response to people’s attempt to define god in some specific way because they would like to exclude something or someone. We say god is the all because god defies judgement and expectation. God is reflected in everything around us, to one degree or another. Things we like, things we don’t like, things which we can easily attribute to god and things which we can’t all reflect something of god. Things we think are good, things we think are evil, people we detest or love: god does not discriminate according to our tastes or ideals.

This is a common teaching in many religions, though vodou tends to be a bit more open to seeing god in parts of existence which are not pleasant to contemplate.

Perceptually, god is fluid. We see god in such a variety of forms, shapes, and circumstances that the best we can do is observe that our perception of god changes—god remains god, but what we see changes based on what we are capable of perceiving. Consciousness has, as other entries in this series observe, no way to perceive god but to judge god and try to categorize, summarize, and divide god. This is not something that is bad or wrong, it’s the consciousness working as it should, as it does. The consciousness is where the rest of the soul tries new things out, where lessons are encountered. It must perceive god in pieces, each piece corresponding to a lesson.

The tendency of consciousness to fragment god is a bit of a mercy. As I’ve written elsewhere, perceiving god directly is incredibly painful to the consciousness.

We can also see this fluidity in the fluidity of the lwa—even possession is an example. One spirit enters another, a lwa pouring some portion of themselves into the soul of their horses. In an experienced priest, the lwa can come back to back, a lwa quickly changing places with another in the head of horse with little apparent difference in anything but the energy. Each lwa has a domain, but the domains interact the way light and color interact, fading into each other as necessary. And yet, the lwa are part of the divine, part of that all.

This was once explained to me by a lwa as the same wine in different shaped glasses: divinity, poured into a vast array of vessels. The domain of a lwa, the shape of god in a person, all examples of the different shapes.

But if god is perceptually fluid, god is only perceptually fluid. As with everything spiritual, whatever you perceive, it is only a part of what you are trying to perceive. God is the all. We might see god in flickers and brief moments of clarity and sanity, but that reflects consciousness and not the nature of god.