okay i feel like i should know this by now but…what does hard polytheism mean?
Hard polytheism means you view each deity as a separate entity. To a hard polytheist, Mars is a different god than Ares or Tyr.
The opposite of this would be soft polytheism. In soft polytheism, all deities are just different faces of the same divine being (or the same divine being.) Examples would be Wiccans who view all gods as aspects of the Horned God, or the Romans, who treated foreign deities as representations of their own gods under different names.
This is, of course, a spectrum. There are people who believe that, e.g., Woden and Odin are the same guy, but Hermes is different despite having been compared to him in the past. There are people whose polytheism is so “hard” that they believe that even deities by the same name might be different local entities (e.g., believing Athena Alea is different from Athena Polias, or that different regions of Ireland have different Cailleachs) and people whose polytheism is so “soft” that they’re basically pantheistic.
These also aren’t historical frameworks, or frameworks used in academia. They’re just useful terms for modern polytheists to compare views.
Tag: terminology
Theism: belief in and worship of god(s).
Monotheism: belief in and worship of only one god.
Polytheism: belief in and worship of many gods.
Megatheism: belief that there are multiple gods, but that yours is superior to all others and only They are worthy of worship.
Henotheism: worship of only one god while acknowledging (the possibility of) the existence of others.
Kethenotheism: the worship of only one god at a time.
Monolatrism: the worship of only one god while believing in multiple gods.
Pantheism: belief that the divine is in everything.
Panentheism: belief that the divine is in everything, while also being beyond everything.
Apatheism: being neutral towards the possibility of the existence of god(s).
Atheism: neither believing in nor worshiping god(s).
Antitheism: being actively opposed to the belief in and/or worship of god(s).
Transtheism: a belief system that cannot be easily categorised as either theistic or atheistic.
(Sadly, not the belief that god(s) is/are trans or that trans people are god(s)).Autotheism: belief that divinity is inherently within oneself (may or may not exclude external divinity).
Agnosticism: belief/philosophical position that the divine (and/or whether or not it exists) is unknowable.
Ignosticism: belief/philosophical position that knowledge regarding whether or not god(s) exist is unprofitable.
Deism: belief/philosophical position that God does not interfere directly with the world.
Pandeism: belief that the creator deity became the universe and then ceased to exist as a separate and conscious entity.
Monism: a philosophical position that attributes oneness or singleness to existence.
Dualism: a philosophical doctrine that attributes co-eternal binary opposition to existence.
Omnism: the recognition and respect of all religions.
Panpsychism: belief/philosophical position that consciousness, mind or soul is an intrinsic universal attribute within all things.
Ietism: unspecified belief in an undetermined transcendent force.
Omnibenevolence/eutheism: belief that (a) god is wholly good.
Dystheism: belief that (a) god is not wholly good and may be evil.
Maltheism: belief that (a) god is wholly evil.
(Please correct any false definitions or add new ones to the list.)
fair--y backup 