Those new to the Pagan experience are often unsure how to go about finding the right deities for them. After all, Christians, Jews and Muslims never have to ponder that sort of thing. Pagan paths, though, are about personal responsibility and one manifestation of that is the responsibility for choosing an appropriate deity, or several.

There is a lot of information available on how to discover the gods and/or goddesses you can most easily relate to and it is not my intention to go into that in too much detail here. The more interesting side of the deity issue is something new Pagans hear a lot of more seasoned Pagans say, that they did not choose their deities, their deities chose them.

Hearing this makes a person wonder just how that happens.

It would be rather pointless, not to mention frustrating, to just sit around waiting for the cosmic hotline to ring with an invitation from a goddess or god. The best idea seems to be to start the process and keep your eyes and ears open. A good place to start is to ask yourself some questions. Are you drawn to any particular time periods or cultures? Ancient Egypt, perhaps, Classical Greece, or maybe pre-Roman Britain? How about Ireland? Most people seem to feel some affinity with an older culture or two and that is a good place to start.

Studying the mythologies of the times and places you feel drawn to is an excellent idea, but for those drawn to several, it can be a bit overwhelming. A little preliminary weeding out may be necessary. If that is the case, Janet and Stewart Farrar’s The Witches’ Goddess and The Witches’ God are great places to start. The books have chapters on god and goddess archetypes and chapters on specific deities. The rest of each book is an encyclopedic listing of gods or goddesses from all over the world, throughout history.

Once you’ve narrowed your search to a specific pantheon or two or to specific realms of the gods, such as goddesses of the moon, goddesses of the underworld, healing gods, or sun gods, then it’s time to begin formal communication. One way to do that is to do a guided meditation to initiate an actual conversation. If you keep at it, you will develop a relationship with one or more. That is how you pick a god. Now let’s look at how a deity picks you.

I have had the experience of being chosen by a goddess twice. The first time I was fairly new to the Craft and was drawn to a few pantheons, no one more so than the others. I was feeling overwhelmed and trying to narrow it down between Egyptian or Celtic pantheons but also being strangely drawn to the Greek underworld goddess Hecate. I was reading a lot, trying to meditate on it and asking for guidance in dreams.

I’ve found that naps are better than sleeping all night when you are trying to get information from your dreams. You’re asleep for a much shorter period and you are more likely to remember any dreams you have. On this particular day, I was napping when I had a very vivid dream. I was standing on a hill, looking up into the sky at a tiny speck way up high, spiraling down, closer and closer. All my attention was focused on the speck, though I did notice a bit of a chilly breeze. Down and down the speck spiraled, growing larger the closer it got. Finally it got close enough for me to see that it was a large white owl. As it got nearer, it turned onto its side and held the tip of its wing out to me. At that point I realized my arm was out in front of me at shoulder level and I was pointing with my index finger. The owl’s wing tip barely touched the tip of my finger and a spark flew from that point.

I woke up immediately. I knew that white animals in dreams are sacred and frequently messengers of the gods. Since I had been asking for a message, I knew this was it. However, I was puzzled because an owl made me think of Minerva or Athena, and I didn’t feel drawn to them. I looked it up and discovered that the owl is Hecate’s messenger. It seemed I had found a deity I could talk to, who actually talked back.

I worked closely with Hecate for a period of time, also with Pan and a few others. Hecate was my primary deity and I definitely felt the strongest connection to her. After a considerable while, that closeness began to fade. At first I struggled against it, not understanding and thinking it was due to some failing on my part. I eventually stopped fighting it, but I felt abandoned and betrayed. It was much later that I realized that Hecate had come to me during a period in my life when I was undergoing Persephone-like experiences. She came to me to guide me through it just as she helped Persephone when Persephone found herself abducted and in pain in the underworld. Once that period of my life ended, Hecate had done what she came to do and was ready to pass me on to another goddess. An explanation would have been nice, but apparently they don’t have e-mail in the Greek underworld.

For a while I continued on, working with other deities, but without being especially devoted to any particular one. Like casual dating, we hung out, we chatted, we enjoyed each other’s company, but it was nothing heavy or deep. In time I started to feel the lack of a close connection with divinity, so I began to make an effort to connect again in a significant way.

This time I approached it from a different angle. I asked myself what things I love the most, what am I the most involved in, what do I spend the most time on. The answer was the arts, mainly poetry, literature, music and dance. I decided to look for a goddess who included those types of things in her domain.

I looked into goddesses associated with those things and let my intuition narrow it down until finally I was left with two: Sarasvati and Bast. Sarasvati seemed the most logical choice because she encompasses almost all of those things, and I did feel drawn to her. Yet I also felt drawn to Bast who is associated with music and dance, but not so much on the poetry and literature. I could not seem to choose one over the other. I agonized and agonized and meditated and did Tarot readings and tried to dream the answer and all I got was more and more frustrated.

This went on for a while until I finally decided to do something that had never before worked, in my experience – I made a deal with the universe. I was planning a trip to the used bookstores and thrift stores downtown and I informed the universe that I was going to be alert to signs and signals and that it might be good if it could just give me some indication of which one of these two goddesses I was meant to be devoted to. Cheeky, I know, but I was out of patience.

Off I went, in search of used books and new goddesses. I tried not to specifically look for goddess clues, but instead to look at whatever caught my attention. I did not want to force something or try to convince myself that something was a sign when it wasn’t. If I were meant to see it, I would.

Several hours later, I was feeling pretty dejected. I hadn’t seen anything remotely Hindu, must less anything reminiscent of Sarasvati in particular. I had seen a few cute little kitty-cat figurines playing with ceramic balls of yarn, but I knew those were just figurines and not messages from Bast. I had mostly given up, but I decided to go into one last store.

I’d been into this store many times over the years and I always enjoyed it. It’s owned by a wonderful woman who seems to be mostly into Krishnamurti herself, but her store has room for every kind of non-mainstream religion and philosophy. She has books on everything from Tarot to Wicca to UFOs. There is jewelry and crystals and little statues and incense and Tarot decks. Nothing ever seems to take priority over anything else; everything has a space.

On this day, my little dejected self stepped into the store to find myself eyeball-to-eyeball with a statue of Bast almost as tall as I am! I just stood there for a moment, staring. Then I looked around and saw that the entire store was all decked out in Egyptian deity, with images of Bast everywhere. How’s that for an answer? I can tell you I had absolute chills and goose bumps.

Since then, I have received many intimations that, in case I missed it, Bast is the one. I think that many people in the Pagan community can probably relate when I say that I’ve always had issues with authority figures. I had trouble with the idea of a goddess and a god who were my spiritual mother and father. I just couldn’t relate to that. I could not feel the love of the mother goddess, nor the father god. That is part of the reason I was drawn to the Celtic pantheon; they are more like aunts and uncles or older siblings than parents. Hecate is not particularly motherly either, at least not in my experience of her.