I'm sure you've all seen practitioners talking about the deities they work with in their craft and "how much they've changed their life" but is it really necessary to have a deity, or several, within your practice? Let's take a deep dive into deity working and worship to better understand why some people swear by deities whereas others refuse the idea of higher beings.
Let us travel back in time before christianity where the idea of multiple Deities or Gods in each pantheon is completely and utterly normal. You have Gods for war, Gods for Harvest, Gods for Rebirth, the list goes on right on into sub-God categories which are still Gods in their own right just not the big guys like Zeus or Ra. We can have a glimpse into this ideology for multiple Gods in one religion with the very much still practiced Hinduism. People would call upon the selected God for what the reason was i.e you would call upon Athena and Ares, the Grecian Deities of different aspects in battle, before war or you would call upon Ala, The African Deity of Fertility if you were planning on conceiving. Worship during these times were a highly respectful and ceremonial act, not going to Starbucks with the supposed Zeus as I have seen on Tiktok. *insert eye roll. Many practitioners still hold on to the old ways of deity worship but that is such a small percentage of these modern practitioners that the old ways may slowly be dying.
Now lets move on to Deity working, not worship. Working with a Deity in your craft CAN be a life altering experience however that doesn't necessarily mean it is essential for the same results. Hear me out. You are travelling along a single road alone when all of a sudden another person appears next to you and begins walking along with you, does this change the course of your path or are you still walking the same way as you were before their arrival? The answer is likely to be you are still walking in the same direction but because they have appeared next to you this allows for you to engage in conversation and the walk seems to be much easier. This is what deity working is like. They do not magickally alter the path you are walking down but they can make that journey just that much easier to handle. They could pin point specific things that you may have missed along your pathway but nevertheless it is still the same path and who knows, maybe you would have noticed all of the same things without them. so is it really necessary to have deities within your practice? Absolutely not! You are still just as good of a witch without a deity as those who incorporate deities into their practice.
I work with Baba Ganesha and Ma Kali on a personal level. I do not incorporate them with my craft as I do not feel they will change the course of my practice however by changing who I am on a personal level it does have knock on effects within my practice. I used to be a hardcore satanist with the belief that Deities do not exist and that Humans will conjure up any form of "higher being" to put all of their blame and misfortune on but when Ma Kali began to present herself so drastically in my life I knew that something had to change.
*Upon digging further into my Heritage something was revealed to me which explains more than it should. Traditional Romani beliefs (and I'm talking waaaaay back in time) worshipped the Goddess Kali, and were believed to be one of the last groups of people to worship a Goddess in Europe. They also had a Horned God who played a prominent role in their lives... Now you may be wondering "what does this have to do with anything?" well I'm about to tell you. I work with Goddess Kali and my "Horned Male God" in my life is Baphomet.
These two bring balance in my life where one is about worshipping the self whilst the other centres around worshipping a deity. Freaky right?! The ancestral connection is strong with this one