There is a lot to explore on the Starry Path, but it’s hard to know where to start. I will start with some basic introductions to two figures of the Path, and then shift into some actual work next time.
The Starry Path is either pantheistic, or panentheistic, that has not been made clear to me yet but on a practical level it does not matter, and it is polytheistic. While it has its own “gods” the focus is far more on the intermediary spirits, their children. There are two main deities, Cosmos and the Star Goddess. These are not new deities or anything like that. They’re universal concepts, universal beings, appearing in mythology from all over the world in archetypal forms. Cosmos and the Star Goddess are not new, but they are an exploration of those forces removed from the cultural contexts of the older myths. So far they have had no names revealed to me, several of the spirits have not provided names, they prefer expressive titles of who and what they are, rather than a name. So while They might have a name, They might have many names, the Star Goddess just wants to be known as the Star Goddess because of the image that conjures, it establishes who They are.
If the Path had a primary deity, it would probably be Cosmos. To quote St. Carl of Sagan “The Cosmos is all that is, or ever was, or ever will be.” Cosmos is an impersonal deity. They are beyond all conception and relation. Cosmos is everything, everywhere, everytime. Cosmos is the basis of all reality, inseparable from all things and no thing. As such they are an impersonal deity, which means they cannot be approached as a person or entity, they just are, they’re only really approached in a sense of reverence and communion.
The other main deity is the Star Goddess. In general I’m not a fan of the idea that all the gods are the same gods in different masks, for a variety of reasons. The Star Goddess is one of the few places where I think the idea is totally valid. There is a certain feel, almost a spiritual cadence to deities of the night and the stars, some of them touching on something primordial. Asteria, Nut, Nuit (Thelemic), the Black God, Nyx, Erebus, Ratri, Citlālicue, Sah, Hine-nui-te-pō, the Star Goddess of Feri, dozens of others, they have a feel a sense to them of commonality. If any deity would appear to humanity in many guises, it would be the primordial god of stars and the night. Regardless of Their identity, if any, in other traditions They are god/dess, beyond notions of masculine or feminine, yet often appears in a more femme-leaning form. Most often They appears as a figure of purest pitch black, but within Their form you have slowly shifting stars and nebulae.
While Cosmos is everything, the Star Goddess made everything. Cosmos is the Ground of Being, the Eternal Source of All, but Cosmos is made manifest through the Star Goddess. It is They that brought the universe into being. They were born at the moment of Creation, and have always been. The two of them are a paradox. Both eternal and beyond time, but Cosmos was made manifest when the Star Goddess was born. Cosmos is all things, but it is the Star Goddess that made all things.
The Star Goddess is somewhere between an impersonal and personal deity. They do respond to petitions, but not as easily or freely as the spirits below Them. Like Cosmos most of the time They are included as a figure of reverence and communion, but by calling upon Them you call upon Their authority as well as the spirits beneath Them, mainly everyone. You can pray to Them, and They may send to you an appropriate spirit, but the Path already has a set of spirits, and most will introduce you to other spirits that you require, and that is often easier and faster than going directly through Them
The Star Goddess is the ancestor of all beings, but They are closest to Astral spirits, in the classic sense, spirits of stars and space. The higher spirits of the Starry Path are Their children, they are embodiments of stars and stellar phenomena. A lot of the work on the Starry Path deals with these spirits, or with their children.
Their children hold many roles, and many secrets, and can be called upon for their aid. Most of them are very easy to call too, the standard summoning ritual on the Path is very minimalist. Over the next while I’ll introduce some of these spirits, and what we can learn from them and do with them.
I am eager to see more of the Starry Path as you put it out there for readers. I am familiar with the Star Goddess as a concept mainly through reading up on Feri witchcraft, but I came across a similar concept while reading a book called Buddhist Goddesses of India by Miranda Shaw. There is a chapter about goddesses in The Flower Ornament Sutra, and at one point the main figure of the sutra, Sudhana, interacts with goddesses of the night sky. It’s my personal work with her that put it in mind for me, but Hekate stood out as a related figure – these night goddesses of India are summoned at crossroads in twilight, they are cloaked in red (the color of sunset), and they liberate or save beings from calamity. Just as interesting, these night goddesses rise to that status over the course of many lives and are usually taught or trained by older night goddesses.
Seeing that kind of connection makes it a little easier for me to fit a being like the Star Goddess in my circle. Hekate is probably the lone goddess that I feel like I can engage with personally – I feel distance from most other goddesses, and that sort of connection I saw between Hekate and these night sky goddesses makes the Star Goddess feel closer.
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Kalagni Edit: Unfortunately you didn’t realize, but I have comments moderated, so I have to approve them to appear. So I’m putting your second comment in with this, because they’re both good, and it will make it easier to address everything.
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I think WordPress might have eaten my first comment, but let’s see if I can remember it properly.
I am grateful that you are posting about the Starry Path and look forward to reading more on it. The Star Goddess as a concept stands familiar to me from my reading about Feri witchcraft, but I also thought about something else I read recently. I’m slowly working my way through a book called Buddhist Goddesses of India by Miranda Shaw, and there is a chapter there on goddesses in The Flower Ornament Sutra. One of the classes of goddess that the main figure of the sutra, Sudhana, encounters are “night sky goddesses.”
I have always felt a touch of distance from goddesses in general – even the overarching figure of a Star Goddess in Feri draws a reaction out of me along the lines of, “That’s fine. You’re cool. We’re cool. You stay there, I stay here,” while I feel more affinity for gods. The one exception is Hekate, and maybe it was just personal work with her that put her in mind while reading that section on night sky goddesses, but- they are summoned at crossroads at twilight, they are cloaked in red (the color of sunset), and they are known for saving and liberating beings from calamity. Just as interesting, the night sky goddess that Sudhana interacts with tells him that she ascended to that position and was taught/trained by other night sky goddesses over several lifetimes.
It’s just an idea that popped into my head, but what if the Star Goddess was a more impersonal power that more personal beings can “step into,” “wear,” or “share in.” She might be more impersonal until other beings act in concert with/through her.
First off, sorry that my approvals made you rewrite your comment, I edited your comments together to make it easier to respond to.
It’s great that you mention the goddesses in The Flower Ornament Sutra. I actually read the entire text (and it is not an easy read), because a friend of mine who teaches Tibetan Buddhism at university said that my explanation of the Starry Path and the Star Goddess had some similarities to the text. I’ll have to look into Miranda Shaw’s book. There is actually a lot more connecting the text to the Path, I don’t know how much Shaw went into it, but the Flower Ornament Sutra is probably the largest (in scope) and cosmic religious text I’ve ever read. I hate to say “The ancients knew stuff we’re just proving with science now”…but in the Flower Ornament Sutra they talk about many worlds, but not just many worlds, that there are groups of worlds that are closer and connect in “world systems” and that millions of world systems come together to make a “world sea.” To me that sounds so much like an ancient expression of planets, solar systems, and galaxies.
I think you’ll be interested with what I’ll have to say about the Star Goddess later. They have a more chthonic side which seems to be a bit closer to Hekate and other so-called dark goddesses. I had thought of listing Hekate as a goddess who feels to have the same sense as the Star Goddess, but there are different facets of Hekate and a lot of the more popular ones, don’t fit so I avoided mentioning her. (Also, while many of my friends enjoy great relationships with Hekate my relationship with her sounds like your relationship with the Feri Star Goddess. Hekate is there, she’s cool, seems great…no interest or connection.)
You might be onto something with the idea of impersonal powers being stepped into with the Star Goddess. It sounds similar to the way I’ve experienced Them when They actually respond directly, that it’s Them, someone else is the medium, but the Star Goddess overshadows them. I’m also not completely sure that’s not what the other night/star gods are. The Star Goddess is the larger impersonal force, but the other gods are expressions of that force in personal forms.
No worries! I suspected the comments might be under moderation, but the first time I entered them the site behavior on my end had me worried it hadn’t gone through. It at least gave me a chance to think through things a little more deeply.
Shaw’s book nudged me toward getting a copy of The Flower Ornament Sutra with a prior chapter on Mayadevi, Siddhartha’s mother. The chapter mentioned the goddess of the grove where Siddhartha was born; she had been the wet nurse of a Buddha in another world system and wanted to be present when another Buddha was born. That said, it does seem like it will be a long read, but I look forward to it when I can get to it.
It’s interesting to think, in terms of interconnectedness and relatedness. We often think of humans and other incarnated beings as the ones being overshadowed by deities in rituals, but then something like this makes you wonder if one kind of deity can embody another and how that points to similarities between them and us.
It’s a long read, but it also gets really surreal at points, which makes it hard to read. There are huge sections where it is listing the Buddhas of different worlds, and it’s just this litany of describing different worlds, and the Buddhas of it. But it’s not like a world like a planet, it’s abstract, things like “This planet is called Jade Tears, it is shaped like a lock of hair, and it floats on the smell of jasmine.” When I got to that point I really had to read it in chunks.
Overall I don’t think gods (or spirits) are necessarily that different than us, just a matter of scope. It makes me wonder though, about the times when a god says/does something out of character, in myth/scripture, if it was completely them or not. Maybe another figure stepped in, either overshadowing them, or just pretending to be them. Makes me think of some of the Gnostic belief where every time YHWH is an asshole it’s Yaldabaoth, and when he does good (like saving Noah) then that’s /really/ god helping out.