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42-620: Classical Kabbalah predominantly refers to the Godhead in Judaism with its designated term " Ein Sof " ("No end"-Infinite). Reference to atzmus is usually restricted in Kabbalistic theory to discussion whether "Ein Sof" represents the ultimate divine being in itself, or to God as first cause of creation. Medieval Jewish philosophers like Maimonides , articulate a transcendent negative theology where it

84-564: A Goddess and a Horned God , thereby being generally dualistic . In traditional Wicca, as expressed in the writings of Gerald Gardner and Doreen Valiente , the emphasis is on the theme of divine gender polarity, and the God and Goddess are regarded as equal and opposite divine cosmic forces. In some newer forms of Wicca, such as feminist or Dianic Wicca , the Goddess is given primacy or even exclusivity. In some forms of traditional witchcraft that share

126-946: A god-sent wind saved them from Mongol invasion. Prayers or propitiations are often offered to specific gods to garner favorable interventions in particular enterprises: e.g. safe journeys, success in war, or a season of bountiful crops. Many faiths around the world—from Japanese Shinto and Chinese traditional religion, to certain African practices and the faiths derived from those in the Caribbean, to Native American beliefs—hold that ancestral or household deities offer daily protection and blessings . In monotheistic religions, divine intervention may take very direct forms: miracles , visions , or intercessions by blessed figures. Transcendent force or power may also operate through more subtle and indirect paths. Monotheistic faiths generally support some version of divine providence , which acknowledges that

168-463: A belief in the divine potential of humanity; Smith taught a form of divinization where mortal men and women can become like god through salvation and exaltation . Lorenzo Snow succinctly summarized this using a couplet , which is often repeated within the LDS Church: "As man now is, God once was: As God now is, man may be." Wiccan views of divinity are generally theistic , and revolve around

210-646: A power or force personified—and these powers and forces may then be extended or granted to mortal individuals. For instance, Jehovah is closely associated with storms and thunder throughout much of the Old Testament . He is said to speak in thunder, and thunder is seen as a token of his anger. This power was then extended to prophets like Moses and Samuel , who caused thunderous storms to rain down on their enemies. Divinity always carries connotations of goodness , beauty , beneficence, justice , and other positive, pro-social attributes. In monotheistic faiths there

252-404: A relation be represented between Him and what is other than He when there is no notion comprising in any respect both of the two, inasmuch as existence is, in our opinion, affirmed of Him, may He be exalted, and of what is other than He merely by way of absolute equivocation. There is, in truth, no relation in any respect between Him and any of His creatures. In Jewish mystical thought ( Kabbalah ),

294-539: Is anthropomorphically described as both male and female, where male denotes outward giving and female denotes inward nurturing. In Kabbalah there are traces of Panentheism , such as the Zohar 's description of the two forms of sustenance, the " Light that surrounds " and the " Light that fills " all Worlds , and Moshe Cordovero 's description of Panentheism in his 16th-century quasi-rational hierarchical systemisation of Kabbalah. Cordovero reconciles previous opinions regarding

336-416: Is an equivalent cohort of malefic supernatural beings and powers, such as demons , devils , afreet , etc., which are not conventionally referred to as divine; demonic is often used instead. Polytheistic and animistic systems of belief make no such distinction; gods and other beings of transcendent power often have complex, ignoble, or even incomprehensible motivations for their acts. Note that while

378-641: Is in accordance with the will of God. The doctrine of the divine right of kings was introduced as late as the 17th century, proposing that kings rule by divine decree; Japanese Emperors ruled by divine mandate until the inception of the Japanese constitution after World War II . Less politically, most faiths have any number of people that are believed to have been touched by divine forces: saints , prophets , heroes , oracles , martyrs , and enlightened beings, among others. Saint Francis of Assisi , in Catholicism,

420-460: Is neither attribute nor substance, Gabirol being so pure a monotheist that he can not brook the thought of any attribute of God lest it mar the purity of monotheism. In this Gabirol follows strictly in the line of Hebrew tradition. In the philosophy of Maimonides and other Jewish-rationalistic philosophers, there is little which can be predicated about the God other than his " existence ", and even this can only be asserted equivocally. How then can

462-558: Is only possible to describe God in terms of what He is not. Here Divine Unity means that God's singularity is unique and bears no relation to any concept one can conceive. Kabbalah , influenced by the philosophical argument, but seeking the Biblical God who is also immanent , gives a different, more radical solution. It distinguishes between God in Himself and in His emanations. The Infinite Divine,

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504-445: Is said to have received instruction directly from God and it is believed that he grants plenary indulgence to all who confess their sins and visit his chapel on the appropriate day. In Greek mythology, Achilles ' mother bathed him in the river Styx to give him immortality, and Hercules —as the son of Zeus —inherited near-godly powers. In religious Taoism , Laozi is venerated as a saint with his own powers. Various individuals in

546-673: Is this: Colossians 2:9 The word "divine" in the New Testament is the Greek word θείας ( theias ), and is the adjective form of "divinity". Biblical examples from the King James Bible are below: The most prominent conception of divine entities in the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (LDS Church) is the Godhead , a divine council of three distinct beings: Elohim ( the Father ), Jehovah (

588-505: The Ein Sof ("Limitless") is beyond all understanding, description or manifestation. Only through the 10 Sephirot Divine attributes is God revealed to Creation, and the sustaining lifeforce that continuously recreates existence is channeled. The final sephirah Malchut (Kingship) becomes the feminine Shechina (Divine presence), the immanent indwelling Divinity in Creation. In manifestation God

630-505: The Keter Malkut (from which Sachs deduces Gabirol's acceptance of the theory of the doctrine of divine attributes) which seem to support this assumption, a minute examination of the questions bearing on this, such as has been made by Kaufmann (in Gesch. der Attributenlehre ), proves very clearly that will and wisdom are spoken of not as attributes of the divine, but with reference to an aspect of

672-658: The sefirot to the En Sof. Azriel (commentary on the Sefer Yetzirah , p. 27b) and, after him, Menahem Recanati ( Ṭa'ame ha-Miẓwot, passim) considered the sefirot to be totally different from the Divine Being. The "Ma'areket" group took the sefirot to be identical in their totality with the En Sof, each sefirah representing merely a certain view of the Infinite ("Ma'areket", p. 8b). The Zohar clearly implies that they are

714-638: The Buddhist faith, beginning with Siddhartha , are considered to be enlightened, and in religious forms of Buddhism they are credited with divine powers. Christ in the Bible is said to be God's Son and is said to have performed divine miracles. In general, mortals with divine qualities are carefully distinguished from the deity or deities in their religion's main pantheon . Even the Christian faith, which generally holds Christ to be identical to God, distinguishes between God

756-501: The Divine nature of the sephirot, by describing them as lights invested in vessels. Only the vessels differentiate, while the light, originating from the Ein Sof, is undifferentiated, removing any notion of plurality, in the manner water pours into different coloured vessels or light streams through different colours of glass. Regarding perception of Divinity, influenced by the negative theology of

798-584: The Father and Christ the begotten Son. There are, however, certain esoteric and mystical schools of thought, present in many faiths— Sufis in Islam, Gnostics in Christianity, Advaitan Hindus, Zen Buddhists , as well as several non-specific perspectives developed in new age philosophy—which hold that all humans are in essence divine, or unified with the Divine in a non-trivial way. Such divinity, in these faiths, would express itself naturally if it were not obscured by

840-592: The Infinite. Each sefirah has a well-known name, but the Holy One has no definite name ( Pardes Rimmonim , pp. 21–23). Divinity Divinity or the divine are things that are either related to, devoted to, or proceeding from a deity . What is or is not divine may be loosely defined, as it is used by different belief systems . Under monotheism and polytheism this is clearly delineated. However, in pantheism and animism this becomes synonymous with concepts of sacredness and transcendence . The root of

882-634: The Son , or Jesus ), and the Holy Spirit . Joseph Smith described a nontrinitarian Godhead, with God the Father and Jesus Christ each having individual physical bodies, and the Holy Spirit as a distinct personage with a spirit body . Smith also introduced the existence of a Heavenly Mother in the King Follett Discourse , but very little is acknowledged or known beyond her existence. Mormons hold

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924-455: The classical and modern languages of Jewish scholarship is אלוהות ( elohút ), meaning deity (essential nature of a god) or divinity . Max Kadushin notes that "The plural 'Elohim, gods, must not be confused with 'Elohut, Godhead. The latter is used with reference to God". The leading Jewish Neoplatonic writer was Solomon ibn Gabirol . In his Fons Vitae , Gabirol's position is that everything that exists may be reduced to three categories:

966-466: The conventional workings of the world; from the subtle redressing of minor personal wrongs to such large-scale havoc as the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah or the biblical Great Flood . Other faiths are even more subtle: the doctrine of karma shared by Buddhism and Hinduism is a divine law similar to divine retribution but without the connotation of punishment: our acts, good or bad, intentional or unintentional, reflect back on us as part of

1008-408: The divine, the creative aspect; so that the will is not to be looked upon as intermediary between God and substance and form. Matter or substance proceeds from the being of God, and form from God as will, matter corresponding to the first substance and form to the will; but there is no thought in the mind of Gabirol of substance and will as separate entities, or of will as an attribute of substance. Will

1050-506: The divinity of the faith has a profound but unknowable plan always unfolding in the world. Unforeseeable, overwhelming, or seemingly unjust events are often thrown on 'the will of the Divine', in deferences like the Muslim inshallah ('as God wills it') and Christian ' God works in mysterious ways '. Often such faiths hold out the possibility of divine retribution as well, where the divinity will unexpectedly bring evil -doers to justice through

1092-454: The first substance (God), matter and form (the world), with the will as intermediary. Gabirol derives matter and form from absolute being. In the Godhead he seems to differentiate essentia (being) from proprietas (attribute), designating by proprietas the will, wisdom, creative word (" voluntas, sapientia, verbum agens "). He thinks of the Godhead as being and as will or wisdom , regarding

1134-402: The human realm. As previously noted, divinities are closely related to the transcendent force(s) or power(s) credited to them, so much so that in some cases the powers or forces may themselves be invoked independently. This leads to the second usage of the word divine (and less common usage of divinity ): to refer to the operation of transcendent power in the world. In its most direct form,

1176-506: The mind as the route to the heart. Consequently, it retained the mystical ideal of communicating as widely as possible the elite nullification of Creation in Divine Unity. Godhead (Judaism) Godhead refers to the aspect or substratum of God that lies behind God's actions or properties (i.e., it is the essence of God), and its nature has been the subject of long debate in every major religion . The closest corresponding term in

1218-403: The names of the deity, and gives for each of them a corresponding name of God and of the hosts of angels mentioned in the Bible. Luria and Cordovero , without regarding them as instruments, do not identify them with the essence of the deity. They argue that the "Absolute One" is immanent in all the sefirot and reveals himself through them, but does not dwell in them; the sefirot can never include

1260-494: The natural working of the universe . Philosophical Taoism also proposes a transcendent operant principle—transliterated in English as tao or dao , meaning 'the way'—which is neither an entity nor a being per se, but reflects the natural ongoing process of the world. Modern western mysticism and new age philosophy often use the term 'the Divine' as a noun in this latter sense: a non-specific principle or being that gives rise to

1302-401: The operation of transcendent power implies some form of divine intervention . For monotheistic and polytheistic faiths this usually implies the direct action of one god or another on the course of human events. In Greek legend , for instance, it was Poseidon (god of the sea) who raised the storms that blew Odysseus 's craft off course on his return journey, and Japanese tradition holds that

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1344-402: The philosophers, Cordovero says: Whenever one forms a conceptual image of God, he should immediately backtrack, recoiling from the false notion, as any notion is shaped by man's spatial world. Rather, he should " Run and Return " towards imagining Divinity, and then rejecting it. In Lurianic Kabbalah the first act of Creation is the primordial Tzimtzum (self "Withdrawal") of God, to resolve

1386-764: The problem of how finite Creation could emerge from the Infinite. Beforehand, the Ohr Ein Sof fills all reality, nullifying potential creation into non-existence. The tzimtzum constitutes a radical leap, withdrawing the infinite light into God, to allow the latent potentially finite light to emerge, from which Creation unfolds. Subsequently, the sephirot reconfigure as Partzufim , recasting Cordovero's linear hierarchy with one of enclothement, allowing lower Creation to conceal within it higher Divine origins. The school of Habad , founded by Schneur Zalman of Liadi (1745–1812), differed from mainstream Hasidism in seeking to intellectually articulate Hasidic thought in systematic study, with

1428-402: The sefirot, one can search out their reality from the depth of supernal wisdom. From there it is possible to understand one thing from another. However, concerning Ein Sof, there is no aspect anywhere to search or probe; nothing can be known of it, for it is hidden and concealed in the mystery of absolute nothingness. There is a divergence of opinion among the kabbalists concerning the relation of

1470-598: The social and physical worlds we live in; it needs to be brought to the fore through appropriate spiritual practices . In the New Testament the Greek word θεῖον ( theion ) in the Douay Version , is translated as "divinity". Examples are below: The word translated as either "deity", "Godhead", or "divinity" in the Greek New Testament is also the Greek word θεότητος ( theotētos ), and the one verse that contains it

1512-534: The term "Godhead" usually refers to the concept of Ein Sof (אין סוף), the aspect of God that lies beyond the emanations ( sefirot ). The "knowability" of the Godhead in Kabbalistic thought is no better than what is conceived by rationalist thinkers. As Jacobs (1973) puts it: "Of God as He is in Himself—Ein Sof—nothing can be said at all, and no thought can reach there." Ein Sof is a place to which forgetting and oblivion pertain. Why? Because concerning all

1554-453: The terms demon and demonic are used in monotheistic faiths as antonyms to divine , they are in fact derived from the Greek word daimón (δαίμων), which itself translates as divinity . There are three distinct usages of divinity and divine in religious discourse : In monotheistic faiths, the word divinity is often used to refer to the singular God central to that faith. Often

1596-464: The third usage, extensions of divinity and divine power are credited to living, mortal individuals. Political leaders are known to have claimed actual divinity in certain early societies—the ancient Egyptian Pharaohs being the premier case—taking a role as objects of worship and being credited with superhuman status and powers. More commonly, and more pertinent to recent history, leaders merely claim some form of divine mandate , suggesting that their rule

1638-500: The will as identical with the divine nature. This position is implicit in the doctrine of Gabirol, who teaches that God's existence is knowable, but not His being or constitution, no attribute being predicable of God save that of existence. Kaufmann holds that Gabirol was an opponent of the doctrine of divine attributes. While there are passages in the Fons Vitae , in the Ethics , and even in

1680-449: The word divinity is the Latin divus meaning of or belonging to a God ( deus ). The word entered English from Medieval Latin in the 14th century. Divinity as a quality has two distinct usages: Overlap occurs between these usages because deities or godly entities are often identical with or identified by the powers and forces that are credited to them—in many cases, a deity is merely

1722-551: The word takes the definite article and is capitalized— "the Divinity" —as though it were a proper name or definitive honorific. Divine —capitalized—may be used as an adjective to refer to the manifestations of such a Divinity or its powers: e.g. "basking in the Divine presence..." The terms divinity and divine —uncapitalized, and lacking the definite article—are sometimes used to denote 'god(s) or certain other beings and entities which fall short of absolute Godhood but lie outside

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1764-470: The world, and acts as the source or wellspring of life . In these latter cases, the faiths do not promote deference, as happens in monotheisms; rather each suggests a path of action that will bring the practitioner into conformance with the divine law: ahimsa —'no harm'—for Buddhist and Hindu faiths; de or te —'virtuous action'—in Taoism; and any of numerous practices of peace and love in new age thinking. In

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