Integrational Polytheism is a form of polytheism where you believe in the existence of not several, but of all the gods ever described. It has also been known as Ecclectic Polytheism and other such names on the internet, but this article is in reference to the religious ideas of Calum Carlyle, who calls it Integrational Polytheism (website listed below).
Of course it is impossible to serve (or to know about!) every god, so an Integrational Polytheist can choose which god(s) s/he follows, while simply acknowledging the rest. Because Integrational Polytheists believe in all gods, they must respect other beliefs, unless those beliefs criticise or repress another belief (eg, they don't need to respect a homophobe's beliefs as those are damaging to homosexual people). Integrational Polytheists believe that all religions have equivalent importance to each other.
Integrational Polytheism gives the person much freedom to make their own beliefs, but there are still a few basic rules to follow:
Freedom of choice.
Freedom of expression.
Equivalence of all religions.
These three basic rules have a higher priority for Integrational Polytheists than individual rules of a certain religion.
For more information and detail on the origins of Integrational Polytheism, please visit Calum Carlyle's website about Integrational Polytheism listed below.
A goddess is unlikely to be, for instance, simply a 'goddess of grain' or a 'goddess of weaving', although she may have particular interest in these areas, just as a human musician is also a member of a family and a community, visiting shops and participating in political debates.
The pre-Christian culture of Europe, and indeed many cultures around the world, have been and in many cases remain polytheistic, and polytheism is reviving in popularity in the West, often accompanied by a return to old texts and recreation of the rituals and way of life they describe.
Pluralistic Soft polytheism means that the person practicing a polytheistic religion believes that their gods are aspects of another god or goddess.
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