What are gods?

Teo Bishop recently wrote of an underlying unity over at his blog Bishop in the Grove, and posed the question "Is polytheism complete?" It's an interesting question, and one that will no doubt provoke a whole array of responses. It's a particularly interesting for myself as I consider myself as something between a polytheist and a monotheist. And so I come back to the question, what are the gods? I have come to the conclusion that there is no simple or straight answer to this seemingly straightforward question. My own experiences and thoughts lead me to believe that not all gods are the same. * Some of the old gods, I believe, are forces of the natural world (despite this being largely out of fashion!), unseen by our eyes but demonstrably an integral part of our world. In saying that some gods are natural forces is not a detraction or an explaining away. I still believe that these forces have their own life and presence, and that we as humans can form relationships with them. To say these are merely natural forces is to misunderstand. There is no merely about it! From an Animists point of view, when you believe these forces are alive and present you start to see just how awesome they really are. These forces are so universal that they tend to be known by many ancient peoples by different names. The names may change but the identity underneath is often the same. * From my Animistic viewpoint some of the old gods are even more tangible. I don't need an abstract sun goddess when the living, life giving sun is right up there in the sky. Sunna needn't be the concept of the sun contained within the shape of a human female for me. No Sunna IS the sun to me. If science grudgingly is beginning to accept the Earth as a living organism (albeit one they still cannot allow a consciousness) then perhaps one day in the far flung future it will not seem such a strange thing to consider other stella objects to have their own life too. Sunna's experience of life is not our own, certainly; and her mind is vastly different from our own. Would you expect anything less though? * Although it was a hard thing to accept, having considered myself a hard polytheist, I came to believe that not all goddesses are distinct entities, especially from a mythological perspective (I speak here of Germanic myth because that is where my heart and my studies have mostly been led). In my experience so far many goddesses are what are commonly called 'aspects' of another. Working out who is who is perplexing! * Most of the gods that I think of as natural forces are tied intimately to the Earth. But this isn't exclusively the case. There are other gods, gods that I have no names for, that I envision as functioning as part of the wider cosmos. * And then there is the unity of which Teo Bishop spoke of, that I cannot but help thinking of as the ultimate divinity, a divine almost beyond our ability to perceive. Awesome in the true sense of the word.