Gods and Guides
In ancient pagan times, gods were everywhere — everyone had at least one personal god to watch over their progress, and there were gods that lived in your kitchen, in your fireplace, in your community, guarding your family and the landscape nearby. These days, many of those who believe in only one god nevertheless believe in spirit guides (or angels) that are similarly numerous and ubiquitous. It’s remarkable how similar the concepts of god and guide are, and how similar they are in sound, as well.
They come from completely different sources. God comes ultimately from the Proto Indo European root gheu(e), meaning “to call” or “to invoke”; from that was derived the noun ghut, “that which is invoked”. Literally, then, a god was “something you pray to”. Note that it really was something: god was originally neuter, and used for both gods and goddesses. God only became masculine after the advent of Christianity. Ghut became god in Old English, and has remained the same ever since.
Guide, meanwhile, is derived from Proto Indo European weid, a verb meaning “to see”. This root is also the source of wisdom, guise, idol, kaleidoscope, wit, view, vision, vista, advice, provide, review, idea, history, penguin, and Rig-Veda. Weid became wit in Proto Germanic, and witan (meaning “show the way”) in Frankish, one of the ancestors of French; it became guider in Old French, and was borrowed as guide into English in 1374.
Both words start off with “g”, a complex letter that appears to represent the Source, a container that is filled with void and yet is the ultimate grounding of everything. God then moves on to short “o”, the vowel of the fundamental Source, while guide has long “i”, a “roomy” vowel of mind and art. Both words then end with the “d” of decisions, doorways.
Both words, then, begin with the ultimate source, and end by bringing that source to an ending or decision point. The different vowel qualities indicate the manner of that change: the short “o” of god being a process closely connected to the source from which it sprang, and the long “i” of guide being a process also connected to source, but perhaps through the intermediary of mind or art.
Certainly in my experience of guides vs. gods, guides are a little further removed from Source — at least in the sense that they’re easier to contact, easier to interact with directly. Gods require rarified states of mind, “high vibrations”, to reach — they sometimes have gatekeeper minions, or tests you have to pass, and so forth. My impression is that this isn’t capriciousness or snobbishness on their part, but simply the fact that they exist at such a “pure” level that we have to work to “cleanse” ourselves enough to reach them. Guides, on the other hand, are closer to where we are — they may be relatives that have passed on, elementals, and the like, more like us, and easier to reach. I find it wonderful that the difference in sound between the words expresses both their similarities and their differences.
Have you had any similar experiences or impressions?
May 16th, 2007 at 5:19 pm
Okay, that is so flippin’ interesting!
This is a great blog!
I think in terms of energy for everything, so I see it similarly to the way you do…except the guides vibrate at an energy that is easier for those of us who are “in matter at the moment” to hear and communicate with them. You see, in order to bring energy to firm matter state, it must slow down to a point…
and guides can slow their energy down enough to be heard and seen by those of us who have re-learned how to speed energy our inuitive thought up enough to hear them.
But God is just pure source energy, which most of us cannot reach until we have sloughed off our matter - or our mind.
Food for that slow but constant companion, thought!
–J
May 17th, 2007 at 8:03 am
Thanks, J!
This ties in pretty tightly with what you were saying over at the “genius” entry, if I understand you… Guides are close enough to us in energy that they can learn our languages (or remember our languages, if they are relatives on the Other Side), and use our languages to communicate with us, even suggest specific words to use, like in the example you gave of your Cosmic Aha. While God-level energy is utterly beyond speech…?
Notably, Mercury/Hermes, the god of communication, the Messenger God, was said to travel freely between the worlds — he could go to Olympus, he could come down to Earth, he could even go below to Hades — no one could stop him. For this reason, ancient and modern mystics have called on his energy to help them reach beyond the mundane world. So it may be that some god-level energy can slow itself down enough to reach us where we’re at!
May 25th, 2007 at 3:37 pm
I like your site. I found it while looking to see when god became masculine. It is about the 8th or 10th page.
When I first started having conscious conversations with my spirit guides (which is what they called themselves), I did not see them, I only heard them.
Since then, I have seen some of them from time to time. One time I was walking home on a very dark street. I grew afraid and wished that there were other people on the street. Suddenly, across the street a little up from me appeared three men, all about the same build and about six feet tall. One was jumping up in the air like he was happy about something. I got really scared with seeing three men. I looked away for the briefest of seconds - and they were gone - with nowhere to go…in my head I heard, “You are never alone. We are always with you.” I thought I was making it all up in my head and didn’t tell anyone about this experience.
About a week later, a friend and I were sitting in a van on chairs that faced one another when I saw (from the rear side window) what seemed to be the same three men I had seen earlier. I watched for them to come closer, in view of the window closest to me, but they never came. I would have seen them if they had walked behind the van - where there were two windows. I would also have seen them if they had turned around and gone back where they had come from.
Then, my girlfriend said to me, “Where did those three guys go?” Hallelujah! “Oh, my God! Thank you! Thank you!” I told her. Then I told her about the week before…My spirit guides often gave her things to give back to me to work on when I had put them to the back of my mind because they made absolutely no sense to me at the time. So, it was really nice of them to show themselves to her so that I would know I had actually seen them. I think that the trio is Konar, Jesus, and Babaji - and I think that it has something to do with the Trinity but I don’t know…
One day, I was talking to God and I aske what God was…”Part of a name, an anachronism…?” There was a pause and then I got, “God is like a guild, with many departments.” )Well, I looked up guild and it seemed to fit.) Then, I asked about the Trinity and I was told all about it and I thought, “Oh…” And then, just as quickly as I thought that, I heard, “Don’t remember that.” And, I swear, I tried to hold onto the thought but it was GONE. I’ve been looking for the answer ever since…and maybe that is part of my journey…who knows?
June 1st, 2007 at 3:56 am
Jeannette, I had a great reply all written out for you, but then my machine crashed, and I lost it.
But here’s the gist: thank you for sharing those amazing stories! It’s good to know someone is watching after you, isn’t it?
Maybe you know this, but the names “Konar” and “Babiji” are both Hindi. “Konar” is the name of the dairyman caste in southern India (in northern India they are called something different), and “Babiji” is another word for guru or ascetic. Does that mean anything to you?…