A Look at the Holy Ghost

Inspiration!

I am a part of an online community that explores Christianity and Paganism and the parallels and differences between the 2 faiths.  Today, I'd like to explore for myself the parallels between the Christian Trinity and a Pagan idea of the god as warrior, father, and sage.  However, I'd like to pay special attention to the sage as compared to the Holy Ghost.

An important distinction needs to be made here.  How I was raised to see the Christian Trinity, the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost are all one but at the same time are entities in themselves.  Obviously Jesus is the Son.  The Father is of course that obscure fatherly figure I always thought of when I prayed, and the Holy Ghost is the part of God that lives inside each one of us.  I always saw the Holy Ghost as my conscience.  Other ways to see the Holy Ghost could be our innate wisdom or our intuition, the little voice or feeling inside of us that discriminates between right and wrong.

On the other hand, the Pagan trinity of warrior, father, and sage is more symbolic than it is separate entities.  They have their own functions, of course, but they are less... solid.  The warrior god is a fighter for the cause, he is the youthful innovator and full of vigor and energy.  The father is slower, more thoughtful, but still energetic in his way.  The sage is like it's female counterpart, the crone: older, wizened, seasoned, knowing, and removed.  The most sizable difference I find between the father and the sage is that the father is still very much connected to this world, still invested in the world at hand although he's wiser than his youth.  The sage, however, is disconnected.  He's no longer invested in his part in the world, but he's interested in the greater good of all.


In my spiritual meanderings I've found that I don't revere one prophet over another necessarily.  I am most familiar with Jesus of Nazareth but I can't rightly say that Jesus was any more or less holy than Muhammad of Muslim theology or any other prophet.  To me, the son/warrior could be any of these prophets, or all of them.  These are people who set everything aside to spread a spiritual message.  It's a kind of battle and many people will liken a life of evangelism to that of a warrior of God.

A certain view of the divine is that of a sort of field of energy that not only makes up the world and the universe but also weaves in and out of it.  This is an energy that many Pagans believe can be tapped into.  Another way this divine is seen is an energy of collective memory and knowledge, and this view makes sense to me.  This is kind of how I see the F/father.

And finally: the Holy Ghost a.k.a. sage.  The Holy Ghost is said to live inside me and you and everyone.  It would only seem appropriate that the Holy Ghost be wise and give us a little nudge in the right direction when we need it.  Because of this, I can see how some Christians find the feminine in the Holy Spirit, making the connection to Sophia (Wisdom).  Keeping more or less to the masculine side of the divine, though, the sage bestows wisdom like an old wise man in a close-knit tribe might. I wonder if our intuition is the sage aspect of God (a.k.a. the Holy Spirit) nudging us forward, closer to our destiny, closer to where we're meant to go in life.  Perhaps our intuition is a series of hints as to how we fit into the puzzle of the overall Design of Everything.