Instructions For Being A Theist Without Believing In Things That Don’t Exist

An Animistic Approach

Stop thinking of gods as supernatural grandpas who live in palaces above the sky. Start thinking of gods as things that humans relate to god-wise.

Make gods by recognizing things as gods and treating them as such.

This works especially well with things that are larger or older than you can comfortably conceptualize in full. Mountains make excellent gods. So do bodies of water, forests, and individual stones.

(I hear a lot of people deify “love” these days. I’m a disciple of “that which affords beautiful experience,” myself. But very tall trees are more traditional.)

Pray to them. Feed them. Offer them devotion, sacrifice, and respect. Build the rhythms of your life around your interactions with them.

Let yourself imagine that they are people. Not human people, but people. Your entire psychophysiology was made to do this. You don’t have to “believe” that they are people. It’s not about belief. It’s about relationship.

Above all, work to maintain right relationship with your gods. Even when your relationships with everyone and everything else seem like a trash fire. Especially then.