We have to accept that the reality of lived polytheism is complex and often a bit confusing.
I’m asked pretty frequently how my idea of deity as individual accounts for ideas of 2 different names for the same deity. “If Diana and Artemis are the same goddess, doesn’t that mean deity isn’t always individual?” This is a valid question, but it confuses name with person.
A name can change with time and growth. Most of us have more than one name we use regularly (nicknames, legal names, formal names, etc.). Imagine you go to a party that two of your friends are attending. When you meet the first she calls you by your nickname. The other runs into you later and refers to you using your surname. You are still you even though each of them uses a different name for you. While you as a person have changed with time and circumstances, there is a specific continuityof identity that is notalwayts matched by the names attahced to the reality of your existence.
This situation can be applied to deity as well. In some cases we do have 2 names for one individual deity. In other situatiuons scholars have decided 2 deities are the same person with 2 names, when in fact they are 2 separate individuals with one name each. To understand this better, think about the people you know. Some of them have markedly different personas in different social arenas. Sometimes it is hard to recognize a person in work apparel and persona when we only know them from religious occasions and social gatherings. As I heard someone say recently, “I didn’t even know he wore shirts. I’d never seen him in one.” If human persons can vary so greatly depending on situation, how much more so might a deity, who exists after all in more dimensions then we are normally aware of.
The deities we know as Artemis and Diana might indeed be one person. Equally, they might be 2 different people who just look a lot alike (I’m always getting told I look exactly like someone else, and its never the same someone else). I can’t say for sure because I don’t know either of them well enough to be positive. I tend to think of them as 2 different people with similar interests, but I’m fully prepared to be wrong on that.
And that, I think, is the heart of dealing with the confusing complexity of polytheism. Personal relationships are our key. They open the door to understanding and some level of knowledge. Using the knowledge we gain through relationships with deities, we can make judgments on things like what name goes with who. We might get it wrong, but we have a sound basis for making judgments.
Let’s continue our analogy with inter-human relationships. Most of us know a lot of people in a general way, a smaller number in a closer way and a very few in such a deep way that we perceive ourselves as understanding them well. Now, if that is the state of our relationships with other humans, how is it surprising that we can only really know a tiny number of deities. It takes time and effort to understand another person, be they human or other than human.
If you are very lucky, you have the time to develop the skills to interact with deities outside of ritual, journey or meditation. In that case you have more chances to interact with and get to know a deity. If you don’t have those skills your relationships with deities will only develop while you are in specific situations designed to put you in touch with deity. Just as if you only saw other humans on certain occasions, your relationship will take longer to deepen and develop in most cases. So it is understandable that we don’t all have immediate knowledge of the nature of all deities. We can’t even expect to have full knowledge of every deity we encounter directly.