Concepts of Divinity.

My personal vision is ALL as a spinning Jewel. The Jewel has infinite facets, and reflects the infinite archetypes. This is probably the end result of kicking the trash can. Ask children what they think a deity is. I find they are much closer to the basic fundamental truths than are adults. Given the least amount of encouragement, they will create a rich and complex pantheon of their own.
This pantheon will have more meaning for them than those created by other people.

You might discuss:

• Who is the deity of electricity? Of computers? Of rain? Of wishes? Of food? Of dreams? Of love?
• Is this deity good, bad, neither, both?
• What is the deity’s name?
• Is this deity male, female, both, neither?
• The story about the deity.

The Archeology Game.

I play an archeology game with my summer camp kids. I scrounge all the pottery I can find. Luckily, my mother is a ceramist. She creates very Pagan pieces, with androgynous faces, dancing nymphs and winged heads. I get the ones that don’t make it through the kiln. However, you can use anything, or have the kids make their own pieces. Painting symbols on broken garden pottery is very effective. They create hieroglyphics to tell stories and make statements, and paint them on the shards and tiles.

The game involves two groups. One group is the creating group. They are an ancient civilization and these are their artifacts. We talk about each piece. They decide who it was or what does it symbolize: deity, royalty, clergy, warrior, ordinary person; male, or female. They make up stories about the pieces. If the pieces represent human beings, we talk about who they were, how they lived, and how they died. If the pieces are Deites, they decide what they ruled, what were their sacred animals, were they kind to human beings or scary.