The first time I felt genuinely called by a deity I was standing in front of a painting of Persephone in a museum, and something in my chest moved. Not metaphorically. Something physically shifted, like a key turning in a lock I hadn't known was there. I stood in front of that painting for a very long time and then I went home and started reading everything I could find about her.

That is how deity work often begins: something catches your attention with a force that feels out of proportion to the ordinary. A name keeps appearing. An animal shows up persistently. A passage in a book lands differently than a passage should. These are the gods extending an invitation. Whether you call that real external presences or a deep movement in the psyche, the practical result is the same: something is asking for your attention.

What I didn't expect, working with Persephone, was that Hekate would arrive shortly after — which makes mythological sense, since Hekate is present in the Homeric Hymn to Demeter and Persephone, accompanying her through the underworld journey. The two goddesses have a relationship in the myth that mirrored a relationship developing in my practice. Learning to work with both of them together deepened my understanding of each in ways that neither would have produced alone.

Several years later, Freya arrived. I won't tell the whole story here, but it involved a dream, a sustained period of encountering Nordic symbols with improbable frequency, and finally sitting down at my altar and saying aloud, "All right, I think you're trying to get my attention." The response — the quality of presence that filled the room in the following minutes — was unmistakable.

What does it mean to work with deities from different pantheons? For me it means maintaining genuine relationships with each: separate altar space and offerings, study of the specific tradition each deity comes from, respect for the context in which each is known. I don't mash them together or assume they all get along simply because I relate to them all. I hold them as distinct presences who happen to both have access to me, and I have found that they are not in conflict. They occupy different domains of my life and have each given me things the others could not have.