I have a fair number of gods I work with and I'm trying for feel out whether they're a pantheon, a cohesive group in some way, or whether they're just a handful of deities, some of whom work together. Mara goes with Laima, Laima goes with Ganesha, I feel like Sarasvati goes with them... but then what about the local spirits? The Two Man Con? Is there consistency to my practice? Does there need to be?
Is Balto-Vedic even a thing?
But the further I go down this rabbit hole, the more sure I am that the gods I work with, the gods that feel like a pantheon or a group, do so in the context of my fictional recon work rather than anything historical or ADF-worthy. I can talk about the Latvian Mara, and the Disneyland Mara, and Mariamman, and Morena, and Zemyna, but the one I work with is another goddess aside from all of those names. I think that's why it gets so fuzzy for me when I try to figure out which ones syncretize and how... the common ground is something I can't point to in a history book, but only in a book I am writing myself.
And then I looked at the title sitting there and realized that someone is going to look at this on the PBP page and think it's about finding local community. If that's you, I'm sorry, I'm probably the least qualified person to write about finding local community. I mean, I keep meeting pagans and druids and even Lokeans who are local but... I don't practice with anybody outside the house, really.
If I'm ever going to get to that point, though, where I can share the gods I work with so that other people can also work with them, I'm going to have to do more of that feeling out, that writing, that understanding. So maybe in the long run it's all one thing after all.