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Why Sikhi Has No Pantheon

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Why Sikhi Has No Pantheon

This entry exists in a register built for pantheons, and the most useful thing it can say is that the register does not fit. That is a fact about Sikhi and not an omission in the record.

Sikh teaching begins with the declaration that there is one reality, without form, without birth, self-existent, and the opening of the Guru Granth Sahib states it before it states anything else. There is no divine society below that one reality. There are no ranked gods, no generations succeeding one another, no assembly, no divine kingship to be won or lost, and therefore none of the structural questions this atlas asks of a pantheon has a Sikh answer.

The gods of the surrounding Indic traditions are not denied existence in the scripture so much as decisively demoted. They appear, and they are subject to the same order as everything else, and they are not what a person should be addressing.

The Gurus are equally clearly not divine. Ten human teachers held the office in succession, and the tradition is emphatic that they are to be honoured and not worshipped. When the line of human Gurus ended, authority passed to the scripture itself and to the collective body of the community, which is a transfer of office rather than a deification.

So the door from mortal to god, open in Greek and Chinese practice and central to both, is closed here on principle.

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