I think the spirits I have suggested are all plausible. The question is whether any of them are sentient or even conscious; that is, whether we may consider any to be deities. In the next chapter I will detail which I consider to be deities (as a matter of personal choice) but first I want to examine the general features of unimodal spirits that we could consider deities, for their singular modality offers insights into their possible sentient and conscious behaviours.

Imagine having a unimodal sentience or consciousness, being able to operate in either the connective or architective mode but unable to switch between them as we do. Strangest of all, one would find only the serial meanings and narratives of one's own mode comprehensible. Operating solely connectively, one could never understand architective activity nor ever be understood by someone who is operating solely architectively, and vice-versa.

With a solely architective sentience, for example, one would spend one's entire life with no concept of empathic relationship, no appreciation of waves and vibrations and have no awareness of sentiences that operate connectively, while one's own sentience would go unrecognized by others whose sentiences are operating connectively. Contrarily, as a solely connective sentience one would have no concept of identity, be incapable of exact enumeration or of exercising control and have no awareness of sentiences that are operating architectively, while one's own sentience would go unrecognized by other architective sentiences.

More so, the narratives in one's own mode would appear seamless even though reality might be skipping between narratives in both modes.

Just as I have characterized unimodal spirits as connective or architective spirits, I can label unimodal deities as connective or architective deities. Holistic and systemic deities would be connective while hierarchical and processional deities would be architective.

Connective Deities

Connective deities would be capable of connective sentience and consciousness only. They would comprehend only connective serial meaning, evaluate their experiences only in terms of connective serial meaning and would play only connective games. Architective events of any kind, though affecting their reality, would be inexplicable and generally irrelevant to them. Objects, as they architectively emerge or disrupt would appear to come out of nowhere or disappear without reason.

In the absence of an understanding of architective serial meaning, concepts such as the creation and extinction of objects would be meaningless to them. The same can be said of contests and a fixed identity. No circumstance could be considered existentially necessary to a connective deity, though they may have a preference for one connective circumstance over another. This does not mean that their being would be unproblematic, for storms may rage (and harmonies sing) through connective systems.

Connective deities could influence events but not control or organize them. And their influences could be curtailed, even negated, by architective constraints or controls (though only within the architective window of scale).

The uncertainty inherent in their activities and their lack of control means that connective deities would be agents with uncertain (but continuing) futures, rather than dictators of destinies.

There could also be no hierarchy among connective deities, nor could games of power be played among them. Some connective deities could exert stronger influences than others (for a while, in some localities), but none would be hierarchically superior or subordinate to any other. Their influences would all be fully expressed and interfere with each other proportionally rather than a stronger eliminate a weaker.

A connective deity could possibly be embodied in a connective like the wind, the sun, a fire, smoke, an ocean, a gaseous planet like Jupiter, or the entire universe, but not in anything having an architecture such as a stone, a book, a person, an animal, the moon or a rocky planet like Mars, nor any social institution. It could be symbolically represented by such objects but not embodied in them. Of course, it may not be embodied at all.

In the absence of architective organ-based bodies, connective deities, though sentient, could not have organ-based senses such as we have since our bodily senses all utilize architective functional elements.

We experience and understand connective serial meaning so the activities of connective deities, purely connective as they are, could be meaningful to us, though they would not cover the full gamut of our experience (and our connective activities may not cover the full gamut of theirs).

Architective Deities

An architective deity would only be capable of architective sentience or consciousness. It would comprehend only architective serial meaning, could evaluate its experiences only in terms of architective serial meaning, and would play only architective games. Connective activity of any kind would be meaningless to it. The smooth motions of objects, and any waves and vibrations they host, would be understood only as steps between architectively significant locations or objects.

An architective deity would be preoccupied with matters of position, identity, composition, contest, rank, power and control. It would be emoted by births and deaths, by clear category classifications, by comparisons among objects and by victories and defeats.

Architective deities would have an all or nothing attitude, a sense of absolute contrast - objects either exist or do not, are for them or are against them; while connective deities would flow through a continuous spectrum of possibility, and host balances/imbalances, harmonies/discords and compromises between these.

A hierarchical deity could be embodied as a physical object, as an organism, a person, a social object such as an institution or an office in an institution, but could not take on a purely connective embodiment such as a wind, a sun, a fire or ocean, or a gaseous planet like Jupiter. It could be embodied in a book, an icon, the moon, or a rocky planet like Mars. It cannot be embodied as the entire universe, for interactions at that scale are purely connective. Processional deities may shift from one architective embodiment to another, or not be embodied at all.

An architective deity could organize the architective narratives of all its subordinates in its architecture (or procession of architectures), including any connective spirits or deities completely contained within its architectures.

An architective deity could only be regarded as a deity by its subordinates. It would not be regarded as a spirit or deity by a peer or superior in its hierarchy or anything outside its hierarchy: to them it would be a venerator or mundane.

Should a hierarchical deity aggregate with another to create a new object, that emergent object could be a deity too if it were considered sentient. Hierarchical deities may thus be tiered in hierarchical levels where the deities at one level regard higher ranked objects as deities, regard peer objects as mundane and regard lower level objects as venerators. Since architective fields of expression emerge with their rank in an architecture, the fields of expression available to an architective deity would depend on its rank.

Being an architective whole, a hierarchical deity would be subject to the possibility of demise. If conscious it would have a sense of its own insecurity and act willfully to avoid its demise. A conscious processional deity, though also architective, would not be so vulnerable to demise since it persists across reconfigurations of architectures, and may even relish the destructions and reconstructions of its processing architectures. However, comprising narratives, it would be vulnerable to termination and so would strive to ensure the continuation of its narratives (and thus a sequence of architectures to provide its narratives), in order to ensure its own survival.

When reality, by performing a connective interaction, appears to a conscious architective deity to have made an inexplicable adjustment, the fact that the event was beyond its comprehension and control would heighten the deity's sense of insecurity and elicit from it preventive strategies.

Our Deities and Us

Since any architective deities we may have would be our architective superiors, they would not interact with us - we would simply be subservient to their authority. They would act on us by controlling and/or organizing our architective activity and perhaps that of our physical and social environment; and by constraining or containing our connective activities (or attempting to do so).

Any connective deities we may have could not control or organize our activities. Holistic deities would act on us by apprehending our connective activity and that in our environment, able only to influence nuances of our and our environment's connective behaviour. Systemic deities would interact with us, influencing our and our environment's connective behaviour, sometimes strongly.

Our connective deities would have no hierarchical authority over us. Their and our own connective influences would all be fully expressed and interfere proportionally.

The apprehensive effects of our holistic deities would be extremely weak in comparison to interactive effects of our systemic deities and to the controls and organizations of our hierarchical and processional deities. Our awareness and appreciation of our holistic deities would also be handicapped by our predisposition to an architective mode of consciousness.

We could contribute to a successful expression of a holistic deity by limiting our own connective interactions or ensuring that our own expressions harmonize with its. Limiting any architective expressions on our part that constrained its expressions would also increase its apprehensive influence.

Our connective deities could not be embodied as human beings since humans are architective functional objects. Architective deities could be embodied as human beings but only to non-human venerators - as humans to other humans they would be peers in interaction. Our architective deities could be socially represented by human beings to other human beings as offices in an institution, in which case the person holding the office would represent the deity to us but would not be an embodiment of the deity. So our deities, whether holistic, systemic, hierarchical or processional, could not be embodied as people.

A connective deity could not talk to us directly using a language such as English (or any other human language) for it has no speech or writing organs (since these employ architective devices). As well, a connective deity would have difficulty constructing meaning by architectively composing words into a sentence, and its communications could have no architective serial meaning. Architective deities could conceivably be embodied as super-human organisms having speech organs of their own but they would more likely be hierarchical or processional deities communicating with us through the speech organs and pens of their office bearers or of the humans they have organized to do so.

Though a connective deity could not talk to us using human language it could communicate with us through constellations of connective events and arrangements, or as music. Even though these constellations would be vague and transient visages, we could find meaning in them as they pass. Such communications would become obvious when events or arrangements are highly constellated, such as when we notice their profundity or synchronicity or when our capacity to discern their constellation is increased by meditation or ingestion of a psychedelic. I regard my use of the I Ching as a spiritual communication employing an architectively random but connectively constellated fall of coins.

Though without organ-based senses themselves, our connective deities might participate indirectly in our organ-based sensations when we respond to these sensations connectively, particularly as the sensations set up vibrations in our brains. I also imagine that, being sentient, a connective deity could have non-organ-based sensations of its own, which we in turn would not experience explicitly but may experience as a mood, perhaps.

Being architective wholes, hierarchical deities would emerge from their lower levels. Our social hierarchical deities would emerge from us as their constituent objects. They in turn would control us and organize our narratives. Thus the deities of many of our religions could be understood as having emerged from our own religious activities. Were it not for the human activities by which a hierarchical deity is venerated that deity would not exist - no venerators would mean no deity. The religion is the deity, as it were.

Our religions and their deities are not the only hierarchical deities to have emerged from us - hierarchical deities emerge from our political and economic activities as well. Our social hierarchical deities are the self-sustaining institutions we as their members create, and their sentience is reflected in our activities as their members, where these activities would have been different or organized differently in the absence of our membership of their institution.

Since the fields of expression at different levels of an architective hierarchy will be different, venerators and their hierarchical deities will likely be playing different games and be preoccupied with different narratives. A venerator's intelligence may not be comprehending of its deity's intelligence, or vice-versa, even though both are architective.

Our architective deities would organize our narratives around their own existential angst. We might experience a depression or sense of existential insecurity not justified by our immediately perceivable circumstances, and suffer contests and social frictions organized for the deity's existential security rather than for our own. A processional deity, being relatively invulnerable and suffering no immediate existential threat, could well organize contests and social frictions among its lower echelons simply as an amusement.

An architective deity's human venerators would not be purely architective as it is. It may feel threatened by connective activities among its venerators no matter how innocent, since it could not understand or control them, and would likely attempt to constrain them.

An architective deity would have an expectation of obedience from its venerators and if it was insecure would demand not only obedience but symbolic demonstrations of submission, perhaps even worship. Failure to deliver these may invoke acts of vengeance from the deity, to whatever degree of control and organization it can muster. Demonstrations of submission would likely occur through the regular performance of appeasing rituals.

An architective deity would not be likely to dispense power or control in the service of an inferior. It would much more likely sacrifice its venerators in its own interest, and do so with the venerators' consent since it organizes their narratives.

Obedience, worship, ritual and sacrifice would be meaningless to a connective deity.

The extreme flexibility of connective events means that connective experiences are never repeated exactly. There is no point recreating the conditions of a prior connective epiphany in the hope that it will happen again. Every connective epiphany is found anew. Indeed, it is the finding of the experience - the being in it - that makes for a connective epiphany. Falling in love is profound, and while marriage may offer subsequent occasions for different profundities, the original is rarely repeated.

Preferences of Deities

Conscious deities may have preferences and express themselves with the intention of serving their preferences.

A conscious architective deity may develop ethics of strength, charity, chivalry, correctness, propriety, soundness and reasonableness. It may develop an aesthetic appreciation of constraint, of its mechanics and of the strategies to achieve it. It may develop an aesthetic appreciation of the complexities achievable through architective construction and novelty. But it may also develop a taste for power, challenge, destruction, corruption, deceit and trickery, and develop or exploit aesthetics of fear around existential insecurity. It may even find beauty in aggression.

A connective deity may express a liking for harmonies of motion and be appreciative of constructive interferences or consonances. A connective deity may alternatively express a preference for dissonance, instability and turbulence.

The preferences of an architective deity as a religion or institution become evident in the activities of its human members, since the members express narratives organized by their deity. For example, acts of charity carried out by a religion's adherents in the name of their religion reflect an ethic of charity in the religion as an institutional hierarchical deity (and probably an ethic of the deities advocated by its dogma), while atrocities committed in the name of a religion are also a reflection of the aesthetic of the religion as a deity (and probably of the deities of the religion's dogma).

An architective deity might enjoy the aggregational complexities of architectivity, while a connective deity might find profundity in the subtleties, harmonies and grandeur of connectivity, and in the evolution and dissolution of visages.

An architective deity may develop a taste for exactness, purity and perfection while a connective deity may develop an enjoyment of surprise, diversity and uncertainty.

Contests Between Deities

While connective deities could compete amongst each other in the sense that one may have a stronger influence than another, the result of their competition would be a proportioning of their influences rather than a selection of one and a negation of the other. All the competing deities would have their intentions expressed to some degree. Architective deities in contest with each other could see some having their intentions expressed in full while others find no expression at all.

In a contest between architective and connective deities there is the possibility that architective constraints, containments or redirections could terminate narratives meaningful to a connective deity, while connective interactive forces could possibly disrupt an architecture or terminate an architective narrative. Though a connective deity could have its narratives terminated by a containing architecture, the deity itself cannot be totally eliminated - there will always be some room for expression within its containment. So for a connective deity there is no existential threat, only a possible restriction of its expression or a termination of some narratives. For an architective deity there is an existential threat - a narrative termination may be the end of a processional deity while the disruption of an architecture could be the end of a hierarchical deity. For a connective deity, such a contest is a competition for expression but for an architective deity it could be a struggle for existence as well. A sense of insecurity is justified for architective deities.

The resources that connective and architective deities could utilize to promote their intents would be entirely different. Architective deities would have available to them the serial meanings of control, precision, organization, contest, categorization and power; while connective deities could utilize the serial meanings of uncertainty, disturbance, interference and empathy.

In a contest between architective deities alone or between connective deities alone, the competitors would be utilizing resources and strategies that each would understand. But in a contest between an architective and a connective deity neither would be able to comprehend the tactics and strategies of the other nor understand the value of each other's resources. More so, neither deity would be directly aware of the other's sentience while each would experience reality as a seamless continuity of narratives in its own mode only - with occasional inexplicable interruptions. Both deities would be competing in the dark as it were, against an inscrutable and invisible opponent. The unexpected gaps in or terminations of their narratives would be the only clues each had to the other's possible presence.

An architective deity would likely interpret any unexpected or incomprehensible gaps in or terminations of it's narratives as a threat to its existence, and blindly attempt to eliminate it's opponent, constrain it or contain it - even if it cannot perceive it. A connective deity would not understand the concept of elimination, so while it may intend to counter its opponent's advances, it would neither feel threatened nor have any intention to threaten its opponent's existence.

Contests between architective and connective deities could result in terrifying contradictions for organisms like us, who can comprehend both modes of serial meaning and who may find themselves having to choose between actions which appear equally sensible but whose meanings are contradictory.

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