In the light of an understanding of architectivity and connectivity, some interesting inferences can be made about our deities - those spirits we might regard as being sentient or conscious.

Stripped of their holisms, I see the raw interactions of our systemic spirits being too prone to turmoil to be sentient. At the other extreme, I see our natural spirits as too elemental or regular to be to be expressing a versatile intent. I see these spirits serving as carriers of other sentiences, such as our own, rather than as sentiences in their own right.

However, many of our internal biological processes - which as parameters of our being are natural spirits to us - do show sentience, for example in the way our white blood cells hunt and destroy alien bacteria. These processes are not simply mechanical, and a variety of such sentiences are present at various levels in our biological architecture (and in the architectures of all living organisms). We are reliant on these processes to maintain their integrity, and for this they (and we) depend on their sentiences. But processes at our internal levels are controlled and organized by the levels above them. We control them and organize their serial meaning rather than them controlling or organizing us. In the strict sense of my definition these internal biological spirits are deities to us since they are sentient, but they have no effect on us other than as natural spirits.

Our holistic, hierarchical and processional spirits, on the other hand, influence, control or organize us significantly, and I do see possibilities for sentience among these spirits (which I will elaborate in the next chapter). As deities these spirits would all be unimodal, and the singular modality of their sentience offers insights into their natures.

Imagine having a unimodal sentience, being able to operate in either the connective or architective mode but not both, unable to switch between them as we are. With a purely architective sentience, for example, one would spend one's entire life with no concept of informal relationship and no appreciation of waves and vibrations. Contrarily, as a purely connective sentience one would have no concept of identity and be incapable of exact enumeration, of reliably storing information or of exercising control.

Strangest of all, one would find only the serial meanings and narratives of one's own mode comprehensible. Operating connectively, one could neither understand architective activity nor could one be understood by someone else who is operating architectively - and vice-versa. Being blind to serial meaning in one's opposite mode, the narratives in one's own mode would appear to be the only meaningful narratives, and would appear seamless even though reality might be skipping between modes.

Welcome to the worlds of our unimodal deities.

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

Connective Deities

Connective deities would be capable of connective sentience 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 meaningless, inexplicable and generally irrelevant to them. Objects, as they architectively emerge or disrupt, for example, would appear to come out of nowhere or disappear without reason.

In the absence of an understanding of architective serial meaning, concepts such as existence and extinction would be meaningless to them. The same can be said of contests and a fixed identity. No circumstance could be considered 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 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 may exert stronger influences than others (for a while, in some localities), but none would be authoritatively 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.

Architective Deities

An architective deity would only be capable of architective sentience. 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 occupied 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 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 may 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 control and/or organize the architective serial meanings 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.

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 intentionally 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, being a narrative, it would be vulnerable to termination and so would strive to ensure the continuation of its narrative (and thus a sequence of architectures to provide its narrative), in order to ensure its own survival.

When reality, through following a connective serial meaning, appears to a conscious architective deity to make 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 our architective deities 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).

Our connective deities could also not interact with us, but neither could they control or organize our activities. As holisms, they would act on us by apprehending our connective activity and that in our environment, influencing only nuances of our and our environment's connective behaviour.

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

Our connective deities would have no hierarchical authority over us. Their and our own connective influences would all be fully expressed and interfere proportionally. We can contribute to a successful expression of their influence by limiting our own connective influence or ensuring that our own influences harmonize with theirs. Limiting any architective expressions on our part that hindered their expressions would also increase the significance of their apprehensive influences.

Connective deities cannot 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 represents the deity to us but is not an embodiment of the deity. So our deities, whether holistic, 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 or arrangements such as music. Even though these constellations are 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 the ingestion of a psychoactive drug. 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, 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, for example.

Being architective wholes, hierarchical deities emerge from their lower levels. Our social hierarchical deities emerge from us as their constituent objects. They in turn control us and organize our serial meaning. 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 serial meaning at different levels of an architective hierarchy will likely 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, and vice-versa, even though both are architective.

Our architective deities organize our serial meaning 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, may well organize contests and social frictions among its lower echelons simply as an amusement.

An architective deity's human venerators are not purely architective as it is. It may feel threatened by connective activities among its venerators no matter how innocent, since it cannot 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 is not likely to dispense power or control in the service of an inferior. It is much more likely to sacrifice its venerators in its own interest, and do so with the venerators' consent since it organizes their serial meaning.

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

Preferences of the 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.

The preferences of an architective deity as a religion or institution become evident in the activities of its human members, since the members express serial meanings 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).

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.

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.

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.

Conflicts 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 is a proportioning of their influences rather than a selection of some and a negation of others. All the competing deities would have their intentions expressed. Contests among architective deities, on the other hand, would result in some contestants having their intentions expressed in full while others find no expression at all. Conflicts among architective deities can be contests for existence.

The resources that connective and architective deities might 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 to achieve their ends; while connective deities could utilize the serial meanings of uncertainty, disturbance, interference and empathy.

In a conflict between architective deities alone or between connective deities alone, the competitors would be utilizing resources and strategies that each would understand. But in a conflict 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 as a sentience while each would experience reality as a seamless continuity of narratives in its own mode - with the occasional inexplicable interruptions. Both deities would be competing in the dark as it were, against an inscrutable and invisible opponent. The unexpected terminations of their narratives and incomprehensible behaviour of their venerators would be the only clues each had to the other's possible presence.

A conflict between an architective and a connective deity would come down to a competition for serial meaning. This would arise when the deities notice incomprehensible gaps in their serial narratives. For the architective deity, the loss of control that a gap signifies is a threat to its existence, and will blindly attempt to eliminate it, constrain it or contain it in an architecture. For the connective deity, a gap in its serial narrative does not pose an existential threat, only a possible undoing of a preferred aesthetic. The connective deity neither understands the concept of elimination nor the possibility that any intention will not be proportionately expressed, and so harbours no intent to threaten its opponent's existence or negate its expression. The architective deity could not understand that it is not being threatened.

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

There can be no conflicts among connective deities alone, not for existence and not for serial meaning. Conflict among unimodal deities requires that at least one be architective.

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