Our understandings of God or gods are indeed formed from a multitude of elements, where personal imagination and subjective experience play a significant role alongside other sources such as the poetic canon, legislative edicts, and artistic creativity.

Imagination and Rationality in Crafting Divine Images

Our understandings of God or gods are indeed formed from a multitude of elements, where personal imagination and subjective experience play a significant role alongside other sources such as the poetic canon, legislative edicts, and artistic creativity. One source emphasizes that conceptions of the divine have several levels of origin. On one hand, they may come from poets and legislators—that is, they represent a kind of cultural and social agreement—and on the other, from an original inner, “nature-given” perception of deities. Thus, a certain degree of subjectivity is inevitably present from the very beginning, as personal vision and creative energy (originating, for example, from the plastic or fine arts) serve as the foundation for the formation of images of the gods. This is confirmed, in particular, by the following excerpt:

"One group of such conceptions has a voluntary, persuasive character and originates from the poets; another group reflects a forced, obligatory comprehension stemming from the decrees of legislators. Certainly, these external conceptions of the gods could not have taken root and would have remained ineffective if they had not met with approval and agreement in the original, primordial, nature-given perception of the gods… Phidias, Alcamenes, Polykleitos, Aglaophon, Polygnotus, Zeuxis and even before all Daedalus did not confine their skill and art to ordinary matters but created a variety of depictions of the gods commissioned by private individuals as well as by states." (source: link txt, page: 225-228)

However, there is also an aspect in which personal imagination is capable of creating visionary images that may not correspond to objective reality. For example, in a critical remark regarding theurgy, it is noted that moments of fusion with the divine may turn out to be the product of unconscious fantasy, not supported by true essence:

"However, Porphyry still harbors one more doubt that with the help of theurgy he will achieve the highest happiness. Porphyry’s first doubt concerns what serves both as the foundation and the goal of theurgy. He is not convinced that the divine visions of the theurgist, that is, moments of union with the deity, possess an actual and genuinely divine nature. After all, they may well be the product of our own fantasy, mirages painted by our imagination that is not controlled by reason." (source: link txt, page: 1630-1631)

To eliminate doubts, it is stated that a true encounter with the divine is only possible through the intellectually apprehensible (rational) part of the soul, and not through sensory, imaginative perception. This means that although personal interpretations and fantasies may give rise to the first images of the gods, for an objective understanding of the divine, one must rely on rational, conscious perception, where imagination ceases to be merely a subjective projection.

Additionally, it is worth noting that the role of imagination encompasses all forms of creativity—from scientific hypotheses to ethical and religious concepts. In this context, mythmaking is not only a source of fantasies but also serves as an instrument for transforming life, creating new images and values (the truth of which is determined by their transformative power):

"Imagination reigns over all forms of creativity: there exists scientific imagination, technically inventive, socio-political, ethical, aesthetic, and religious imagination. There is no creativity without divination, without the act of guessing by imagination: a scientific hypothesis is just as 'divinatory' in this sense as seers and myth. The criterion of the truth of a myth lies in its sublimating power, in its ability to transform life and save. In this sense, every act of creativity is mythmaking." (source: link txt)

Thus, we can say that the formation of our conceptions of the divine is a process in which personal imagination and individual interpretations play a noticeable role. However, for these conceptions to have an objective basis, they must be integrated into the framework of rational understanding, where subjective fantasies are subjected to critical evaluation and intertwined with established cultural and intellectual traditions.