There are many names for “God.” Many are almost as old as humanity itself, pre-historical names now long forgotten.

Note: The word “God” likely derives from pre-German words meaning “pour” or “pour out.” The word pour is a lot like a word we use in our Book, flow.  At the end of this blog post, I quote a few passages from Wikipedia’s article (as of 3-14-22), God (word).

As you likely know from reading J.X. Mason’s online Book, Continuing Creation, Followers of Our Spiritual Path have an updated name for God. 

  • The name we use most is Continuing Creation: The Growing, Organizing, Direction. 
  • We also use this name: The Interlocking Processes of Continuing Creation.

These are both long names because their words describe what the names mean.  

Note: At one point, our Book included the first name shortened to an acronym, G>O>D>, where the little arrows reinforced the idea of Progressive Direction. But early readers found themselves stumbling over that acronym every time it showed up on the pages. So, J.X. Mason took it out.

No name can ever express the totality of God, of the Tao, of the G>O>D>, or of whatever name we may call it.  As the ancient Chinese sage LaoTsu said many hundreds of years ago, “The Tao that can be named is not the eternal name.” (The Tao Te Ching, Chapter 1.) Why? Because The Tao / G>O>D>/etcetera is ever changing, ever evolving.

Next week’s blog post will list out many of the Processes of Continuing Creation that we’re talking about. Four important Processes are Combination, Differentiation, Emergence, and Evolution.

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In Appendix A to our Essay, Forerunners to Our Spiritual Path, I give five different lists of widely used names for “God.” Most of these names were taken from published books of well-known theologians. Here are two of the five lists, #2 and #5. 

List #2, where God means “The Sum of All Energy”

  • The One
  • The Light
  • The Big Bang
  • The Way
  • Ultimate Cause
  • Ultimate Source
  • Primal Power
  • Prime Mover Unmoved
  • Brahman
  • Higher Power

List #5, where God means “The Sum of All Systems”

  • Continuing Creation: The Growing, Organizing, Direction of the Cosmos.
  • The Connection of All Connections
  • The Whole of All Wholes
  • The System of All Systems
  • The Sum of All Sums
  • The Totality of All Creative Systems Moving Through Time
  • The Flow, The Way, The Path
  • The Tao – The Tao means “The Path,” or “The Way.” It is perfectly described in the world’s shortest “sacred” book, The Tao Te Ching, written (according to legend) by the sage Lao Tsu:

The Tao is like a well:
Used but never used up.
It is like the eternal void:
Filled with infinite possibilities.
It is hidden but always present.
I don’t know who gave birth to it. It is older than God.

           — Lao Tsu, The Tao Te Ching, Chapter 4
                 — Stephen Mitchel, Translator, 1988, Harper Perennial


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Note: Quotes from the Wikipedia Article, “God (word)”

“The English word god comes from the Old English god, which itself is derived from the Proto-Germanic *ǥuđán. Its cognates in other Germanic languages include guþ, gudis (both Gothic), guð (Old Norse), god (Old Saxon, Old Frisian, and Old Dutch), and got (Old High German)…

“The Proto-Germanic meaning of *ǥuđán [is] thought [to] derive from the root ǵʰeu̯- “to pour”… 

“Some variant forms of the name Odin such as the Lombardic Godan may point in the direction that the Lombardic form actually comes from Proto-Germanic *ǥuđánaz… 

“Godan was shortened to God over time and was adopted/retained by the Germanic peoples of the British isles as the name of their deity, in lieu of the Latin word Deus used by the Latin speaking Christian church, after conversion to Christianity…

“God entered English when the language still had a system of grammatical gender. The word and its cognates were initially neuter but underwent transition when their speakers converted to Christianity, “as a means of distinguishing the personal God of the Christians from the impersonal divine powers acknowledged by pagans.”[5]: 15  However, traces of the neuter endured.”