Not to be confused with Pagani.
"Pagan" and "Heathen" redirect here. For other usages, see Pagan (disambiguation) and Heathen
(disambiguation)
Paganism (from Latin paganus, meaning "country dweller", "rustic") is a blanket term typically used
to refer to religious traditions which are polytheistic or indigenous.
It is primarily used in a historical context, Greco-Roman polytheism as well as the polytheistic
traditions of Europe and North Africa before Christianization. In a wider sense, extended to
contemporary religions, it includes most of the Eastern religions and the indigenous traditions of the
Americas, Central Asia, Australia and Africa; as well as non-Abrahamic folk religion in general. More
narrow definitions will not include any of the world religions and restrict the term to local or rural
currents not organized as civil religions. Characteristic of Pagan traditions is the absence of proselytism
and the presence of a living mythology, which informs religious practice.
Ethnologists often avoid the term "pagan," with its uncertain and varied meanings, in referring to
traditional or historic faiths, preferring more precise categories such as polytheism, shamanism,
pantheism, or animism.
In the late 20th century, "Paganism", or "Neopaganism", became widely used in reference to adherents
of various New Religious Movements including Wicca. As such, various modern scholars have begun
to apply the term to three groups of separate faiths: Historical Polytheism (such as Celtic polytheism,
Norse Paganism, the Cultus Deorum Romanorum and Hellenic Polytheistic Reconstructionism also
called Hellenismos), Folk/ethnic/Indigenous religions (such as Chinese folk religion and African
traditional religion), and Neopaganism (such as Wicca and Neo- Druidism
Pagan
The term pagan is from the Latin paganus, an adjective originally meaning "rural", "rustic", or "of the
country." As a noun, paganus was used to mean "country dweller, villager."[3] The semantic
development of post-classical Latin paganus in the sense "non-Christian, heathen" is unclear. The
dating of this sense is controversial, but the 4th century seems most plausible. An earlier example has
been suggested in Tertullian De Corona Militis xi, "Apud hunc [sc. Christum] tam miles est paganus
fidelis quam paganus est miles fidelis," but here the word paganus is generally interpreted as "civilian,"
since the alternative would be that Tertullian had written of "In Christ... the faithful pagan." There are
three main explanations of the development:
• (i) The older sense of classical Latin pāgānus is "of the country, rustic" (also as noun). It has
been argued that the transferred use reflects the fact that the ancient idolatry lingered on in the
rural villages and hamlets after Christianity had been accepted in the towns and cities of the
Roman Empire; cf. Orosius Histories 1. Prol. "Ex locorum agrestium compitis et pagis pagani
vocantur." From its earliest beginnings, Christianity spread much more quickly in major urban
areas (like Antioch, Alexandria, Carthage, Corinth, Rome) than in the countryside (in fact, the
early church was almost entirely urban and soon the word for "country dweller" became
synonymous with someone who was "not a Christian," giving rise to the modern meaning of
"pagan." This may, in part, have had to do with the closeness to nature of rural people, who may
have been more resistant to the new ideas of Christianity than those who lived in major urban
centers and were cut off from the cycles of nature and the forms of spirituality associated with
them. However, it may have also resulted from early Christian missionaries focusing their
efforts within major population centers (e.g., St. Paul), rather than throughout an expansive, yet
sparsely populated, countryside (hence, the Latin term suggesting "uneducated country folk")
until a bit later on.
• (ii) The more common meaning of classical Latin pāgānus is "civilian, non-militant" (adjective
and noun). Christians called themselves mīlitēs, "enrolled soldiers" of Christ, members of his
militant church, and applied to non-Christians the term applied by soldiers to all who were "not
enrolled in the army".
• (iii) The sense "heathen" arose from an interpretation of paganus as denoting a person who was
outside a particular group or community, hence "not of the city" or "rural"; cf. Orosius Histories
1. Prol. "ui alieni a civitate dei..pagani vocantur." See C. Mohrmann, Vigiliae Christianae 6
(1952) 9ff.
—Oxford English Dictionary, (online) 2nd Edition (1989)
The post-classical Latin paganismus gave rise to both paganism and to its synonym paynimry.
Paynimry may be used of paganism, its practises, and pagans, as well as for the domain or realm of
pagans.
"Peasant" is a cognate, via Old French paisent.
In their origins, these usages derived from pagus, "province, countryside", cognate to Greek πάγος
"rocky hill", and, even earlier, "something stuck in the ground", as a landmark: the Proto-Indo-
European root *pag- means "fixed" and is also the source of the words page, pale (stake), and pole, as
well as pact and peace.
While pagan is attested in English from the 14th century, there is no evidence that the term paganism
was in use in English before the 17th century. The OED instances Edward Gibbon's Decline and Fall
of the Roman Empire (1776): "The divisions of Christianity suspended the ruin of Paganism." The term
was not a neologism, however, as paganismus was already used by Augustine.
Less than twenty years after the last vestiges of Paganism were crushed with great severity by the
emperor Theodosius I Rome was seized by Alaric in 410. This led to murmuring that the gods of
Paganism had taken greater care of the city than that of the Christian God, inspiring St Augustine to
write The City of God, alternative title "De Civitate Dei contra Paganos: The City of God against the
Pagans", in which he claimed that whilst the great 'city of Man' had fallen, Christians were ultimately
citizens of the 'city of God.'
Heathen
"Heathen" redirects here. For other uses, see Heathen (disambiguation).
Heathen is from Old English hæðen "not Christian or Jewish" (c.f. Old Norse heiðinn). Historically, the
term was probably influenced by Gothic haiþi "dwelling on the heath", appearing as haiþno in Ulfilas'
bible as "gentile woman" (translating the "Hellene" in Mark 7:26). This translation was probably
influenced by Latin paganus, "country dweller", or it was chosen because of its similarity to the Greek
ἐθνικός ethnikos, "gentile". It has even been suggested that Gothic haiþi is not related to "heath" at all,
but rather a loan from Armenian hethanos, itself loaned from Greek ἔθνος ethnos.
Terminology
Further information: Idolatry, Polytheism, and Ethnic religion
Both "pagan" and "heathen" have historically been used as a pejorative by adherents of monotheistic
religions (such as Judaism, Christianity and Islam) to indicate a disbeliever in their religion; although in
modern times it is not always used as a pejorative. "Paganism" frequently refers to the religions of
classical antiquity, most notably Greek mythology or Roman religion; and can be used neutrally or
admiringly by those who refer to those complexes of belief. However, until the rise of Romanticism
and the general acceptance of freedom of religion in Western civilization, "paganism" was almost
always used disparagingly of heterodox beliefs falling outside the established political framework of
the Christian Church.
Hypatia of Alexandria, philosopher, mathematician and astronomer, a pagan killed by a Christian mob
in March 415 CE.
"Pagan" came to be equated with a Christianized sense of "epicurean" to signify a person who is
sensual, materialistic, self-indulgent, unconcerned with the future and uninterested in sophisticated
religion. The word was usually used in this worldly and stereotypical sense, particularly among those
who were drawing attention to what they perceived as being the limitations of Paganism. Thus G. K.
Chesterton wrote: "The Pagan set out, with admirable sense, to enjoy himself. By the end of his
civilization he had discovered that a man cannot enjoy himself and continue to enjoy anything else." In
sharp contrast, Swinburne the poet would comment on this same theme: "Thou hast conquered, O pale
Galilean; the world has grown grey from thy breath; We have drunken of things Lethean, and fed on the
fullness of death."
Christianity itself has been perceived at times as a form of polytheism by followers of the other
Abrahamic religions because of the Christian doctrine of the Trinity (which at first glance might
suggest Tritheism, or the celebration of Pagan feast days and other practices – through a process
described as "baptizing" or "Christianization". Even between Christians there have been similar charges
of idolatry levelled, especially by Protestants, towards the Roman Catholic and Orthodox Churches for
their veneration of the saints and images.
Historical paganism
Further information: Prehistoric religion and Polytheism
In the Christian perspective the term has been used historically to encompass all non–Abrahamic
religions. The term pagan is a Christian adaptation of the "gentile" of Judaism, and as such has an
inherent Abrahamic bias, and pejorative connotations among monotheists, comparable to heathen and
infidel. Words such as kafir and mushrik are similarly used by Muslims. Peter Brown observes:
The adoption of paganus by Latin Christians as an all-embracing, pejorative term for
polytheists represents an unforeseen and singularly long-lasting victory, within a religious
group, of a word of Latin slang originally devoid of religious meaning. The evolution
occurred only in the Latin west, and in connection with the Latin church. Elsewhere,
"Hellene" or "gentile" (ethnikos) remained the word for "pagan"; and paganos continued as
a purely secular term, with overtones of the inferior and the commonplace.
Bronze Age to Early Iron Age
• Religions of the Ancient Near East
• Ancient Egyptian religion
• Ancient Semitic religion
• Mesopotamian religion
• reconstructed Proto-Indo-European religion
• Proto-Indo-Iranian religion
• historical Vedic religion
Classical Antiquity
Main articles: Religion in ancient Greece, Ancient Roman religion, Hellenistic religion, Roman
imperial cult, and Mystery religion
Ludwig Feuerbach (1833) defines "Paganism" (Heidentum) in the context of classical antiquity as "the
unity of religion and politics, of spirit and nature, of god and man", qualified by the observation that
"man" in the Pagan view is always defined by ethnicity, i.e. Greek, Roman, Egyptian, Jew, etc., so that
each Pagan tradition is also a national tradition. Feuerbach goes on to postulate that the emergence of
monotheism and thus the end of the Pagan period was a development which naturally grew out of
Hellenistic philosophy due to the contradiction inherent in the ethnic nature of Pagan tradition and the
universality of human spirituality (Geist), finally resulting in the emergence of a religion with a
universalist scope in the form of Christianity.
Late Antiquity
Further information: Origins of Christianity, Decline of Hellenistic paganism, Magic in the Greco-
Roman world, and Hellenic philosophy and Christianity
The developments of Late Antiquity in the religious thought in the far-flung Roman Empire needs to be
addressed separately, as this is the context in which Early Christianity itself developed as one of several
monotheistic cults, and it was in this period that the concept of "pagan" developed in the first place.
Christianity as it emerged out of Second Temple Judaism (or Hellenistic Judaism) stood in competition
with other religions advocating "pagan monotheism", including Neoplatonism, Mithraism, Gnosticism,
Manichaeanism, and the cult of Dionysus.
Dionysus in particular exhibits significant parallels with Christ, so that numerous scholars have
concluded that the recasting of Jesus the wandering rabbi into the image of Christ the Logos, the divine
saviour, reflects the cult of Dionysus directly. They point to the symbolism of wine and the importance
it held in the mythology surrounding both Dionysus and Jesus Christ; Wick argues that the use of wine
symbolism in the Gospel of John, including the story of the Marriage at Cana at which Jesus turns
water into wine, was intended to show Jesus as superior to Dionysus. The scene in The Bacchae
wherein Dionysus appears before King Pentheus on charges of claiming divinity is compared to the
New Testament scene of Jesus being interrogated by Pontius Pilate.
For these reasons, it is difficult if not impossible to draw a clear line between "Christianity" and
"Paganism" for the period of the 3rd to 4th centuries when Christianity was in its formative phase. Only
with the emergence of Orthodox Christianity as reflected in the Apostle's Creed and the final decline of
Hellenistic paganism by the 6th century does "Paganism" become a concept clearly distinct from
Christianity.
Ethnic religions of pre-Christian Europe
(as opposed to Abrahamic religion)
• Celtic polytheism
• Germanic paganism
• Slavic paganism
• Baltic paganism
• Finnic paganism
• Vainakh paganism
• Armenian paganism
Pagan survivals in folklore
Further information: Folklore
In addition, folklore that is not any longer perceived as holding any religious significance can in some
instances be traced to pre-Christian or pre-Islamic origins. In Europe, this is particularly the case with
the various customs of Carnival or Fasnacht and the Yule traditions surrounding Santa
Claus/Sinterklaas. By contrast, the Christmas tree in spite of frequent association with Thor's Oak
cannot be shown to be an innovation predating the Early Modern period.
Early Modern period
Interest in pagan traditions was revived in the Renaissance, at first in Renaissance magic as a revival of
Greco-Roman magic. In the 17th century, description of paganism turned from the theological aspect to
the ethnological, and a religion began to be understood as part of the ethnic identity of a people, and the
study of the religions of "primitive" peoples triggered questions as to the ultimate historical origin of
religion. Thus, Nicolas Fabri de Peiresc saw the pagan religions of Africa of his day as relicts that were
in principle capable of shedding light on the historical Paganism of Classical Antiquity.
Romanticism
Paganism re-surfaces as a topic of fascination in 18th to 19th century Romanticism, in particular in the
context of the literary Celtic and Viking revivals, which portrayed historical Celtic and Germanic
polytheists as noble savages.
The 19th century also saw much scholarly interest in the reconstruction of pagan mythology from
folklore or fairy tales. This was notably attempted by the Brothers Grimm, especially Jacob Grimm in
his Teutonic Mythology, and Elias Lönnrot with the compilation of the Kalevala. The work of the
Brothers Grimm influenced other collectors, both inspiring them to collect tales and leading them to
similarly believe that the fairy tales of a country were particularly representative of it, to the neglect of
cross-cultural influence. Among those influenced were the Russian Alexander Afanasyev, the
Norwegians Peter Christen Asbjørnsen and Jørgen Moe, and the Englishman Joseph Jacobs.
Romanticist interest in non-classical antiquity coincided with the rise of Romantic nationalism and the
rise of the nation state in the context of the 1848 revolutions, leading to the creation of national epics
and national myths for the various newly formed states. Pagan or folkloristic topics were also common
in the Musical nationalism of the period.
Contemporary Paganism
Romuvan priestess conducting a ceremony in Lithuania. Romuva is the Neopagan revival of the ethnic
religion of the Lithuanians and the Balts.
Contemporary Paganism, or Neopaganism, includes reconstructed religions such as the Cultus Deorum
Romanorum, Hellenic polytheism, Slavic neopaganism (i.e. Slavianstvo, including Rodnovery), Celtic
Reconstructionist Paganism, or Germanic religious reconstructionism, as well as modern eclectic
traditions such as Discordianism, Wicca and its many offshoots.
Many of the "revivals", Wicca and Neo-druidism in particular, have their roots in 19th century
Romanticism and retain noticeable elements of occultism or theosophy that were current then, setting
them apart from historical rural (paganus) folk religion.
The hammer Mjöllnir is one of the primary symbols of Germanic Neopaganism. Pendants of the
Mjöllnir are commonly worn amongst Germanic Neopagans.
• Paleopaganism: A retronym coined to contrast with "Neopaganism", "original polytheistic,
nature-centered faiths", such as the pre-Hellenistic Greek and pre-imperial Roman religion, pre-
Migration period Germanic paganism as described by Tacitus, or Celtic polytheism as described
by Julius Caesar. Among extant "major religions", Bonewits would count as Paleopagan
Hinduism as it stood prior to the Islamic invasions of India, Shintoism and Taoism.
• Mesopaganism: A group, which is, or has been, significantly influenced by monotheistic,
dualistic, or nontheistic worldviews, but has been able to maintain an independence of religious
practices. This group includes aboriginal Americans as well as Australian aborigines, Viking
Age Norse paganism and New Age spirituality. Influences include: Freemasonry,
Rosicrucianism, Theosophy, Spiritualism, and the many Afro-Diasporic faiths like Haitian
Vodou, Santería and Espiritu religion. Isaac Bonewits includes British Traditional Wicca in this
subdivision.
• Neopaganism : A movement by modern people to revive nature-worshipping, pre-Christian
religions or other nature-based spiritual paths, frequently also incorporating contemporary
liberal values at odds with ancient paganism. This definition may include groups such as Wicca,
Neo-Druidism, Ásatrú, and Rodnovery.
Prudence Jones and Nigel Pennick in their A History of Pagan Europe (1995) classify "pagan religions"
as characterized by the following traits:
• polytheism : Pagan religions recognise a plurality of divine beings, which may or may not
be considered aspects of an underlying unity (the soft and hard polytheism distinction)
• "nature-based": Pagan religions have a concept of the divinity of Nature, which they view
as a manifestation of the divine, not as the "fallen" creation found in Dualistic cosmology.
• "sacred feminine": Pagan religions recognize "the female divine principle", identified as
"the Goddess" (as opposed to individual goddesses) besides or in place of the male divine
principle as expressed in the Abrahamic God.
In modern times, "Heathen" and "Heathenry" are increasingly used to refer to those branches of
Paganism inspired by the pre-Christian religions of the Germanic, Scandinavian and Anglo-Saxon
peoples.
Demographics
Paganism has been previously defined broadly, to encompass many or most of the faith traditions
outside the Abrahamic religions.
The term has also been used more narrowly, however, to refer only to religions outside the very large
group of so-called Axial Age faiths that encompass both the Abrahamic religions and the chief Indian
religions. Under this narrower definition, which differs from that historically used by many (though by
no means all[ Christians and other Westerners, contemporary Paganism is a smaller and more marginal
numerical phenomenon. According to Encyclopædia Britannica estimates (as of 2005), adherents of
Chinese folk religion account for some 6.3% of world population, and adherents of tribal religions
("ethnoreligionists") for another 4.0%. The number of adherents of neopaganism is insignificant in
comparison, amounting to 0.02% of world population at the most, or some 0.4% of the "ethnoreligious"
population.
Legacy
Concepts of progress
According to Carl Mitcham, "the Christian mythology of progress toward transcendent salvation"
created the conditions for modern ideas of scientific and technological progress.] Hayden White
describes "the myth of Progress" as the "secular, Enlightenment counterpart" of "Christian myth".
Reinhold Niebuhr described the modern idea of ethical and scientific progress as "really a rationalized
version of the Christian myth of salvation".
Political and philosophical ideas
According to Mircea Eliade, the medieval "Gioacchinian myth [...] of universal renovation in a more or
less imminent future" has influenced a number of modern theories of history, such as those of Lessing
(who explicitly compares his views to those of medieval "enthusiasts"), Fichte, Hegel, and Schelling,
and has also influenced a number of Russian writers.
Calling Marxism "a truly messianic Judaeo-Christian ideology", Eliade writes that Marxism "takes up
and carries on one of the great eschatological myths of the Middle Eastern and Mediterranean world,
namely: the redemptive part to be played by the Just (the 'elect', the 'anointed', the 'innocent', the
'missioners', in our own days the proletariat), whose sufferings are invoked to change the ontological
status of the world".
In his article "The Christian Mythology of Socialism", Will Herberg argues that socialism inherits the
structure of its ideology from the influence of Christian mythology upon western thought.
In The Oxford Companion to World Mythology, David Leeming claims that Judeo-Christian messianic
ideas have influenced twentieth-century totalitarian systems, citing Soviet Communism as an example.
According to Hugh S. Pyper, the biblical "founding myths of the Exodus and the exile, read as stories
in which a nation is forged by maintaining its ideological and racial purity in the face of an oppressive
great power", entered "the rhetoric of nationalism throughout European history", especially in
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