What is Paganism?
The Basics
Pagans may be trained in particular
traditions or they may follow their own inspiration. Paganism is not
dogmatic. Pagans pursue their own vision of the Divine as a direct and
personal experience.
The Pagan Federation recognizes the rich
diversity of traditions that form the body of modern Paganism. In a
brief introductory booklet, it is not possible to describe each and
every one. Rather than attempt this, the pages in this section – links
are on the left hand side of this page contain an introduction to six
examples of major Pagan traditions.
This is not an exhaustive list, but
these six traditions provide a good overview of modern Pagan practice. A
suggested reading list is also available.
Some authors see the emergence of
Paganism in the twentieth century as a revival of an older Pagan
religion and describe all the above traditions as Neo-Pagan.
This term is also used to describe all
those who are recognisably Pagan, but who do not adhere to any of the
above traditions per se.
A definition of a Pagan: A follower of a polytheistic or pantheistic nature-worshipping religion.
A definition of Paganism: A polytheistic or pantheistic nature-worshipping religion.
What Paganism Is
Paganism is the ancestral religion of
the whole of humanity. This ancient religious outlook remains active
throughout much of the world today, both in complex civilisations such
as Japan and India, and in less complex tribal societies world-wide. It
was the outlook of the European religions of classical antiquity –
Persia, Egypt, Greece and Rome – as well as of their “barbarian”
neighbours on the northern fringes, and its European form is re-emerging
into explicit awareness in the modern West as the articulation of
urgent contemporary religious priorities.
The Pagan outlook can be seen as threefold. Its adherents venerate Nature and worship many deities, both goddesses and gods.
The spirit of place is recognised in
Pagan religion, whether as a personified natural feature such as a
mountain, lake or spring, or as a fully articulated guardian divinity
such as, for example, Athena, the goddess of Athens. The cycle of the
natural year, with the different emphasis brought by its different
seasons, is seen by most Pagans as a model of spiritual growth and
renewal, and as a sequence marked by festivals which offer access to
different divinities according to their affinity with different times of
year. Many Pagans see the Earth itself as sacred: in ancient Greece the
Earth was always offered the first libation of wine, although She had
no priesthood and no temple.
Polytheism: Pluralism and Diversity
The many deities of Paganism are a
recognition of the diversity of Nature. Some Pagans see the goddesses
and gods as a community of individuals much like the diverse human
community in this world. Others, such as followers of Isis and Osiris
from ancient times onwards, and Wiccan-based Pagans in the modern world,
see all the goddesses as one Great Goddess, and all the gods as one
Great God, whose harmonious interaction is the secret of the universe.
Yet others think there is a supreme divine principle, that “both wants
and does not want to be called Zeus”, as Heraclitus wrote in the fifth
century BCE, or which is the Great Goddess Mother of All Things, as Isis
was to the first century CE novelist Apuleius and the Great Goddess is
to many Western Pagans nowadays. Yet others, such as the Emperor Julian,
the great restorer of Paganism in Christian antiquity, and many Hindu
mystics nowadays, believe in an abstract Supreme Principle, the origin
and source of all things. But even these last Pagans recognise that
other spiritual beings, although perhaps one in essence with a greater
being, are themselves divine, and are not false or partial divinities.
Pagans who worship the One are described as henotheists, believers in a
supreme divine principle, rather than monotheists, believers in one true
deity beside which all other deities are false.
Pagan religions all recognise the
feminine face of divinity. A religion without goddesses can hardly be
classified as Pagan. Some Pagan paths, such as the cult of Odin or of
Mithras, offer exclusive allegiance to one male god. But they do not
deny the reality of other gods and goddesses, as monotheists do. (The
word ‘cult’ has always meant the specialised veneration of one
particular deity or pantheon, and has only recently been extended to
mean the worship of a deified or semi-divine human leader.) By contrast,
non-Pagan religions, such as Judaism, Christianity and Islam, often
abhor the very idea of female divinity. The (then) Anglican Bishop of
London even said a few years ago that religions with goddesses were
‘degenerate’!
Other Characteristics
The many divinities of Pagan religion
often include ancestral deities. The Anglo-Saxon royal houses of England
traced their ancestry back to a god, usually Woden, and the Celtic
kings of Cumbria traced their descent from the god Beli and the goddess
Anna. Local and national heroes and heroines may be deified, as was
Julius Caesar, and in all Pagan societies the deities of the household
are venerated. These may include revered ancestors and, for a while, the
newly dead, who may of may not choose to leave the world of the living
for good. They may include local spirits of place, either as personified
individuals such as the spirit of a spring or the house’s guardian toad
or snake, or as group spirits such as Elves in England, the Little
People in Ireland, Kobolds in Germany, Barstuccae in Lithuania, Lares
and Penates in ancient Rome, and so on. A household shrine focuses the
cult of these deities, and there is usually an annual ritual to honour
them. The spirit of the hearth is often venerated, sometimes with a
daily offering of food and drink, sometimes with an annual ritual of
extinguishing and relighting the fire. Through ancestral and domestic
ritual a spirit of continuity is preserved, and by the transmission of
characteristics and purposes from the past, the future is assured of
meaning.
So, not all Pagan religion is public
religion; much is domestic. And not all Pagan deities are humanoid
super-persons; many are elemental or collective. We are looking at a
religion which pervades the whole of everyday life.
One consequence of the veneration of
Nature, the outlook which sees Nature as a manifestation of divinity
rather than as a neutral or inanimate object, is that divination and
magic are accepted parts of life. Augury, divination by interpreting the
flight of birds, was widespread in the ancient world and is in modern
Pagan societies, as is extispicy, divination by reading the entrails of
the sacrificed animal, itself a larger scale version of divination by
reading the tea-leaves left in a teacup. As well as reading the signs
already given by deities, diviners may also actively ask the universe to
send a sign, e.g., by casting stones to read the geomantic patterns
into which they fall, by casting runes or the yarrow stalks of the I
Ching. Pagans usually believe that the divine world will answer a
genuine request for information. Trance seership and mediumship are also
used to communicate with the Otherworld.
Magic, the deliberate production of
results in this world by Otherworld means, is generally accepted as a
feasible activity in Pagan societies, since the two worlds are thought
to be in constant communication. In ancient Rome a new bride would
ceremonially anoint the doorposts of her new home with wolf’s fat to
keep famine from the household, and her new-born child would be given a
consecrated amulet to wear as a protection against harmful spirits. The
Norse warriors of the Viking age would cast the magical ‘war fetter’
upon their enemies to paralyse them, and Anglo-Saxon manuscripts record
spells to bring healing and fertility. Specialist magical technologists
such as horse-whisperers and healers are common throughout Pagan
societies, but often the practice of magic for unfair personal gain or
for harm to another is forbidden, exactly as physical extortion and
assault are forbidden everywhere.
Modern Paganism
With its respect for plurality, the
refusal to judge other ways of life as wrong simply because they are
different from one’s own, with its veneration of a natural (and
supernatural) world from which Westerners in the age of technology have
become increasingly isolated, and with its respect for women and the
feminine principle as embodied in the many goddesses of the various
pantheons, Paganism has much to offer people of European background
today. Hence it is being taken up by them in droves. When they realise
that it is in fact their ancestral heritage, its attraction grows.
Democracy, for example, was pioneered by the ancient Athenians and much
later reinvented by the Pagan colonisers of Iceland, home of Europe’s
oldest parliament. Our modern love of the arts was fostered in Pagan
antiquity, with its pageants and its temples, but had no place in
iconoclastic Christianity and Islam. The development of science as we
know it began in the desire of the Greeks and Babylonians to understand
the hidden patterns of Nature, and the cultivation of humane urbanity,
the ideal of the well-rounded, cultured personality, was imported by
Renaissance thinkers from the writings of Cicero. In the Pagan cities of
the Mediterranean lands the countryside was never far from people’s
awareness, with parks, gardens and even zoos, all re-introduced into
modern Europe, not by the religions of the Book, and not by utilitarian
atheists, but by the Classically-inspired planners of the Enlightenment.
In the present day, the Pagan tradition
manifests both as communities reclaiming their ancient sites and
ceremonies (especially in Eastern Europe), to put humankind back in
harmony with the Earth, and as individuals pursuing a personal spiritual
path alone or in a small group (especially in Western Europe and the
European-settled countries abroad), under the tutelage of one of the
Pagan divinities. To most modern Pagans in the West, the whole of life
is to be affirmed joyfully and without shame, as long as other people
are not harmed by one’s own tastes. Modern Pagans tend to be relaxed and
at ease with themselves and others, and women in particular have a
dignity which is not always found outside Pagan circles.
Modern Pagans, not tied down either by
the customs of an established religion or by the dogmas of a revealed
one, are often creative, playful and individualistic, affirming the
importance of the individual psyche as it interfaces with a greater
power. There is a respect for all of life and usually a desire to
participate with rather than to dominate other beings. What playwright
Eugene O’Neil called “the creative Pagan acceptance of life” is at the
forefront of the modern movement. This is bringing something new to
religious life and to social behaviour, a way of pluralism without
fragmentation, of creativity without anarchy. Here is an age-old current
surfacing in a new form suited to the needs of the present day.
Kind thanks to Prudence Jones for the wording of this pagePlease give full credit for the article to :
http://www.paganfederation.org/what-is-paganism/
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