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The term “Pagan” comes originally
from the Latin “paganus,” which appears to have
originally had such meanings as “villager,” “country
dweller,” or “hick.” The Roman army used it to
refer to civilians. The early Roman Christians used “pagan”
to refer to everyone who preferred to worship pre-Christian divinities,
whom the Christians had decided were all “really” demons
in disguise, based on the habit of rural folks holding on to
their old faiths longer than city folks, as well as because the
polytheists were unwilling to enroll in “the Army of the
Lord.” Over the centuries, “pagan” became simply
an insult, applied to the monotheistic followers of Islam by
the Christians (and vice versa), and by the Protestants and Catholics
towards each other, as it gradually gained the connotation of
“a false religion and its followers.” By the beginning
of the twentieth century, the word’s primary meanings became
a blend of “atheist,” “agnostic,” “hedonist,”
“religionless,” etc., (when referring to an educated,
white, male, heterosexual, non-Celtic European) and “ignorant
savage and/or pervert” (when referring to everyone else
on the planet).
Today there are many people who proudly call
ourselves “Pagan,” and we use the word differently
from the ways that most mainstream Westerners do. To most of
us, “Paganism” is a general term for polytheistic
religions old and new, with “Pagan” used
as the adjective as well as the membership term. The overwhelming
majority of all the human beings who have ever lived were or
are Pagans, and we believe that there is an enormous wealth of
spiritual insight and strength to be gained from following a
Pagan path. There are three important points to be noted here,
however:
- Like the members of every other religious
community, we Pagans have the right to define ourselves
and to demand that our definitions, rather than (or in
addition to) those invented by individuals and institutions hostile
to us, be quoted or referenced when we are discussed by the mass
media.
- Like the names of all other religions and
their followers, “Pagan” and “Paganism”
deserve a capital letter, just as “Buddhist,”
“Christian,” “Protestant,” or “Bahai”
do.
- Like other general terms for religions, “Pagan/Paganism”
requires modifying prefixes or adjectives in order to
communicate specific approaches, denominations or sects. The
following are the ones I have settled upon over the last thirtyfive
years:
“Paleopaganism”
or “Paleo-Paganism” is a general term for the original
polytheistic, nature-centered faiths of tribal Europe, Africa,
Asia, the Americas, Oceania and Australia, when they were (or
in some rare cases, still are) practiced as intact belief systems.
Of the so-called “Great Religions of the World,” Hinduism
(prior to the influx of Islam into India), Taoism
and Shinto,
for example, fall under this category, though many members of
these faiths might be reluctant to use the term. Some Paleopagan
belief systems may be racist, sexist, homophobic, etc. There
are billions of Paleopagans living and worshiping their deities
today.
“Mesopaganism”
or “Meso-Paganism” is a general term for a variety
of movements both organized and nonorganized, started as attempts
to recreate, revive or continue what their founders thought
were the best aspects of the Paleopagan ways of their ancestors
(or predecessors), but which were heavily influenced (accidentally,
deliberately and/or involuntarily) by concepts and practices
from the monotheistic, dualistic, or nontheistic worldviews of
Zoroastrianism, Judaism, Christianity, Islam, or early Buddhism.
Examples of Mesopagan belief systems would include Freemasonry,
Rosicrucianism, Theosophy,
Spiritualism, etc.,
as well as those forms of Druidism
influenced by those movements, the many Afro-Diasporatic faiths
(such as Voudoun,
Santeria, Candomble,
etc.), Sikhism, several
sects of Hinduism that have been influenced by Islam and Christianity,
Mahayana Buddhism, Aleister
Crowley’s religion/philosophy of Thelema,
Odinism (some Norse Paganism), most “Family Traditions”
of Witchcraft (those that aren’t completely fake), and most
orthodox (aka “British Traditionalist”) denominations
of Wicca.
Also included as Mesopagans would be the so-called
“Christo-Pagans,” those who call themselves “monotheist
Pagans,” and perhaps those Satanists who worship the Egyptian
deity Set, if there really are any. The Satanists who insist
that they don’t worship anything other than themselves but
who like to use the name Satan because it’s “scary,”
are simply Christian heretics, along with the Secular
Humanists and other Western atheists, because the God
and Devil they don’t believe in are the ones defined by
Christian doctrine. Some Mesopagan belief systems may be
racist, sexist, homophobic, etc. There are at least a billion
Mesopagans living and worshiping their deities today.
“Neopaganism”
or “Neo-Paganism” is a general term for a variety of
movements both organized and (usually) nonorganized, started
since 1960 c.e. or so (though they had literary roots going back
to the mid-1800’s), as attempts to recreate, revive or continue
what their founders thought were the best aspects of the
Paleopagan ways of their ancestors (or predecessors), blended
with modern humanistic, pluralist and inclusionary ideals, while
consciously striving to eliminate as much as possible of the
traditional Western monotheism, dualism, and puritanism. The
core Neopagan beliefs include
a multiplicity of deities of all genders, a perception of those
deities as both immanent and transcendent, a commitment to environmental
awareness, and a willingness to perform magical as well as spiritual
rituals to help both ourselves and others. Examples of Neopaganism
would include the Church of All
Worlds, most heterodox
Wiccan traditions, Druidism as practiced by Ár
nDraíocht Féin and the Henge
of Keltria, some Norse Paganism, and some modern forms of
Buddhism whose members refer to themselves as “Buddheo-Pagans.”
Neopagan belief systems are not racist, sexist, homophobic,
etc. There are hundreds of thousands of Neopagans living and
worshiping their deities today. As “Neo-Paganism,”
this term was popularized in the 1960’s and 1970’s
by Oberon Zell, a founder of the Church
of All Worlds.
The term “Neopaganism” has nothing
to do with the Catholic Church’s recent use of “neo-paganism”
to refer to Hitler’s Germanic Mesopaganism, which incorporated
nineteen centuries of Christian anti-semitism and dualism. Hitler,
after all, considered himself a good Christian and was perceived
as such by many, if not most, German Christians at the time.
The Catholic Church is simply trying to distract attention away
from its responsibility for creating the Western cultural environment
that dehumanized Jews, and from its pathetic record in opposing
the Holocaust while it was going on (not to mention the value
to the Church in trashing competing new religions by associating
us with the Nazis).
These three prefixed terms do not delineate
clear-cut categories. Historically,
there is often a period, whether of decades or centuries, when
Paleopaganism is blending into Mesopaganism, or Mesopaganism
into Neopaganism. Furthermore, the founders and members of Mesopagan
and Neopagan groups frequently prefer to believe (or at least
declare) that they are genuinely Paleopagan in beliefs and practices.
This “myth of continuity” is in keeping with the habits
of most creators and members of new religions throughout human
existence, and should not be taken too seriously.
When doing searching on the Net, you should
be aware that some people do and some don’t hyphenate these
terms, especially “Neo-Paganism,” that many Neopagans
drop the “Neo-” entirely (especially in casual use),
and that many outsiders refuse to capitalize the names of our
religions. More confusingly, many Mesopagans and Paleopagans
refuse to use the term “Pagan” for themselves at all,
having accepted the mainstream Christian definitions. One sign
of progress, however, occured when the publishers of Hinduism
Today — a fabulous monthly journal published
in a dozen languages around the globe — printed an editorial
a few years back in which they proudly accepted the term “Pagan”
on behalf of the one billion Hindus in the world!
Obviously, the use of this vocabulary is currently
in flux, and you may need to try variant spellings, capitalizations,
and hyphenizations to find what you’re looking for.
Some of this material is taken from my Pagan Glossary of Terms, elsewhere
on my website. I will eventually have a page here listing definitions
for Paganism and Neopaganism written by other Pagan authors and
groups.
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