Some (relatively) short comments and quotations from various sources that may prove useful.
WHO ARE THE PAGANS? By Embreis23, originally written for Athens Pagan Pride Day 2023
On Saturday, Oct. 5, Athens Pagan Pride Day will be celebrated in downtown Athens, on College Square from 5-10 pm. This will be the 12th Annual Athens Pagan Pride Day, the 11th organized by Athens Area Pagans, Inc. (AAP), and the 3d to be held on College Square. AAP was organized in 2005, has held weekly public meetings since, and is a non-profit religious organization recognized by the IRS under section 501(c)(3).
Because not many people know that Pagans exist, we hold Pagan Pride Day to show the community that we exist, and are ordinary people, and are not sinister or scary.
We also hope to explain some of what it means to be Pagan. That’s difficult because Modern Paganism is a religious movement, but it isn’t a single religion. Rather, it is a group of religions, with many differences, united by a history and culture.
The national Pagan Pride Project, which oversees Pagan Pride Day celebrations all over the world, uses this definition:
“A Pagan or NeoPagan is someone who self-identifies as a Pagan, and whose spiritual or religious practice or belief fits into one or more of the following categories:
- “Honoring, revering, or worshipping a Deity or Deities found in pre-Christian, classical, aboriginal, or tribal mythology; and/or
- “Practicing religion or spirituality based upon shamanism, shamanic, or magickal practices; and/or
- “Creating new religion based on past Pagan religions and/or futuristic views of society, community, and/or ecology;
- “Focusing religious or spiritual attention primarily on the Divine Feminine; and/or
- “Practicing religion that focuses on earth based spirituality.”
The AAP’s semi-official definition is this:
“We are not dogmatic or exclusionist: the founders could fairly be described as Wiccan- influenced Eclectics, but we have or have had Druids, Heathens, Feri, Cabalists and Thelemites among the regulars at different times. The working definition from the beginning was that anyone who felt excluded by the Big Religions and was comfortable with the word ‘Pagan’ was invited.”
Paganism, then, is diverse, and any generalization about what Pagans are or believe will likely make someone angry, but I will venture a few, in light of 35 plus years of practice and study.
The word “Pagan” derives from a Latin word that originally meant “country people,” but which, for complicated reasons, early Christians adopted as a term of abuse for people who refused to convert to Christianity. From the late Roman era until sometime in the 19th Century, “paganus” and its equivalents in other languages simply meant “not Christian.”
Although European artists and poets had begun using “Pagan” in a more accepting sense earlier, Modern Paganism as a public phenomenon began in 1954 with the publication of Witchcraft Today by Gerald Gardner. Gardner, a British public servant, revealed that he was leading a secret group in a revival of what he called “the Religion of Witchcraft” or “The Craft of the Wise.” According to Gardner, what he was teaching was a system thousands of years old that had been passed down secretly through the centuries.
Gardner’s claims remain controversial, but after the publication of Witchcraft Today, other groups revealed that they were following similar practices, mostly centered on the worship of a Great Mother Goddess, and her consort, often referred to as The Horned God. That is the basis of one of the main branches of modern Paganism, Traditionalist Witchcraft, also called Initiatory Religious Witchcraft.
Other widespread strands of Paganism are Reconstructionism and Eclecticism. Reconstructionists seek to revive the religions of the ancients by studying ancient documents and archaeology. Eclectics, as one might expect, draw on all these approaches along with personal vision, to create a modern and often idiosyncratic practice, and don’t accept that any one tradition or system has a monopoly on the truth.
Other general statements about Pagans (none of which apply to all of us):
- Most Pagans are not monotheists; that is, most Pagans follow, worship, work with and
perhaps believe in goddesses and gods, but not God, singular and capitalized. - Paganism is often described as a Nature Religion. More accurately, Pagans regard
themselves as a part of nature not apart from nature, and value that connection. - Pagans do not proselytize. That is we do not actively seek to persuade people to convert to paganism. If you are interested, we’ll gladly explain. If you don’t buy it, that’s okay too.
- Pagans generally do not believe in the concept of “sin” or see any need to be “saved.”
- Pagans generally have a more permissive view of sexuality, gender identity and nudity than is conventional.
It’s probably necessary to say something about The Devil. In popular culture, Paganism is often associated with the worship of the Christian devil, usually named as Satan or Lucifer, because for centuries the Christian churches held that anyone who followed the Old Gods was a devil worshipper. Some people still believe that. Many Pagans regard Satanism or devil worship as a Christian idea and reject the idea that these practices have anything to do with Paganism. Others accept Satan or Lucifer as gods among other gods. There are also Pagans who identify Jesus and Mary and other figures from other religious traditions as gods among other gods. The AAP’s expansive definition of Paganism would not necessarily exclude a Satanist, although to my knowledge.
From GERALD GARDNER, WITCH by Jack Bracelin
“It was halfway through when the word Wica was first mentioned:’and I then knew that that which I had thought burnt out hundreds of years ago still survived.’”
Sara Amis, 2013 online comment: “I am reminded of why discussions of religion so often go awry; people inevitably view it through their own personal lens, and most especially universalize ideas that simply aren’t. Take the notion of “faith.” It is central to Christianity, and consequently tends to shape ideas about religion held by anyone raised in the Western world…whether they are Christian themselves or not. We even use the word ‘faith’ interchangeably with ‘religion,’ as if all religions revolve so centrally around belief.
But the ancient Romans, like many or perhaps most people throughout history, cared diddley squat about faith. Piety was a virtue … but piety meant observing rituals and festivals, especially the ones centered around family. One could never step foot in a temple and be a perfectly pious Roman, so long as one performed the rituals to one’s ancestors and household gods, especially the former. One could also be a deist or atheist and be perfectly pious in Roman terms; what mattered was that you did the rites.”
From DISCRIMINATION AND MODERN PAGANISM: A STUDY OF RELIGION AND CONTEMPORARY SOCIAL CLIMATE pp 4-6
By Elizabeth Hoadley (unpublished thesis, University of Pittsburgh, 2016)
Although the witch-hunts of the past may seem archaic, the sad reality is that even in America today religiously motivated hate crimes make up about one fifth of all hate crimes committed (United States Department of Justice). These include violence, vandalism, and threats among others. However, in the case of Paganism what seems to be more detrimental are the less blatant, systemic consequences of misunderstanding and ignorance, such as that which brought the death penalty upon Damien Echols in the West Memphis Three case. Damien was not beaten up by a stranger, nor was his home vandalized, but because the members of law enforcement in charge of his case immediately wrote off the Wiccan religion as devil worship, the consequences quickly spiraled out of control. Even beyond the legal and publicly visible realm is an entire level of discrimination that nearly always goes unreported. The consequences of these circumstances are echoed in the accounts of many of my Pagan informants. One man, for instance, had his Pagan flag torn completely down by one of his neighbors. While this was indeed an act of vandalism and could be considered a hate crime, what Jeff, a 50-year-old man from the quiet countryside just outside of Pittsburgh, considered to be more detrimental was the loss of his peace of mind and place in the community. Jeff has been a member of the community for many years and lives in a fairly rural area that is heavy with Christian churches. While he was aware that his neighbors were Christian, he never imagined that they would go so far as to walk onto his property and physically vandalize his flag:
“It was just a nice little flag I picked up at one of the esoteric stores I went to once, and I didn’t think it would offend anyone. It had a pentacle on it, but I’m not embarrassed of that. Satanism inverts the pentacle for evil just like they invert the cross. But one of my neighbors, a middle aged man in the house over, walked up to my house and tore my flag down. Now, I knew he was a Christian and I could guess why he did it, but to actually rip my flag down? That was surprising to me. I felt pretty uncomfortable after that, and I felt like I needed to speak with him about it. When I confronted him about it later, he claimed that my flag had offended him and he didn’t want his children seeing it. But, I said, the witch decorations he puts up around Halloween offend me and provides a bad example for his kids too. The crappy part is that doesn’t even register to him, even after I talked to him about it. He was still just as angry about his children seeing my flag, and didn’t see anything wrong with tearing it down. It was like I didn’t even count as a person”.
For Jeff, this instance was more than just an act of vandalism on his property but a dehumanizing act that made him feel ostracized from his community. While this small event was not something that Jeff felt could be reported in a way that would solve any issues, it is the dehumanizing and demoralizing consequences of the ignorance of mainstream society that causes much greater detriment to the Pagan community. As Jeff explained, “I can replace my flag, that wasn’t the issue. The issue was the way it made me feel unsafe and unwanted in my own community” (P 203). While this feeling is often the result of hate crimes, what is unique about Paganism is that this ostracization and discrimination most often comes from much smaller and covert events that fly under the radar of any real consequence for the discriminator. Many of my Pagan informants described similar issues resulting from misunderstanding and prejudice associated with Paganism, such as Janet, who was fired from her office job shortly after she started telling people about her religion, or John, whose own family no longer associates with him because of his religion (P 236) (P 222). Almost every other informant described the fear that exists in their lives as a result of hearing the stories of others. I argue that it is this exact system of information surrounding experiences with the broader community that leads Pagans to perpetuate the cycle of discrimination by using defense techniques to guard themselves from any possible discomfort.
Fear and anxiety leads many Pagans to remain quiet about their beliefs even with their closest friends. In this work I argue that while remaining silent decreases their risk of discrimination, it conversely increases the probability that discrimination will continue to exist. Because they are not presenting a clear, visible image of the Pagan population to the community at large, the secrecy and compartmentalization cements in place a feedback loop of ignorance and thus discrimination. If the goal of the community is to be respected and understood, this cycle of ignorance and secrecy cannot continue. However, the ease with which a Pagan is able to guard his or her beliefs makes the alternative—dealing with the possible consequences that may first come with making their community visible—all the more unappealing to many. While an African American cannot guard himself against the conjectures of a racist, a Pagan has the ability to blend in and remain under the radar of anyone with strong prejudices against them. This fact leads many members of the community to take precautions in their lives when allowing anyone to know their religion, and thus inadvertently promotes a skewed popular understanding of the scope of the religion.
From BEING PAGAN: A GUIDE TO RE-ENCHANT YOUR LIFE by Rhyd Wildermuth (Ritona Press: 2021)
I do not present Pagan as a religion to be part of or an identity to take on, but rather an active state of being itself. Put another way, Pagan is not something you can be or become part of, but rather something you are actively being. The crucial point here is active relation to the world. Being Pagan is a manner of relating to ourselves and the world of which we are part, rather than a fixed set of beliefs, doctrines, practices, or identity traits.
This kind of active relation to the world does have certain characteristics, however. For instance, it is ultimately animist, recognising that humans are not the only “persons” on the earth but rather in constant relation to other persons, the vast majority of which are not human. For an animist, everything is being and nothing is inanimate. A tree is not a mere mate‐ rial object or source of wood: it is a being, just as we are beings. Similarly, a forest is not merely a large amount of trees all living in the same geographical area, but rather also a being in itself, composed of many beings the way that a family is composed of many humans.
from UPON THE ROOD DAY: THE WITCHCRAFT OF CHRISTSONDAY AND THE QUEEN OF ELPHEN. By Robin Artisson
“It is more important than anything else that we love the world and be happy in it; even with its occasional dark seasons and mind-twisting evils and confusions, life is good. And spirit-beings want us and need us to recognize this, and then come to them with these words: life is good. Spirits can’t tolerate human gloom forever; our Ancestors- back to the very beginning- made enormous fires and danced and sang at the top of their lungs, all the days long, and deep into the night. Some can analyze their songs and dances from this or that anthropological perspective, but ultimately the first dances and songs were just spontaneous expressions of how good and powerful life was.
“And this is how so many other spirits exploring the world – elders to us by a long way – came to learn about human beings. The humans ate and drank like so many others, and mated, and sometimes pushed and shoved, and they slept and dreamed – but they also sang and they danced. We must remember. We must get back to this, hidden in all of us somewhere.”