Paganism (from
Latin paganus, meaning "country dweller, rustic")http://encarta.msn.com/dictionary_/pagan.html is the blanket term given to describe religions and spiritual practises of pre-Christian Europe, and by extension a term for
polytheistic traditions or
folk religion worldwide seen from a Western or Christian viewpoint. The term has various different meanings, though, from a Western perspective, it has modern connotations of a faith that has
polytheistic,
Catholic Encyclopaedia (1917 edition) on paganism spiritualist,
animistic or
shamanic practices, such as a
folk religion,
historical polytheistic or
neopagan religion.
The term has been defined broadly, to encompass all of the religions outside the
Abrahamic monotheistic group of
Judaism,
Christianity, and
Islam. The group so defined includes most of the
Eastern religions,
Native American religions and mythologies, as well as non-Abrahamic
ethnic religions 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
explains religious practice."And it Harms No-one", A Pagan Manifesto,
Janet Farrar &
Gavin Bone, 1998.
[1]The term "pagan" is a Christian adaptation of the "
gentile" of Judaism, and as such has an inherent Abrahamic bias, and
pejorative connotations among Western
monotheists,"Pagan", Encyclopedia Britannica 11th Edition, 1911, retrieved 22 May 2007.
[2] comparable to heathen, and
infidel,
mushrik and
kafir (كافر) in Islam. For this reason,
ethnologists avoid the term "paganism," with its uncertain and varied meanings, in referring to traditional or historic faiths, preferring more precise categories such as
polytheism,
shamanism,
pantheism, or
animism; however others criticise the use of these terms, claiming that these are only aspects that different faiths may share and do not denote the religions themselves.
Since the later 20th century, "Pagan" or "Paganism" has become widely used as a self-designation by adherents of
Neopaganism.
"A Basic Introduction to Paganism", BBC, retrieved 19 May 2007. As such, various modern scholars have begun to apply the term to three separate groups of faiths:
Historical Polytheism (such as
Celtic polytheism and
Norse paganism),
Folk/
ethnic/Indigenous religions (such as
Chinese folk religion and
African traditional religion), and
Neo-paganism (such as
Wicca and
Germanic Neopaganism).
Etymology
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."http://encarta.msn.com/dictionary_/pagan.html Word HistoryThe 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
Christum tam miles est paganus fidelis quam paganus est miles infidelis," but here the word paganus may be interpreted in the sense "
civilian" rather than "heathen". 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 generally 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, 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)Another fine point may be put upon this. Although in a general sense, 'pagus' refers to countryside and all of the above are true, there is a more specific Roman usage. The Roman city had not only physical walls and boundaries, but a spiritual boundary called the pomerium. This term is very ancient and derives from post (beyond) and murem (the wall). The wall in question is not a physical wall, but an imaginary sacred boundary denoted by stone cippi, or stakes marked as such. The pomerium began as a furrow plowed by Romulus on the Palatine Hill, and gradually expanded in fits and leaps as Rome itself expanded. However, not all real estate owned by the people and the state of Rome was within the pomerium or sacred city. For example, the Aventine Hill remained outside the pomerium for centuries, and contained the famous Temple of Diana, dedicated to the worship of deities not native to Rome but belonging to the Latin and Italian merchants who passed through the increasingly important commercial center that was Rome. Land belonging to the city of Rome, but not within the pomerium, was referred to as pagus. Thus, it undoubtedly was a term of disdain for some to use in referring to foreigners. Since the Christian god above all refused to make any accommodation with the deities native to Rome, the Christian god was utterly revulsive to patriotic and religious Romans. In fact, Christians were referred to as atheists for their lack of respect for the imperial and city cults, and their insistence on worshiping only one vague and powerless deity whose earthly incarnation perished as a common crucified criminal. It must have seemed a supreme irony, therefore, that when the Christians became the only authorized religion in the final days of the Western Empire, it was their turn to refer to their enemies as pagans--not only rustics, but those whose deities were not permitted within the (now no longer meaningful) pomerium.
The post-classical Latin paganismus gave rise to both paganism and to its synonym paynimry.OED etymology for paynim: < Anglo-Norman paenisme, painisme, paienime, painnim, peinime, paenime, etc., and Old French paienime, paienisme heathen lands (c1150-74), heathen religion (1160) < post-classical Latin paganismus (see PAGANISM n.), probably influenced by Old French paien (see PAYEN n.). Paynimry may be used of paganism, its practises, and pagans,OED entry for 'paynimry'. as well as for the domain or realm of pagans.http://www.lexic.us/definition-of/paynimry
"
Peasant" is a
cognate, via
Old French paisent. http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/cgi-bin/ptext?doc=Perseus%3atext%3a1999%2e04%2e0062&query=id%3dpagus#id,pagus Harry Thurston Peck, Harper's Dictionary of Classical Antiquity, 1897; "pagus"
In their distant 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.Divers. Quaest. 83. Augustine makes clear that, in his time, paganus was the term in
Vulgar Latin synonymous to educated gentilis "
gentile".
Less than twenty years after the last vestiges of paganism were crushed with great severity by the emperor Theodosius I"Theodosius I", The Catholic Encyclopedia, 1912.
[3] 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.'"The City of God", Britannica Ultimate Reference Suite DVD, 2003.
Heathen
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 probably influenced by Latin paganus, "country dweller", or it was chosen because of its similarity to the Greek
ethne, "
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 ethnos.
Terminology
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."Pagan" came to be equated with a Christianized sense of "
epicurian" 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, for example, as when
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."'Hymn to Proserpine'
Christianity itself has been perceived at times as a form of paganism by followers of the other Abrahamic religions
Jewish EncyclopediaShirk of, for example, the Christian doctrine of the Trinity, the celebration of pagan feast days,
Christianised calendar and other practices
Christianised rituals – through a process described as "baptising"
The Pope, The Emperor and the Persian Leader or "
christianization". Even between Christians there have been similar charges of paganism levelled, especially by Protestants,'
Philip Melanchthon 'Apologia Confessionis Augustanae'
Jean Seznec 'The Survival of the Pagan Gods' towards the Roman Catholic and Orthodox Churches for their
veneration of the saints and images.
"Heathen" (Old English hæðen) is a translation of Paganus. The
Germanic tribes were distributed over Eastern and Central Europe by the 5th century, and their
dialects ceased to be mutually intelligible from around that time.
Christianization of the Germanic peoples took place from the 4th (
Goths) to the 6th (
Anglo-Saxons,
Franks) or 8th (
Alamanni,
Saxons) centuries on the continent, from the 9th to 12th centuries in Iceland and Scandinavia and later still in
Lithuania.Rowell, S.C.:
Lithuania Ascending: A Pagan Empire Within Europe 1295-1345 (
Cambridge University Press 1994, ISBN 052145011X, 9780521450119
Classifications
Pagan subdivisions coined by
Isaac Bonewits "Defining Paganism: Paleo-, Meso-, and Neo-"(Version 2.5.1) 1979, 2007 c.e., Isaac Bonewits
- Paleopaganism: A retronym coined to contrast with "Neopaganism", denoting a Pagan culture that has not been disrupted by other cultures. The term applies to Hinduism, Shinto, pre-Migration period Germanic paganism as described by Tacitus, Celtic polytheism as described by Julius Caesar, and the Greek and Roman religion.
- 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 aboriginals, Viking Age Norse paganism. Influences include: Freemasonry, Rosicrucianism, Theosophy, Spiritualism, and the many Afro-Diasporic faiths like Haitian Vodou, and Santería. 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. This definition may include anything on a sliding scale from Reconstructionism at one end to non-reconstructionist groups such as Neo-druidism and Wicca at the other.
Historical polytheism
- Bronze Age to Classical Antiquity
- Late Antiquity to High Middle Ages (as opposed to Abrahamic and Indian religions)
Contemporary ethnic religion
There are many surviving traditions of
ethnic religion. Organized ethnic religions that achieved the status of a
civil religion are
Shinto, tied to
Japanese identity, and
Judaism, tied to
Jewish identity. In
nationalist definitions,
Hinduism may be tied to
Indian identity.
All
world religions also include folk religious aspects, as opposed to their theological or philosophical aspects, see
folk Christianity, or local institutions of revealed religions may become strongly tied to ethnic identity, e.g.
Yazdânism (Kurdish faiths descending from
Zoroastrianism),
Tibetan Buddhism, or various Christian
national churches such as the
Armenian Apostolic Church, the various
Syriac churches, and the various branches of the Orthodox Church, e.g.,
Greek Orthodox,
Russian Orthodox and other non-Roman churches.
Uninstitutionalized
folk religion is found mainly in rural and sparsely populated areas. These include
Animism,
ancestor worship and
Shamanism of
Asia,
Africa, the
Americas, as well as
New Guinea and other
Pacific islands.
Chinese folk religion is an umbrella term for uninstitutionalized folk traditions under a secular regime.
Africa
During the expansion of the
Sokoto Caliphate in West Africa, Islamic
Fulbe (Fula) labelled their non-Muslim neighbours, such as this Kapsiki
diviner,
Kirdi, or "pagans".
Australian and Oceanic
Eurasia
Eurasian ethnic religions became largely extinct in the course of the
Middle Ages, first with
Christianization in the West and the
spread of Buddhism in the East, and then with the
Islamic conquests of Persia, Central and South Asia. A notable survival of pre-Islamic traditions are the people of
Kafirstan, now shrunk to the
Kalasha people, inhabiting three valleys in the
North-West Frontier Province of
Pakistan.
The 2002 census of the
Russian Federation reports 123,423 people (0.23% of the population) as belonging to ethnic groups predominantly adhering to "traditional beliefs", mostly in
Siberia and the
Russian Far East.the Mari-el republic within Russia is the last European Nation where I large percentage of the population has never been christianised and remains pagan.In Japan, polytheism survived in the form of
Shintoism and
Ryukyuan religion.
Central America
In spite of five centuries of persecution
Mayan paganism is alive and well in Guatemala, and is experiencing a resurgence of interest among young Mayans. Recent peace accords signed by the Guatemalan government have provided funds to teach Mayan language and traditional religion in rural schools.
Pagan survivals in 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."It would be a great pleasure to make the comparison with what survives to us of ancient paganism in our old books, in order to have better
[4] their spirit." Peter N. Miller, History of Religion Becomes Ethnology: Some Evidence from Peiresc's Africa Journal of the History of Ideas 67.4 (2006) 675-696.
[5]
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.Jack Zipes, The Great Fairy Tale Tradition: From Straparola and Basile to the Brothers Grimm, p 846, ISBN 0-393-97636-X
Romanticist interest in non-classical antiquity co-incided 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.
Neopaganism
Neopaganism includes
reconstructed religions such as
Hellenic polytheism,
Celtic or
Germanic reconstructionism as well as modern eclectic traditions such as
Discordianism, or
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
Íslenska Ásatrúarfélagið is a notable exception in that it was derived more or less directly from remnants in rural folklore.
Neopaganism in the United States accounts for roughly a third of all neopagans worldwide, and for some 0.2% of US population, figuring as the sixth largest non-Christian denomination in the US, after
Judaism (1.4%),
Islam (0.6%),
Buddhism (0.5%),
Hinduism (0.3%) and
Unitarian Universalism (0.3%).
ARIS 2001 figures.
Demographics
Paganism has been previously defined broadly, to encompass many or most of the faith traditions outside the
Abrahamic monotheistic group of
Judaism,
Christianity, and
Islam.
The term has also been used more narrowly,
Meanings of the terms Pagan and PaganismEisenstadt, S.N., 1983, Transcendental Visions -- Other-Worldliness -- and Its Transformations: Some More Comments on L. Dumont. Religion13:1-17, at p. 3.Michael York, Paganism as Root-Religion, The Pomegranate, 6:1 (2004), pp. 11-18 (distinguishing the main streams of developed religion as gnostic, dharmic, Abrahamic and pagan). 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
Hindu rites at a famous Catholic shrine shocks many Catholics (though by no means allDavid Scott, Christian Responses to Buddhism in Pre-Medieval Times, Numen, Vol. 32, No. 1 (Jul., 1985), pp. 88-100Audrius Beinorius, Buddhism in the Early European Imagination: A Historical Perspective, ACTA ORIENTALIA VILNENSIA 6:2 (2005), pp. 7–22) Christians and other Westerners, contemporary paganism is a relatively smaller and more marginal numerical phenomenon. According to
Encyclopedia 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.
See also
Notes
References
- Michael York, Pagan Theology: Paganism as a World Religion NYU Press (2003), ISBN 0814797083.
Further reading
- Jones, P. & Pennick, N., (1995) "A History of Pagan Europe". New York, Barnes & Noble Books, ISBN 0-7607-1210-7.
External links
Christian history
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