Everybody has their favorite definition of the word "Pagan." Most people are
convinced that their meaning is the correct one. But no consensus exists,
even within a single faith tradition or religion as to the "correct" definition
of "Pagan." The same problem happens with the definition of
"Christianity," and probably with many other religions.
Origin of the term:
There is general agreement that the word "Pagan" comes from the Latin word "paganus."
Unfortunately, there is no consensus on the precise meaning of the word in
the fifth century CE and before. There are three main
interpretations. 16 None
has won general acceptance:
Most modern Pagan sources interpret the word to have meant "rustic,"
"hick," or "country bumpkin" -- a pejorative term. The
implication was that Christians used the term to ridicule country folk
who tenaciously held on to what the Christians considered old-fashioned,
outmoded Pagan beliefs. Those in the country were much slower in
adopting the new religion of Christianity than were the city folks. They
still followed the Greek state religion, Roman state religion,
Mithraism, various mystery religions, etc., long after those in urban
areas had converted.
Some believe that in the early Roman Empire, "paganus" came
to mean "civilian" as opposed to "military." Christians
often called themselves "miles Christi" (Soldiers of Christ).
The non-Christians became "pagani" -- non-soldiers or
civilians. No denigration would be implied.
C. Mohrmann suggests that the general meaning was any "outsider,"
-- a neutral term -- and that the other meanings, "civilian" and
"hick," were merely specialized uses of the term. 17
By the third century CE, its meaning evolved to
include all non-Christians. Eventually, it became an evil term that implied the
possibility of Satan worship. The latter two meanings are still in
widespread use today.
There is no generally accepted, single, current definition for the word "Pagan."
The word is among the terms that
the newsgroup alt.usage.english, calls "skunk words." They have
varied meanings to different people. The field of religion is rife with such
words. consider: Christian,
cult, hell, heaven,
occult, Paganism,
pluralism,
salvation, Witch, Witchcraft,
Unitarian Universalist, Voodoo, etc. Each has so many meanings that
they often cause misunderstandings wherever they are used. Unfortunately, most
people do not know this, and naturally assume that the meaning that they have
been taught is universally accepted. A reader must often look at the context in which the word is used in order to
guess at the intent of the writer.
We
recognize that many Wiccans, Neopagans, and others regularly use the terms "Pagan" and "Paganism"
to describe themselves. Everyone should be free to continue whatever definitions
that they wish.
However, the possibility of major confusion exists -- particularly if one is talking
to a general audience. When addressing non-Wiccans or non-Neopagans, it
is important that the term:
Be carefully defined in advance, or that
Its meaning is clearly understandable from the text's context.
Otherwise, the speaker or writer will be referring to one group of
people, while the listeners or readers will assume that other groups are
being referred to.
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Seven definitions of "Pagan:"
First meaning: Pagans consist of Wiccans and other Neopagans:
We recommend that this should be the primary definition of "Pagan," for
the simple reason that many Wiccans and other Neopagans embrace the term for
themselves. "Paganism" in this sense refers to a range of spiritual paths. These are
generally Neopagan religions based on the
deities, symbols, practices, seasonal days of celebration and other surviving
components of ancient religions, which had been long suppressed. For example:
The Druidic religion is
based on the faith and practices of the ancient Celtic professional class;
Followers of Asatru adhere to the ancient,
pre-Christian Norse religion;
Wiccans trace
their roots back to the pre-Celtic era in Europe.
Other Neo-pagans follow
Hellenismos (ancient Greek religion), Religio Romana (ancient Roman
religion), Kemetism (ancient Egyptian religion) and other traditions.
Some Neopagan religions, like Wicca and Druidism, are Earth centered:
emphasizing living in harmony with the Earth and observing its cycles.
Others, like Hellenismos and Religio Romana, are deity centered.
Some typical quotations which
demonstrate this meaning of "Pagan" are:
"Witchcraft, or Wicca, is considered part of the occult, but has little
relationship to Satanism. Wicca is pagan (pre-Christian, as opposed to
anti-Christian) and is currently gaining popularity." 1
"Witches do not
worship the devil...Witches are more interested in magical arts and the
divinity of nature...Wiccans are considered pagans because they worship several
nature gods instead of a single god." 2
"The World Christian Encyclopedia estimates 6 million Americans profess to
be witches and engage in practices like these. They are a sub-group of over
10 million persons the encyclopedia says call themselves pagans, who practice
"primitive" religions such as Druidism, Odin worship and Native American
shamanism." 3
In this sense, "Pagan" refers to a group of religious
traditions, and should
be capitalized, as Christianity, Islam and Judaism are.
Second meaning: Pagans are people to hate:
Religious and social conservatives sometimes use "Pagan"
as a general purpose "snarl" word to refer to cultures or
religions that are very different from the speaker's. There is no
general consensus as to meaning. It can be seen directed at any religious
or cultural group that the speaker hates. Some examples:
Dr. John Patrick, professor at the University of
Ottawa, Canada was discussing at a conference the number of abortions
performed worldwide. He said: "Gods and goddesses are beginning to re-inhabit the
Western world. Infant sacrifice -– there are 52 million a year.
It is paganism." 4
Dr. Richard Swenson, director of the Future Health Study
Center. said at the same conference: "We went into post-Christian and neopaganism very
quickly...We want the culture to change, we want some spiritual
sanity, but we need to understand that this is a pluralistic and
even neopaganist society." 4
Jerry Falwell appeared as a guest on Pat Robertson's "700 Club"
program on 2001-SEP-13. He said that God became sufficiently angry at
America that he engineered the terrorist attack on New York City and
Washington-- presumably to send Americans a message. He said: "I
really believe that the Pagans,
and the abortionists, and the feminists, and the
gays and the lesbians
...all of them who have tried to secularize America
- I point the finger in their face and say 'you helped this happen.' "
Pat Robertson responded: "Well, I totally concur..." 15
[We asked Falwell's office via repeated Emails to tell us
exactly to whom he was referring with the word "Pagans." They declined to respond.
Since he died on 2007-MAY-15, we suspect that the question will never be
answered.] More details.
Third meaning: Pagans are ancient polytheists:
The term "Pagan" is sometimes used to refer to ancient polytheistic
religions. The Cambridge Advanced Learner's Dictionary defines "pagan"
as: "belonging to a religion which worships
many gods, especially one which existed before the main world religions."18
The Hebrew Scriptures (Old Testament) contains many references to the societies surrounding the
Israelites -- Babylonians, Canaanites, Philistines, etc. These
are commonly referred to as Pagans:
There are allegations that these societies engaged in human
sacrifices:
II Kings 3:26-27: "...the king of Moab...took his eldest son that should have reigned in his stead, and offered him for a burnt offering upon the wall."
Psalms 106:37-38: "Yea, they sacrificed their sons and their daughters unto devils,
And shed innocent blood, even the blood of their sons and of their daughters, whom they sacrificed unto the idols of Canaan: and the land was polluted with blood."
Their altars were often referred to as "high places:"
II Kings 16:4: "And he sacrificed and burnt incense in the high places, and on the hills, and under every green tree."
Surrounding tribes were viewed as committing idolatry by worshiping
golden images of animals:
II Kings 17:16: "And they left all the commandments of the LORD their God, and made them molten images, even two calves, and made a grove, and worshipped all the host of heaven, and served Baal."
Some current examples of this usage are:
Referring to sun wheels and obelisks: "...These symbols of
pagan sun worship were associated with Baal worship, or Baalim, which is
strongly condemned in scripture. So why are they so prevalent in the
Roman Catholic Church, if they are associated with paganism and
apostasy?" An anti-Catholic essay on a conservative Protestant Christian
web site. 5
Ancient faiths of ancient Celtic, Egypt, Greece, Norse, Rome, and other
cultures are
frequently referred to as Pagan religions. Even though many of these
religions had strict social and sexual behavioral codes, their followers are
often portrayed as hedonist and immoral:
1 Peter 4:3: "For the time past of our life may suffice us to have wrought the will of the Gentiles, when we walked in lasciviousness, lusts, excess of wine,
revellings, banquetings, and abominable idolatries."
Paganism is occasionally used to refer to animistic, spirits-and-essences filled belief
systems. These are based upon direct perception of the forces of
nature and usually involves the use of idols, talismans and taboos in
order to convey respect for these forces and beings. Many native,
aboriginal religions fit this definition.
Fifth meaning: Pagans are followers of non-Abrahamic religions:
A rare use of "Pagan" is to describe a person who does not follow an
main Abrahamic religion. That is, their
faith does not recognize Abraham as a patriarch. The individual is neither Christian,
Muslim, Baha'i nor Jew.
This includes Agnostics, Atheists, Buddhists, Hindus, Humanists,
Taoists, etc. About 45% of the people of the world are Pagans, by this
definition.
Sixth meaning: Pagans don't belong to any of the main religions of the
world:
The Cambridge Advanced Learner's Dictionary gives an alternative
definition of the word "pagan" as: "relating
to religious beliefs that do not belong to any of the main religions of the
world"18 This definition
is rather vague, because it does not describe how a "main religion of the
world" is defined. If it is any religion with more than, say, 1% of the
world's population (i.e. 60 million members, then: Aboriginal religions,
Atheism, Buddhism, Christianity, Hinduism, Islam, Taoism would be non-pagan,
whereas Judaism, Sikhism, Confucianism, the Baha'i Faith, Wicca,
Zoroastrianism etc. would be pagan. I doubt that many members of the latter
religions would be happy with their classification.
Seventh meaning: Pagans are Atheists, Agnostics, Humanists, etc:
The term "Pagan" was widely used by Atheists, Agnostics, Humanists, etc. to
refer to themselves. The word was also used by others to describe these groups.
The usage dropped after the rise of Neopaganism in the middle of the 20th
century, and is rarely seen today.
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How common are the various meanings of "Pagan"?
On the Internet itself: Wiccans and other Neopagans have made
extensive use of the Internet; they probably have more web pages per capita
than followers of any other religion. Using the search string
"Pagan," the Google search engine found about 459,000 hits on
the Internet. 6We found that:
The first 14 hits all referred to Wicca
or another Neopagan religion.
24 of the first 27 hits referred to a Neopagan faith tradition.
In conservative Christian search engines: We used the same search
string on Goshen. It is perhaps the largest conservative Christian search
engine. 7It found ten web sites which
referred to Paganism. Some were broken links; others had no apparent
references to Pagans. But others did:
Five referred to ancient polytheistic religions, such as the
faiths of Babylonians, Celts, Romans, etc. during biblical times and in
the early history of Christianity:
An anti-Roman Catholic essay which described the use of sun
wheels and obelisks of ancient Pagan religions within Roman Catholicism.
5
One condemned Christmas' practices as "merely variations of
the ceremonies invented by the corrupt pagans of yesterday." It
refers to the Christian concept of the Trinity as deriving from "Pagan
Babylon." "The religion of pagan Babylon did not disappear...it
was passed on down, to 'Mystery Babylon,'...[the] mother of abominations
of the earth." 8
One promotes Christian observance of Halloween:
"...someone is bound to ask why we allow our
children to act out a ritual rooted in pagan and satanic beliefs..."
9
One referred to the Pagan cultures surrounding the early Christian
movement. 10
Another anti-Roman Catholic essay discusses Jesus' mother Mary. It
notes that the titles "Mother of God" and "Queen
of Heaven" came from Pagan cultures that surrounded the
early Christian movements. It says that the concept of the perpetual
virginity of Mary is also Pagan, being derived from the worship of
"Ashtoroth, also known as Isis, Diana, Venus, Vesta,
Samariums, Istarte and Helen...".
One probably refers to Neopagans: The author writes that "all belief
systems except atheism, paganism and satanism have had their roots from
certain scriptures..." 12Presumably,
the author is not referring to ancient polytheistic religions because
various cultures from Babylon to Rome had religious writings. He might possibly
be referring to Aboriginal religions, which typically use an oral
tradition.
Examples:
To show the wide variety of meanings attributed to the word
"Paganism," we will create a context file below. It will consist of
quotations from various news sources in which the term is used. We started this list on
2000-OCT-25, and only have a few entries to date:
Paganism = secularization + New Age religion, + politically
liberal thinking + others:
According to U.S. Newswire:
The National Clergy Council and Operation Save Our Nation havescheduled for 2000-OCT-28 a "Jericho March" of
100 religious "intercessors" around Capitol Hill and
the White House. President of the Council, the Rev. Rob Schenck
said: "The concept behind this Jericho March is to 'tear down'
the walls of the new 'Washington Paganism' -- the secularization, New
Ageism and postmodern amoralism -- epitomized in the Clinton-Gore
Administration, in the morally weak leadership in the Congress, and in
the liberal members of the Supreme Court."
Paganism = ancient polytheists: According to John Silber writing in the Boston Herald:
"This opposition [to Christmas trees],
then and now, rests on a recognition of the pagan origin of the
Christmas tree. Indeed, as columnist Kimberley Strassel has noted in
The Wall Street Journal, the Prophet Jeremiah specifically condemned
as pagan the practice of cutting down trees, bringing them inside and
decorating them." 14
Paganism = Non-Abrahamics: According to a Pagan news service:
"Vatican officials have labeled Europe a "Pagan country."
The comment was prompted by a statistic from Austria that 43,632
Austrians formally renounced their Roman Catholic affiliation in 1999,
whereas only 3,387 converts joined the Church.
Sponsored links:
Conclusions:
Most Internet references to Paganism refer to Wiccans and other Neopagans.
Conservative Christians generally use the term Pagan to refer to ancient
Polytheistic religions that adversely affected Christianity.
Other meanings of "Paganism" appear to be rarely used in contemporary
literature.
Recommendations:
We recommend that the terms "Pagan" and "Paganism"
never be used in speech or written form, unless:
They are precisely defined in advance, or
A known and homogenous audience is being addressed.
Otherwise mass confusion will occur. Even if it is carefully defined,
listeners or readers' interpretation of the text will probably be distorted.
They will carry over some of
the baggage associated with their own definition of "Pagan." In place
of "Pagan," we suggest that you use the actual
name of the religious group that you are referring to: (e.g. Animism,
Asatru, Buddhism,
Druidism, Hinduism,
Native American Spirituality, Wicca,
etc.) to avoid ambiguity.
The term "Neopagan" has a unique
definition and can be used without confusion among those who know its meaning.
However, not everyone is aware of what it means.
A search of the Amazon data base for "Paganism":
The following books are the result of a book search at the Amazon.com web site
-- the world's biggest online bookstore.
If you see a generic ad here, please click on your browser's refresh button:
A highly recommended book with stories by over 50 Pagans:
Caroline Tully, one of the contributors to the book, writes:
"Gardnerian High Priestess and Cherry Hill Seminary instructor, Laura
Wildman, has collected amazing stories from a diverse set of practitioners,
each with their own individual perspective on what it means to be Pagan in
the modern world. With over fifty contributors - including famous names like
Starhawk, Macha NightMare and Oberon Zell-Ravenheart, as well as a plethora
of less well-known but just as gifted writers - this book has something that
will appeal to everyone. The book is divided into five sections; Earth:
Community - the roots that nourish, the families we create, the coming home;
Air: The learning process - teachers, mentors, students and inner guides;
Fire: magical transformation - from Wow! To Oops!; Water: the seasons and
the cycles of life; and Spirit: The God and Goddess in our lives. The reader
can dip into the book anywhere - you need not start at the beginning - and
find honest, creative, thought-provoking stories about joy, awe, triumph,
failure, consternation, love, loss and sorrow, that stand out as being
written by deeper-than-average thinkers. A ripe collection of wisdom-fruit
from people who really live their Paganism. Highly recommended."
References used:
The following information sources were used to prepare and update the above
essay. The hyperlinks are not necessarily still active today.
Rob Tucker, IPCA REPORT (Spring 1989) Volume 2 #1. P. 8
The Institute for the Prevention of Child Abuse, 25 Spadina Rd, Toronto
ON M5R 2S9, Canada.
McDowell & Stewart, "THE OCCULT", Here's Life Publishers, (1992)
P. 199.
Sharon Rufus, "WHO ARE THE WITCHES?", Fate (1986 AUG), P. 59:
quoted by Nelson Price in "NEW AGE, THE OCCULT AND LION COUNTRY",
Power Books (1989), P. 98:
From speeches delivered at the Bioethics in the New Millennium
conference, Deerfield IL., 2000-JUL-22. Reported by Jordan Lite in
"Bioethicists Man the Pulpit," Wired News, at: http://www.wired.com/news/technology/
C. Mohrmann, "Encore une fois: paganus," Études sur le latin
des chrétiens (Rome, 1958-1965), 3.277-289; orig. pub. in Vigiliae
Christianae, 6 (1952), 109-121. Quoted in Ref. 16.
Laura Wildman,
Ed., "Celebrating the Pagan soul," Citadel. (2005).
