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[L. paganismus: cf. F. paganisme. See
The state of being pagan; pagan characteristics; esp., the worship of idols or false gods, or the system of religious opinions and worship maintained by pagans; heathenism.
In the late Roman world a paganus was a ‘rustic’, and the word's shift to mean ‘non-Christian’ reflects a period when Christianity had spread among the upper classes and within towns, but not to the rural peasantry. Pagans need not share any common ground, but in Britain the Anglo-Saxons and Vikings recognized the same major gods and goddesses, but with slight variations in name (e.g. Woden/Odin), and although the native British had different deities these had responsibility for similar aspects of life such as warfare and fertility. The Romans had no trouble in assimilating the deities of either group with their own pantheon.
One should not envisage either Celtic or Germanic paganism as having structures or doctrines comparable to those of the Christian church. The building of temples and existence of a professional class of priests seems to have been more a feature of Celtic than Germanic practice. What may have mattered far more to the majority of people were localized guardian spirits who might be honoured at natural sites such as a spring, a grove of trees, or a hilltop.
Christianity saw off the major pantheons of gods and goddesses without too much difficulty and major festivals of the pagan year such as midwinter could be replaced with appropriate Christian celebrations like Christmas. What was harder to eradicate was the attachment to local holy places, though healing springs, for instance, were sometimes absorbed into local saints' cults.
The term (with its synonym ‘heathenism’) for any religion where several gods and goddesses are worshipped; its relationship to folklore has long been debated, and is central to most origin theories.
In England, the first people to discuss folklore from the outside (as opposed to participating in it) were Elizabethan Protestants, who used it as a weapon in their campaign to identify Catholicism with paganism. They sought out every possible similarity between medieval customs and rituals and those of the only two pagan cultures they knew about: Old Testament Gentiles, and classical Greeks and Romans. This was the argument of Philip Stubbes's The Anatomie of Abuses (1583), with its famous diatribe against the maypole as a ‘stinking idol’; it was taken up by antiquarians such as the Revd Henry Bourne, whose Antiquitates Vulgares (1725) attacks popular customs and beliefs as coming from Pagan Rome via Papist Rome. Even Aubrey, who liked old ways, held the same theory. In his significantly titled Remaines of Gentilisme and Judaisme (1686) he argues that ceremonies and beliefs were ‘imbibed’ by the ancient Britons from the Romans, and survived wherever ‘the Inundation of the Goths’ (i.e. Anglo-Saxons) did not penetrate (Aubrey, 1686/1880: 55).
Several generations of writers referred back to Flora, Ceres, or the Saturnalia, to explain English festivals. Then 19th-century scholars showed that early Germanic and Celtic peoples had had myths and rituals of their own, independent from Rome, supplying closer precedents for English traditions. Claims for pre-Christian origins have always had great appeal among the general public, if only for the glamour antiquity confers; currently they are more popular than ever, for pagan beliefs (especially Celtic ones) are seen by many as admirable, and Christian tradition as repressive and dull.
However, there is an important distinction between showing that a custom or belief is older than Christianity, and arguing that when it is found among Christians it means paganism is still alive. Some aspects of the supernatural (e.g. fear of ghosts and witchcraft, belief in dreams) are so commonplace that they can occur in virtually any period, including our own, and do not correlate with one religion rather than another. The same is true of large categories of non-rational thought and action, e.g. those involving fate, luck, omens, and minor practices such as touching wood; Christians who think or act in this way rarely see it as inconsistent with faith. Calendar and life-cycle customs usually involve celebratory activities (e.g. dancing, special foods, drinking, disguise, bonfires) distinct from the religious side of the event (if any), but not felt to be in conflict with it. The appropriate word for these is ‘secular’, not ‘pagan’.
In England, a fair amount is known about Roman, Celtic, and Anglo-Saxon religions before the arrival of Christianity, but little about the conversion process itself, which has led modern advocates of paganism to claim that tolerance and continuity was the norm. For the first wave of Christianization, that which reached the Celtic Britons of the 4th century, the only evidence points the other way: when Celtic Christians reused pagan sites, they mutilated and dumped the statues of the gods (Merrifield, 1987: 96-106). The final conversion, that of the Anglo-Saxons, is described by Bede as a peaceful process, but evidence of continuity is again scanty. Despite the interpretation sometimes put on Pope Gregory's letter, no Saxon pagan shrine has yet been found underlying a church; though (very exceptionally) some Roman sacred sites were reused (Merrifield, 1987: 93-5). Coincidence of dates is even less significant. The dates of Christmas and Easter had been fixed long before Christianity reached Britain, and reflected Roman paganism and the Jewish Passover respectively, not the festivals of northern Europe; since every day in the Christian year celebrated at least one saint, every pagan festival necessarily coincided with a saint's day, for reasons quite unconnected with local cults.
The only significant documents are some law-codes of the 7th and 8th centuries forbidding sacrifices to Germanic deities, and some more in the early 11th century applying to the diocese of York, where Viking settlers had reintroduced them. The names of some gods appear in place-names, royal genealogies, and one or two charms, but their myths vanish; surviving hero-legends (Beowulf, Wayland) have no religious content.
There is thus no general framework to support claims that individual folklore items are pagan survivals, and each must be assessed on its own merits. For discussion of the main candidates, see ABBOTS BROMLEY, ANIMAL DISGUISE, CERNE ABBAS, FOLIATE HEADS, GREEN MAN, HALLOWEEN, HEADS, JACK-IN-THE-GREEN, MAY DAY, MAYPOLES, MUMMING, SHEILA-NA-GIGS, SKULLS, SWORD DANCES, UFFINGTON, WELLS, WILMINGTON, YULE
Bibliography
The full bibliography list is available here.
Due to the concerted efforts of both the eastern and western churches, Christianity largely replaced Slavic paganism during the course of the ninth and tenth centuries. There are primarily three sources for information about Slavic paganism: written accounts, archaeological discoveries, and ethno-graphic evidence. As literacy was introduced to the East Slavs only with their conversion to Christianity in 988 C.E., and the written sources were most often compiled by Christian monks or missionaries, much of what is known about East Slavic paganism from written accounts is of questionable accuracy. The sources begin with the Byzantine historian Procopius (sixth century) and include Arab travel accounts, reports of Christian missionary activity, and references in the Primary Chronicle and the First Novgorod Chronicle. Archaeological evidence has provided some information on pagan temples, particularly among the West Slavs on the island of Rügen in the Baltic Sea. In addition, what may have been a temple to Perun, god of thunder, was excavated near Peryn, south of Novgorod in 1951, and several sites that were likely associated with cult practices have been found at Pskov, in the Smolensk region, and Belarus. Generally, however, archaeological sites are able to provide more information about material culture than about the spiritual life of a preliterate people. Ethnographic material was not systematically collected until the nineteenth century, which makes it difficult to separate genuine information from later accretions. One can summarize, based on evidence from all these sources, however, that early Slavic religion was animistic, in that it personified natural elements. It also deified heavenly bodies and recognized the existence of various spirits of the forest, water, and household. Ritual sacrifice was likely used to appease the pagan deities, and amulets were used to ward off evil. In accordance with widespread Indo-European practice, the early Slavs likely cremated their dead, but even before the Christian era burial was also practiced. Chernaya Mogila, a burial site in Chernigov that dates from the tenth century provides strong evidence for a belief in the afterlife, as three members of a princely family were interred with the horses, weapons, and utensils that they would need for existence in the next world.
Procopius makes reference to a Slavic god who is the ruler of everything, but evidence for a larger pantheon comes much later. The twelfth-century Primary Chronicle relates how Prince Vladimir set up idols in the hills of Kiev to Perun, "made of wood with a head of silver and a mustache of gold," as well as to Khors, Dazhbog, Stribog, Simargl, and Mokosh. In the entries for 907 and 971 C.E., the chronicle reports that the Rus swore by their gods Perun and Volos, the god of the flocks. Perun is associated with thunder and the oak tree, thought to be a favorite target of the lightning bolts unleashed by the thunder god. Much less is known about the other gods mentioned in the chronicle. Khors seems to refer to the sun and, as Jakobson points out, is closely connected with Dazhbog, the "giver of wealth," and Stribog, "the apportioner of wealth." Simargl appears to be a form of Simorg, the Iranian winged monster, who is at times depicted as a winged dog. The only female in the pantheon is Mokosh, whose name is probably derived from moist, and who is likely a personification of Moist Mother Earth. Some scholars view Mokosh as a remnant of the Great Goddess cult, which struggled against the patriarchal religion of the Varangians (Vikings). The god Volos, identified in the peace treaties as the god of cattle, may be connected with death and the underworld. The association with cattle possibly comes from the efforts of Christian writers to connect him with St. Blasius, a martyred Cappadocian bishop who became the protector of flocks. Although not listed in Vladimir's pantheon, the god Rod, with his consort Rozhanitsa, is mentioned in other East Slavic sources as a type of primordial progenitor.
After the conversion of Rus, elements of paganism continued in combination with Christian beliefs, a phenomenon that has been called "dvoev-erie" or "dual belief" in the Slavic tradition. References to pagan deities occasionally occur in Christian era texts, most notably as rhetorical ornamentation in such works as the Slovo o polku Igoreve. Syncretism is also apparent in the transformation of Perun into the Old Testament Elijah, who was taken to heaven in a fiery chariot.
Bibliography
Barford, Paul M. (2001). The Early Slavs: Culture and Society in Early Medieval Eastern Europe. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press.
Gimbutas, Marija. (1971). The Slavs. London: Thames and Hudson.
Hubbs, Joanna. (1989). Mother Russia: The Feminine Myth in Russian Culture. Bloomington: Indiana University Press.
Jakobson, Roman. (1950) "Slavic Mythology." Funk and Wagnalls Standard Dictionary of Folklore, Mythology and Legend. Vol. 2. New York: Funk and Wagnalls.
The Russian Primary Chronicle: Laurentian Text. (1953). Ed. and tr. Samuel Hazzard Cross and Olgerd P.
Sherbowitz-Wetzor. Cambridge, MA: The Mediaeval Academy of America.
—DAVID K. PRESTEL
Paganism (from Latin paganus, meaning "an old country dweller, rustic") is a term which, from a Western perspective, has come to connote a broad set of spiritual or cultic practices or beliefs of any folk religion, and of historical and contemporary polytheistic religions in particular.
The term can be defined broadly, to encompass the faith traditions outside the Abrahamic monotheistic group of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. The group so defined includes the Indian religions (such as Hinduism, Jainism), Native American religions and mythologies and Shinto 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.[1]
The term "pagan" is a Christian adaptation of the "gentile" of Judaism, and as such has an inherent Christian or Abrahamic bias, and pejorative connotations among Westerners,[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.
Since the later 20th century, however, the words "pagan" or "paganism" have become widely and openly used as a self-designation of adherents of polytheistic reconstructionism and neo-paganism.[3]
The term pagan is from Latin paganus, an adjective originally meaning "rural", "rustic" or "of the country." As a noun, paganus was used to mean "country dweller, villager." In colloquial use, it could mean much the same as calling someone today a 'country bumpkin' or a 'hillbilly'.
The 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 [sc. 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:
-- Oxford English Dictionary, (online) 2nd Edition (1989)
"Peasant" is a cognate, via Old French paisent. (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.
Less than twenty years after the last vestiges of paganism were crushed with great severity by the emperor Theodosius I[4] 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.'[5]
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
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. "Paganism" is also sometimes used to
mean the lack of (an accepted monotheistic) religion, and therefore sometimes means essentially the same as
atheism. "Paganism" frequently refers to the religions of
Christianity itself has been perceived at times as a form of paganism by followers of the other Abrahamic religions[7][8]because of, for example, the Christian doctrine of the Trinity, the celebration of pagan feast days[9], and other practices [10] – through a process described as "baptising" [11]or "christianization". Even between Christians there have been similar charges of paganism levelled, especially by Protestants[12],[13], 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, Alamanni) or 8th (Saxons) centuries on the continent, and from the 9th to 12th centuries in Iceland and Scandinavia.
Pagan subdivisions coined by Isaac Bonewits [5]
Bronze Age to Classical Antiquity (as opposed to Zoroastrianism, Judaism and Indian religions)
Late Antiquity to High Middle Ages (as opposed to Abrahamic and Indian religions)
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.
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 Papua and other Pacific islands. Chinese folk religion is an umbrella term for uninstitutionalized folk traditions under a secular regime.
All world religions, however, 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., Anglican Orthodox, Greek Orthodox, Russian Orthodox and other non-Roman churches.
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".
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 tothe Kalasha people, inhabiting three valleys in the NWFP, 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. In Japan, there is the Ryukyuan religion.
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.
Neopaganism includes reconstructed religions such as Hellenic, Celtic or Germanic reconstructionism as well as modern eclectic traditions such as Discordianism, and 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%).[14]
Many current pagans in industrial societies base their beliefs and practices on a connection to Nature, and a divinity within all living things, but this may not hold true for all forms of Paganism, past or present. Some believe that there are many deities, while some believe that the combined subconscious spirit of all living things forms the universal deity.[citation needed] Ancient Greek paganism, which tended in many cases to be a deification of the local deity, as Athena in Athens, saw each local emanation as an aspect of an Olympian deity during the Classical period and then after Alexander to syncretize the deity with the political process, with "state divinities" increasingly assigned to various localities, as Roma personified Rome. Many ancient regimes would claim to be the representative on earth of these gods, and would depend on more or less elaborate bureaucracies of state-supported priests and scribes to lend public support to their claims.
In one well-established sense, paganism is the belief in any non-monotheistic religion, which would mean that the Pythagoreans of ancient Greece would not be considered Pagan in that sense, since they were monotheist, but not in the Abrahamic tradition. In an extreme sense, and like the pejorative sense below, any belief, ritual or pastime not sanctioned by a religion accepted as orthodox by those doing the describing, such as Burning Man, Halloween, or even Christmas, can be described as "pagan" by the person or people who object to them and the individuals who choose to claim this title.
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. If the Indian religions are included, then 50 percent of the worlds religions would be considered pagan.[15].
The term has also been used more narrowly,[16][17][18] 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[19][20] (though by no means all[21][22]) Christians and other Westerners, contemporary paganism is a relatively smaller and more marginal numerical phenomenon.
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Français (French)
n. - paganisme
Deutsch (German)
n. - Heidentum
Ελληνική (Greek)
n. - ειδωλολατρία, παγανισμός
Português (Portuguese)
n. - paganismo (m)
Español (Spanish)
n. - paganismo
Svenska (Swedish)
n. - hedendomen, hednisk religion
中文（简体） (Chinese (Simplified))
异教, 偶像崇拜, 异教信仰
中文（繁體） (Chinese (Traditional))
n. - 異教, 偶像崇拜, 異教信仰
日本語 (Japanese)
n. - 異教, 異教信仰, 異教徒であること
עברית (Hebrew)
n. - עבודת כוחות-הטבע, עבודת אלילים
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 | Dictionary. Webster 1913 Dictionary edited by Patrick J. Cassidy Read more |
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| British History. A Dictionary of British History. Copyright © 2001, 2004 by Oxford University Press. All rights reserved. Read more |
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| English Folklore. A Dictionary of English Folklore. Copyright © 2000, 2003 by Oxford University Press. All rights reserved. Read more |
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| Russian History Encyclopedia. Encyclopedia of Russian History. Copyright © 2004 by The Gale Group, Inc. All rights reserved. Read more |
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