Paganism: everything you wanted to know | HistoryExtra
"‘Did Christians invent the concept of paganism and was this the only word that they used to describe people other than Christians?’
‘Christians certainly invented the term paganism in order to describe people who weren't Christians. Until that time there wasn't any polarity between or antagonism between religions and so there was no need for a general term for a different and other, a wrong kind of religion. It was Christianity that brought in this concept. But it certainly wasn't the only term that Christians used for people who weren't Christian it was used by those whose main language was Latin. Those whose main language was Germanic used the term Heathen instead. And later on Latin speakers used the term infidel. And there were some who deeply rooted in biblical language who used the term Gentile, meaning people who weren't the True Believers, taken over from the Old Testament... Paganism has always had a negative connotation to Christians. It was coined to mean people who are wrong, people who haven't got the point, haven't got the message, haven't been converted, the others. And so although it sometimes used in early days neutrally, in other words these people are not bad in themselves, just got the wrong religion. There's always been a stigma attached to it. Only recently, the last few hundred years has it become redeemed by people who have dropped out of Christianity or never had Christianity and are looking for older traditions...
There are three things that really distinguish pagans from Christians apart from not being Christian. One is that they tend to believe in a lot of different goddesses and gods even if some of them think that they're all reflections of one big Central being, they still have different faces and they include the feminine. There’re goddesses as well as gods, are goddess as well as a god. Second is that nature is seen as something inherently Divine, it has Divinity within it. It's spiritually embodied, it's animate, it's got live spiritual forces actually within it as opposed to being something created by something outside it or some body outside it. And the third difference is that pagans don't really believe most of them. That goddesses and gods give Commandments or morals to humans, or give them rules or monitor their behavior. Indeed to many pagans, Divine beings aren't terribly interested in humans. They got their own stuff to do. And you need to attract their attention...
If something goes wrong for you, you already want something, then you choose a goddess or God who's really expert in that particular thing and then you will make them an offer. You'll say if I manage to win the heart of the woman I love, O Venus then I shall build an altar to you and I shall burn expensive incense on top of it so you can enjoy the fragrance. And then you wait to see what happens. And if the love of your life throws her arms around you, you build the altar to Venus, you burn the incense and you put an inscription on the side of the altar explaining why you've done all this. it's a whole opposite belief system from thinking that you're created and monitored by a deity who then scores you according to how well you're behaving and decides the fate of your soul as a result of that’...
‘On the whole Christians worried a lot more about sex, than pagans did. There were pagans who were just as celibate or austere as many Christians but there was from the beginning a strong strain in Christianity which felt the world was coming to an end. That matter was inherently rather evil and suspect, that the world was a place that had gone wrong. And the best we could hope for was to get out of it and get to heaven’...
‘Were elements of paganism absorbed into the Christian faith in these earlier years? Perhaps festivals, rituals, beliefs, anything like that at all’
‘Lots of things got absorbed into Christianity from paganism. Physical things, the basic shape of Christian churches is taken over from Pagan town halls and they're filled with altars, hangings, incense, flowers. Hymns, or at least songs. And prayers, all of which have been taken from paganism. But they're wrapped around a completely different theology. Christianity is definitely not just paganism in a different dress. It's a different kind of religion. But, uh, festivals are often adapted, particularly those that mark the changing of the seasons. They're turned over to Saints from goddesses and gods. And even the gestures by which people pray with raised arms are taken from paganism. So there's an enormous amount of borrowing but it's, it's external stuff. It doesn't alter the fundamental difference in the new religion'...
‘We have a willful lack of knowledge about why early Christians did all sorts of things. The only thing approaching a mandate or a philosophy that we have for taking over things from paganism and Christianity, is from Pope Gregory the Great. In a letter he wrote to a missionary to England at the beginning of the 7th Century. In which he says, take over the Pagan temples and turn them into churches. Take over the Pagan festivals and make them Christian. Two things are problematic about this. The first is that such an order is very rare among early Christian leaders. The second is there's no sign that the missionaries paid any attention. We just don't find Anglo-Saxon temples underneath medieval churches, anywhere. And where you do find what probably are Anglo-Saxon churches, temples rather, that they've been burned to the ground. And Gregory had sent an earlier letter saying torch them. He changed his mind later but it's his earlier directive that seems to have been followed and his later one ignored. It's in Rome itself, Gregory's own place, that after a few hundred years Pagan temples really are, turned into Christian churches. But then you don't find yourself with very few exceptions going into the entrances of actual Pagan temples. It's more that the stone platforms, the foundations have been used to build churches after the temples had been demolished’...
‘To an impartial observer, Hinduism and Shintoism in particular look pretty well exactly like ancient European paganism except they're still around. If you go into an ancient Roman Temple around about 2 000 years ago it's pretty well the same architecture, rituals and atmosphere you get in a Hindu temple in India at the present day. So there is a distinct kinship, a similarity. But modern Hindus are very keen, most of them are not, being associated with modern pagans in the west. They see themselves as a continuous, ancestral, non-western World religious tradition’...
‘There are two types of popular misconceptions surrounding paganism. All of them held naturally enough by people who don't really know pagans or, know anything about paganism. There's a soft and a hard form. The soft form is the pagans are people who get naked and dance. And this is simply because, in traditional Christian views of paganism, pagans do the things that Christians would never do, like take their clothes off and then dance. Uh, as a matter of fact, some Modern pagans actually have taken off their clothes and danced but it's not actually a central and informing theme of paganism. It's living out the myth of, a joy of celebration of life without shame for the human body. But as said it's not central to ancient or modern paganism.
The harder misconception of modern paganism is that it's about blood sacrifice. This is because ancient paganism often was. Simply because most people didn't eat meat, most the time, they couldn't afford it. And so a festival was an excuse for a barbecue. And people would gather together, an animal or a group of them would be provided from public funds, and humanely slaughtered. It was actually a rule that if an animal brought for sacrifice showed fear or unwillingness, the ritual couldn't happen. It had to be completely unafraid and die without any pain, instantly. Otherwise it wasn't acceptable. And then the indigestible bits were offered up to the deities and the people barbecued and ate everything else. So it's a consecration of a barbecue. Uh, in modern times that doesn't happen because we can afford, if we wish, to eat meat, fish, high protein foods all of the time.
And also the attitude to nature has changed. Instead of the natural world being something incredibly big and mysterious and overwhelming and terrifying, it's something we're trying to rescue from ourselves a lot of the time. And so the need that you need to buy off the deities or propitiate has completely gone. And with it the need to offer up any sacrifices. Relations between modern pagans and their deities really are more like respectful interactions between friends. One side of the transaction of which is more powerful. Or at least better informed and universal than the other side’"
