The Rise of Paganism

[beenherebeforeagain]

Thank you for the clarification.

I googled it up: March 1997--search for Adrian Targett and Cheddar Man. 9,000 years or roughly 300 generations. He looks like a regular gent. If anyone's interested.

 

[Poeticus]

I googled it up: March 1997--search for Adrian Targett and Cheddar Man. 9,000 years or roughly 300 generations. He looks like a regular gent. If anyone's interested.

He looks like your average citizen of the UK.

 

[llwyd blaidd]

origionally posted by Legiononomamoi [However, the 19th century was also marked by the production of grimoires, "secret" orders, and the development of magic frameworks (e.g., mappings from macroscale to microscale, incorporation of kabbalah, among other things) as well as a lengthy tradition (going back before the 19th century) of at least borderline religious druidic revivals.
the druidic revival has a very long history (see e.g., Hutton's Blood and Mistletoe: The History of the Druids in Britain) that the 1950s had no real effect on.
Variations of Wicca, yes. Same with Druidism. However, I'm not so sure about Asatru and the others. (Neo)gnosticisms, Norse paganisms, even witches (i.e., the various groups of people who did not identify themselves as wiccans but did identify themselves as witches) were, I believe, not until the 60s at least. I could be wrong as I'm going off of memory here so I'll have to check up on this one.
That will require another post.[/quote]

I agree that much was going on before the 1950 but how much was intellectual vs. a true religious belief. I researched a little history I must admit I was not as aware of how extensive pagan ideas were brought back especially in the 18th century. The Renaissance brought back classical ideas including Greek and Roman mythology. The Reformation created a split in Christianity which opened different ways of thinking about religion in its wake and the Age of Reason brought new was of reason which would find many of the church claims of witchcraft as not rational. I found a source stating that there was a developing national awareness of Britons past especially Druidic because of a growing interest in the megalithic sites like Stonehenge. People like John Wood who wrote Choir Gaure in 1747 about Britons druid past. Henry Rowlands in wales published in 1723 that druidic paganism was not bad and helped with and was a benign awareness in Nature. He was also a Reverend which raises the question how much of the pagan beliefs did they accept. Clearly there was a rise in respect or even national pride of their Druid history. Evidently there was a connection of Druids with freemasonry. The ancient order of druids started in 1717. In 1833 the United Ancient Order of Druids was started and exists today and another druid order even initiated Winston Churchill. Many of the founders of the United States belonged to the Freemasons who incorporated rituals and beliefs into their ceremonies Kenneth Grahme wrote the pagan papers in 1904 and he expressed himself as a faithful pagan and felt a new religion was about to be created. His idea of pagan was still built on a universal pagan faith - the Old Religion. The term Neo-pagan evidently was first applied to artists of the Pre-Raphaelite movement. in 1908. Again it appears to be more of a intellectual pursuit rather than a reestablishment of a pagan religion. Margaret Murray published her work in 1921 which had a large influence also. Well from this it is clear the recovery of paganism has a longer history than I was completely aware of. Still it seems that our modern paganism is different and on a larger scale with a much broader socioeconomic base. Much of what I read came from the intellectuals of those days and it is not clear that the majority converted completely to a pagan religion. I still think something was different in Gerald Gardner's approach to a Wicca religion along with the repeal of the witchcraft act of England that more resembles our modern movement but I am open to a different view.

 

[LegionOnomaMoi]

I agree that much was going on before the 1950 but how much was intellectual vs. a true religious belief.

By the early 18th century, we had books on modern druids, druid orders, and Alexander Pope's rip-off of Virgil's Aeneid linking the modern druids to Troy. Mysticism, theosophy, eclectic ceremonial magic traditions used by particular orders, and more were all around before Wicca. Gardner actually was a part of the O.D.O.

However, except for the German Völkisch movement, which began before the Nazi's and consisted largely of a religious/ideological "mythology" and functioned like a sick, twisted version of the nationalistic tendencies behind modern druidry, and the Nazi party's use of this movement along with pseudo-Aryan motifs and occult traditions, the "paganism" of the 19th and early 20th century was artistic (poetry, paintings, stories, etc.). And the modern Germanic (neo)pagans have nothing in common with Die völkisch-religiöse Bewegung im Nationalsozialismus (the main title of Puschner, U. (2012). Die völkisch-religiöse Bewegung im Nationalsozialismus: eine Beziehungs-und Konfliktgeschichte (Vol. 47). Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht GmbH KG.).

True, there are still racist anti-Semites who sport tattoos of Nazi iconography and shaved heads, Der Übermensch who survive to protect an ideology they don't understand and a philosophy they don't know of because most are probably incapable of reading, let alone reading Nietzsche.

These are pseudo-pagans (and imbeciles), not (neo)pagans. Ásatrú is a different story. But it began in the 70s, not the 50s. In the 50s, we barely had Wicca, and 2 decades later we not only had multiple kinds or types of Wicca, but different types of witches who did not identify themselves as Wiccans. The revival of (neo)Gnosticism was also later than the 50s.

Modern paganism has more to do with things like Jungian psychoanalysis, armchair anthropology of the 19th century, the literature of Shelley, Graves, etc., and the mythology collections that inspired countless authors and artists. Equally important was the death of a Christianity so ingrained in Western culture that much of it survives simply because people (especially Americans) are not prone to trying to understand their cultural heritage. There are still plenty of Christians, but there is not any Christian west, and therefore there is no unified identity that there used to be. Like psychoanalysis, positive psychology, and ideology (political, environmental, racist, whatever), modern paganisms filled a void. The numinous, as it were.

Well from this it is clear the recovery of paganism has a longer history than I was completely aware of.

Modern Hinduism and Buddhism are for the most part the result of an West-East interaction beginning several centuries ago.