Why did paganism/heathenism return as a religion in modern society?

[Bear Wild]

Why did paganism return as a religion?

In reflecting on how I got to the point of entering into the druid path I started to become interested again in how paganism returned to modern western culture. This story became both fascinating and enlightening so I thought I might be worth discussing with insight from others. Most of the information will come from three books Ronald Hutton’s Triumph of the Moon and Queens of the Wild both which are historic presentation based on what has been preserved in writing. The other main source is from Margot Adler Drawing down the Moon which is from a journalist perspective.

I want to do this in small sections so I will start with this first post about the difficulties of definitions. Hutton presents this problem in the opening of his book identifying the problems e starting definitions.

Religion – Here Hutton presents two examples of definitions. Religion - “Those duties and that reverence needed to keep the human world in a good relationship with the divine” or “a belief in the existence of spiritual beings and in the need of humans to form relationships with them. “ The etymology of religion as related to religare equates as "to bind fast". Here I would propose religion as the way to establish and maintain the appropriate relationship to that which is most revered. Where sacred is what is considered the most important

Paganism - Pagan seems even more difficult in its use but at some point it referred to those people in the countryside or rural areas that most kept the old ways and in particular the f non-Christian or non-Jewish faith. This makes a reasonable concept of paganism since Christianity developed in the cities and spread outwards with those farthest or most isolated from the centers of Christianity would retain the most understanding of the old ways. This also complements the presentation that pagans were more connected with the land and those in rural areas were more directly connected with the land.



Heathenism – First used by the Goths in writing to apply to someone of a non-Christian religion which became in England associated more with the heath or wild places of the land. Thus heathen implies the similar representation but in a Germanic world and implying someone more from the wild than countryside. Again there is a connection with the land.

Since some posts can get so long as to be difficult to read I would like to start with these definitions and in future posts examine the events that lead to the reemergence of heathenism and paganism in modern society.

 

[Bear Wild]

There is fairly clear evidence that at least in the British Isles by the year 1000 there were no longer any organized surviving pagan gatherings and no written documentation at least to support that there were people continuing the pagan religion after that time. It is also apparently true that there was no evidence of a revived pagan practice in western society that was completely separated from the Christian religion up until the 1900’s.

The first reported public religion which would be considered pagan was the Church of Aphrodite in Long Island New York. Gleb Botkin who immigrated from Russia to the US created a non-Christian organization in 1938 based on the worship of the goddess Aphrodite with worship services at an altar of the goddess. This was a monotheist religion equipped with a definite belief system and creed and did not effectively continued after he died. It was after the witch trials were repealed in 1951 in England that Gerald Gardner make his form of witchcraft which he was called Wicca public. This represented the first public pagan movement completely detached from Christianity. Neither first pagan religions had evidence of an unbroken line from pre-Christian times.



Thus it took over 900 years for paganism to return publicly in western society from what information is available so far.

 

[beenherebeforeagain]

In my case, I 'turned' pagan because of my life experiences. I suspect that many other people have experiences and have since learned that there are ways to engage those and similar experiences in spiritual and religious manners...

 

[Bear Wild]

In my case, I 'turned' pagan because of my life experiences. I suspect that many other people have experiences and have since learned that there are ways to engage those and similar experiences in spiritual and religious manners...

This is what Margot Adler identified in so many she interviewed. Many who replied to her said there was a feeling of coming home when they found paganism.

 

[beenherebeforeagain]

This is what Margot Adler identified in so many she interviewed. Many who replied to her said there was a feeling of coming home when they found paganism.

When experiences can't be shoehorned into Christianity or Western WEIRDism without doing great violence to the self...I tried that for a couple of decades...it was a relief to discover that other avenues existed...

 

[1137]

When polytheism is allowed to flourish, it flourishes. When it's a death sentence or mark of exile it's not as popular.

 

[Bear Wild]

In the return of paganism in the form of witchcraft Hutton presents the following elements in its return. With each he traces all of the written evidence in detail in its development change and finally incorporation into our earliest modern pagan traditions in the form of witchcraft.

1. Finding a goddess - In connecting with a goddess the earlier references were focused on the classical Greek and Roman goddesses. Initially It was Venus, Diana, Minerva and Juno as presented in the roman pantheon and there were also Mother nature or Natura. In time however it was Diana of the wilds, the hunt and feminine power that became dominant. Later The Celtic and Norse goddesses appear in reconstructionist polytheism and Gaia as the universal earth goddess.

2. Finding a god - As in the goddess it was initially Apollo, Mercury, Jupiter and Neptune from the classical roman and Greek pantheon, but this also shifted later to pan and the horned god.

3. In finding a structure for ritual he follows the development of the masonic lodges and temples with intricate ritual which became a framework for the initial ritual of witchcraft.

4. In finding a high magic he traces the occult traditions especially Egyptian, ritual magic Rosicrucian the development of the hermetic order of the golden dawn as examples

5. In finding a low magic he reviewed the literature on cunning folk, herbalists, and those who practiced divination, spells, and other types of folk magic.

6. In finding a folklore he examines how the folklore created myth for witchcraft even if it was not accurate.

7. In finding a witchcraft he shows how these things converged over time to come together in the form of Wicca.

What this book does is put together an impressive analysis of the written record pertaining to the return of witchcraft at least in England. Within it, it does start to imply some of the reasons. The only problem is that this is review of what was written and documented with little attempt to examine other ways of to understand what was passed down from pagan Europe. It does show however how many misconceptions were created and then held true.

 

[Bear Wild]

When I then read again Drawing Down the Moon which gives a journalistic perspective, the reasons for the return paganism. Hutton's work is impressive but its sources except for the end were from Christians. They may have been considering an alternative religion but at least as he found in his resources, they still at least to some extent held onto an aspect of Christianity. The combined resources of practicing modern pagans and historical records gives a fascinating explanation with the following things seemed to me to be at the heart of pagan and heathen return.

1. Nature - a return of reverence to nature as the source of wisdom and knowledge. Reconnecting with the land.
2. The Goddess - A need to return the feminine back to the divine. No matter what Christians may say there was a clear perception at least in Northern Europe and America that Christianity was all about the one God that returned as man and seen in both the conscious and unconscious as being male. The original wicca placed evidence on the goddess but had an equal god connected. Later particularly in America you find goddess dominant paths.
3. Mystery and Darkness - Christianity and its offspring science have been presented as celebrating the light and not the dark. Science is all about reducing the mysteries in the world for clear explanations that shed light on everything. The dark in Christianity was demonized. Paganism celebrates the light and the dark, the known and the mystery both as important.
4. Magic and occultism - Magic, divination, spells and magical systems were always present in society but they became an important focus in the pagan return.
5. Hierarchy and authoritarianism. Many people became attracted to a pagan return in response and rejection to the perception of hierarchy and structure of the Christian society and a monotheistic religion. Polytheism is much more compatible with diversity and at least to some extent less hierarchical than in monotheism.
6. Return of ritual - this was particularly associated with societies that had become protestant who had removed most of the ritual of the roman Christian church for being too pagan.
7. Rejection of set beliefs and celebrating diversity- This is in particular was a rejection of the bible which was perceived to have created an unyielding doctrine of beliefs that could not be questioned.

These are some of the reasons I was able to find in the two books I read. They do not define paganism and not shared by everyone. They are some of the reasons that were found in the literary history and given in the opinions of people responding to a journalist. Please add or correct what is here. I am hoping for challenges, additions or alternative opinions.

 

[Quintessence]

In my (yikes!) couple decades walking this sort of path, there are a few main currents I would identify as to why contemporary Paganism (re)arose in Western culture (if it was ever even really gone to begin with):

• Paganism is the Human Default. While I'm a bit reluctant to frame things this way, it also just is. Regardless of what high-minded intellectualizing you want to do about the human condition, the fact of the matter is humans are denizens of planet earth who enter into countless relationships with greater-than-human others simply by being in the same times and spaces together. Navigating and understanding those relationships more or less gave birth to religion just in general, as well as theism or the concept of gods/spirits. Paganism emerges from life experience itself in a very direct, visceral, sensual, fundamental way. It is a pre-modern, pre-literate, pre-intellectual way of being that doesn't require anything other than just... being. No need for words or languages or alphabets. No need for human organizations or buildings or rules or governments. It just directly emerges out of the human relationship with the greater-than-human world through simply being.
• The Enlightenment and Romanticism. If there was one thing I had to point to as the "start" of contemporary Paganism it would be Romanticism, which itself was a reaction against the Enlightenment and more broadly modern Western intellectualism and industrialization. As it turns out, humans don't so much appreciate reducing themselves down to mere cogs in a physicalist machine whose only value boils down to utility and dollar signs. There's something fundamentally dehumanizing about the soulless perspective that came out of the Enlightenment, perhaps because it denies the very visceral sensuality of experience and interconnection described above. However we want to tell the story, the fact remains that contemporary Paganism is very much an extension of Romanticism - an embrace of nature, the value of subjectivity, personal experience, and whimsy.
• Environmentalism and Feminism. These two other countercultural movements also had an outsized influence on the development and rise of contemporary Paganism. As it turns out, humans (women) don't so much appreciate being treated like a slave class and mere playthings for males. When religions of antiquity provided abundant examples of women in positions of power and independence it is hardly any surprise that it made for ripe grounds for inspiration as women (re)gained equality in society. Similarly, as it turns out there's no removing humanity's dependence upon the gods (aka, nature) and the self-caused environmental problems were starting to bite the species in its collective arse. With gods of nature par for the course in the religions of antiquity, again it is hardly any surprise that inspiration was dawn from these sources in tandem with environmentalism.
• Anthropology. It should go without saying that without the rise of the discipline of anthropology, information about the religions of antiquity wouldn't have even been accessible to the masses. While it's true Paganism will just spontaneously arise anywhere as per the first point, modern domesticated humans are often so immersed in their alphabetic and literate machine culture that's not how they first come to the "old ways" - they find it through books and media. And the tomes compiled by anthropologists and other academics who have studied the religions of our ancestors provide a wellspring of inspiration for others to draw from in this post-oral culture where papers bound in tomes carry more weight than tales uttered on lips or in the wind.
• Stagnation of Christianity. In some ways, contemporary Paganism is a countercultural movement reacting against the mainstream cultural religion gone wrong. Bogged down with its own institutional structures and organization, many branches of Christianity have failed to adapt to the modern human condition in a way that resonates with the people. So they leave and look for something else. This in some ways explains the aversion most contemporary Pagans have to organized religion and hierarchical structures and incontrovertible dogmas as these aspects of Christian traditions is in part why they have had trouble adapting and changing to modern needs. The irony of Christian traditions often being "stuck in the past" when Paganism technically predates it is not lost on me.

This is just a very oversimplified quick and dirty overview of the main things I would point at. Each could be a book on its own (several, probably) so I'll beg your pardon on the quality here. :sweat;

 

[Bear Wild]

In my (yikes!) couple decades walking this sort of path, there are a few main currents I would identify as to why contemporary Paganism (re)arose in Western culture (if it was ever even really gone to begin with):

• Paganism is the Human Default. While I'm a bit reluctant to frame things this way, it also just is. Regardless of what high-minded intellectualizing you want to do about the human condition, the fact of the matter is humans are denizens of planet earth who enter into countless relationships with greater-than-human others simply by being in the same times and spaces together. Navigating and understanding those relationships more or less gave birth to religion just in general, as well as theism or the concept of gods/spirits. Paganism emerges from life experience itself in a very direct, visceral, sensual, fundamental way. It is a pre-modern, pre-literate, pre-intellectual way of being that doesn't require anything other than just... being. No need for words or languages or alphabets. No need for human organizations or buildings or rules or governments. It just directly emerges out of the human relationship with the greater-than-human world through simply being.
• The Enlightenment and Romanticism. If there was one thing I had to point to as the "start" of contemporary Paganism it would be Romanticism, which itself was a reaction against the Enlightenment and more broadly modern Western intellectualism and industrialization. As it turns out, humans don't so much appreciate reducing themselves down to mere cogs in a physicalist machine whose only value boils down to utility and dollar signs. There's something fundamentally dehumanizing about the soulless perspective that came out of the Enlightenment, perhaps because it denies the very visceral sensuality of experience and interconnection described above. However we want to tell the story, the fact remains that contemporary Paganism is very much an extension of Romanticism - an embrace of nature, the value of subjectivity, personal experience, and whimsy.
• Environmentalism and Feminism. These two other countercultural movements also had an outsized influence on the development and rise of contemporary Paganism. As it turns out, humans (women) don't so much appreciate being treated like a slave class and mere playthings for males. When religions of antiquity provided abundant examples of women in positions of power and independence it is hardly any surprise that it made for ripe grounds for inspiration as women (re)gained equality in society. Similarly, as it turns out there's no removing humanity's dependence upon the gods (aka, nature) and the self-caused environmental problems were starting to bite the species in its collective arse. With gods of nature par for the course in the religions of antiquity, again it is hardly any surprise that inspiration was dawn from these sources in tandem with environmentalism.
• Anthropology. It should go without saying that without the rise of the discipline of anthropology, information about the religions of antiquity wouldn't have even been accessible to the masses. While it's true Paganism will just spontaneously arise anywhere as per the first point, modern domesticated humans are often so immersed in their alphabetic and literate machine culture that's not how they first come to the "old ways" - they find it through books and media. And the tomes compiled by anthropologists and other academics who have studied the religions of our ancestors provide a wellspring of inspiration for others to draw from in this post-oral culture where papers bound in tomes carry more weight than tales uttered on lips or in the wind.
• Stagnation of Christianity. In some ways, contemporary Paganism is a countercultural movement reacting against the mainstream cultural religion gone wrong. Bogged down with its own institutional structures and organization, many branches of Christianity have failed to adapt to the modern human condition in a way that resonates with the people. So they leave and look for something else. This in some ways explains the aversion most contemporary Pagans have to organized religion and hierarchical structures and incontrovertible dogmas as these aspects of Christian traditions is in part why they have had trouble adapting and changing to modern needs. The irony of Christian traditions often being "stuck in the past" when Paganism technically predates it is not lost on me.

This is just a very oversimplified quick and dirty overview of the main things I would point at. Each could be a book on its own (several, probably) so I'll beg your pardon on the quality here. :sweat;

thanks, I appreciate the effort I know from writing what I did took time. I think this is worth consideration even if it is not necessary to practice. I think there revealing aspects to the nature of being human in our natural world also. More to come.

 

[Bear Wild]

One of the most confounding aspects of the return of paganism in Northern Western Europe has been what was pagan and what was Christian. Although we have writings from Egyptian, Greek, and Roman we have nothing written from the Celtic and Norse/Germanic religions that was not written by Christians. In returning to pagan religions the initial sources used were Greek and Roman for they preserved some of the wisdom and practices but in writing only. Most of the early Romantics of Europe turned to the classical gods and goddess of the Greeks and Romans. So for those returning to the pagan path how does one know what pagan vs Christian is in recovering a meaningful religion. There were many incorrect assumptions of surviving pagan witchcraft lineages, unbroken ancestry, universal goddess worship and others that have been proposed.

Hutton looks and many of these but three i will bring up in particular - mother nature, the Cailleach, and the fairy queen. Hutton draws a literary connection of each of these to Christian creations. The concept of mother nature as natura in addition to goddesses like lady poverty, lady love, lady church, and the goddess of eternal wisdom. these later seem to embody qualities to be revered but Natura or mother nature was expressed as a divine goddess here on Earth under the control of the heavenly father. The first reference of the Cailleach was a Christian reference of the root term veiled one for a godly older woman. It was only later that the Cailleach or hag began to sound not so Christian taking on good and bad personifications depending on place. The idea of a Fairy queen also is identified as a Christian invention based on the literary references available and the word fairy came from the French. The available literature creates a suggestion that these ideas which become fully embraced as Pagan in modern times is actually Christian inventions.

I think this presentation is and illusion of what was written since all early Northern Europeans who wrote were Christians and thus, we have only half of the story or just one side of the story. Wondering how others in this forum respond to this.

 

[Bear Wild]

In her book, God and the Goddesses: Vision, Poetry, and Belief in the Middle Ages, Barbara Newman looks at how European Christians wrote about gods and goddess in addition their primary god which was influenced by an early form of renaissance starting in the 12 century. This is the time when Europe was opening up to the Islamic world and knowledge as well as connecting with Byzantium giving access to Hellenistic philosophers including Plato and Aristotle. During this time, it was Thomas Aquinas who lead a shift from Plato’s inductive reasoning to Aristotle’s reductive reasoning which became embraced in science. This early renaissance used classical idealizations of the goddess figure under the control of a supernatural god. Natura was represented more as divine goddess but still subservient to God. This use of the classical deities continued like this up until the romantic era



In the 1750s German Romanticism fused ancient Greece with a nostalgia for the pre-Christian past and a desire for unity with nature creating a shift in presentation of the goddess and at least a literary treatment of the old deities as real. There was also a reaction to the growing dominance of science in a reaction to the feeling that the beauty of the world was being reduced to chemicals. With the growing Romantic era there was a increasing celebration of nature and the irrational/mystery which had been disparaged up to this point and seen as feminine.

Thus the themes of a return to nature, seeing the pagan deities as divine, embracing the feminine and reacting to the increasing reductionism of science all seemed to be a response to the dominant Christian culture and its offspring of modern science. There still however was not yet a full rejection of Christianity but a clear need to at least complement it with aspects they associated with the pagan past.

 

[Bear Wild]

Before the return of a completely non-Christian paganism we have developments occurring particularly in the Romantic era that would provide an estuary for what would come. The romantics reacted to the increasing dominance of science and technology as well as the perceived patriarchal dominant religion that seemed separated from the natural world. To them extreme materialism of science to them seemed as if it was reducing the beauty of the world into meaningless parts (reductionism) and taking away the aspect of mystery and enchantment in the world. The industrialization of northern Europe created a longing for the tranquility and Romanization of the countryside. The increasing fascination with the pre-Christian deities continued but with a shifting from the culturally idealized gods particularly of Greek/roman to those more connected with the surrounding the wild and sensual nature. Thus the rise of pan and the “horned” god and the Diana connected with the wild, the hunt and moon.



In addition, there was an increasing interest in the occult and ritual. This may have been influence by the reformation and development of the protestant religions which removed most of the ritual and other spiritual practices that were not supported by the bible. Hutton points to the rise of the free masons who although remained Christian in orientation developed complex rituals heald under secrecy with emphasis at least in the beginning on classical and biblical symbolism particularly associated with Solomon. Their rituals were highly symbolic and even drew in elements of ancient Egypt. Increasing interest in occult created resurgence in what is called high magic like Hermeticism and kabbalah while interest in folklore brought in what is described as low magic (spells, curses, herbal magic and others practiced by the more “common” folk.

By the beginning of the 1900’s the influences above along with the works of Margret Murray in her work on witches and Egypt, James Frazer with his book The Golden Dawn, Helena Blavatsky and her Theosophical Society. Robert Graves the white goddess, Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn, and occultists like Allister Crowley had created the environment in which Gerald Garner brought a non-Christian pagan religion to the public.

Gardner may not have been the first but it was his Wicca that became public enough to influence a significant growth in pagan practitioners which has only continued to grow today. Wicca was the first religion since Christian colonization to finally balance the god and goddess again. Even if one does not follow Wicca or see oneself connected to it, Wicca made the final break from the dominant Christian society. It took hundreds of years to make this final break which shows how hard it is to shift from a dominant monotheistic religion. It is hard to see and understand this from our technological culture with so much information and communication available. This also means that it would have taken a long time for transition for most people and especially people who were more isolated from the urban centers to shift from paganism to Christianity which means that aspects of paganism lasted well into the Christian domination of Europe.

 

[rocala]

My case is very similar to that of @beenherebeforeagain . On top of this I felt totally unable to relate to the Abrahamic religions.

 

[Isabella Lecour]

It was a great boon to admit that one fails to follow whatever the local Church teaches without being hauled off to jail or worse, stoned on the spot. Without a social tolerance to difference, I don't think Pagans would be so public and would have remained underground as whispers, the old ways, old nursery rhymes, and various habits and traditions that's been passed down by word of mouth that only the gods know if it's short or long.
I don't really see it as a return of Paganism but a return to honesty and openness.

 

[Bear Wild]

It was a great boon to admit that one fails to follow whatever the local Church teaches without being hauled off to jail or worse, stoned on the spot. Without a social tolerance to difference, I don't think Pagans would be so public and would have remained underground as whispers, the old ways, old nursery rhymes, and various habits and traditions that's been passed down by word of mouth that only the gods know if it's short or long.
I don't really see it as a return of Paganism but a return to honesty and openness.

I actually agree with you from a pagan polytheistic view. The reason is seen as a return is based on a Christian monotheistic rationalist society. Polytheistic cultures are always adding and blending new aspects into the culture. In the case of early Europe most polytheists could accept an new god if needed without culturally abandoning the old ways of relationship to he land. The problem with academia discussing this topic is they use written sources as the primary information with in history with some archeology influence. Western academia also likes thing in nice reductionist boxes. This is Celtic, this is Norse, this is Christian based on the written sources. Thus the written sources of Europe were all written by Christians who interpret the information and the world from a monotheistic view. Most of the information about Christianity was not available to the average person for a long time after colonization took hold. It was presented in Latin until the protestant revolt and the printing press. Since the written sources are Christian without reference to pagan survivals, the academic world paganism is a new religion because they cant find any written sources to contradict their opinion. The book drawing down the moon as a journalistic book has people who have had generations consider themselves witches that go back generations into the old country, but these accounts are from interviews and have not written proof of how far back the witch lines go.

Humans especially outside of urban areas are generally conservative of beliefs but still adaptable. Just put saint in front of the god, change the name of the celebration, and rename the holy wells and you have instant Christianity devoid of pagan practice according to Christians who cannot tolerate even the though of anything they do as "barbaric" paganism. Just read some of the opinions of the Irish from the British anthropologist Edward Tylor.