Definition

[enchanted_abyss]

I've been conversing with a friend who is Christian on the topic of paganism. For him, it's hard to let go of the dictionary definitions given to him. A lot of them are inaccurate, and when I listen to them, I'm always thinking "not really, not exactly, not quite." The term "pagan" for him, is very broad. It's a broad term really, but when you

Comments

[lilairen]

It's a complicated term. A friend of mine wrote to me noting that the heirarchy of the Religio Romana (Roman recons) note that pedantically they can't be pagan, because 'pagan' is originally the term was for those people who weren't Religio. (They do agree that the modern usage of the word includes them.)

One of the common meanings for 'pagan' is 'Not one of the People of the Book'; the traditional Religions of the Book would be, I believe, Zoroastrianism, Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. I've riffed off this to a tendency to use 'pagan' to mean 'a follower of a religion that does not have a Holy Book', without limiting the Holy Bookness to that particular scriptural tradition.

But really, it's hard to generate an affirmative definition for a term that originally means "Not a follower of our state religion." ;) It's a negative term to start out with, and paganism practiced in a modern context is so huge that it's really bloody hard to put in positive statements that are universal.

If I wanted to make statements about modern paganism, I would do it in "tend to be" phrasings; I can't think of a good absolute. So I might put together a list that runs like:

- pagans tend to be polytheistic, pantheistic, and/or animistic.
- pagans tend to put emphasis on awareness of natural cycles and living in harmony with them; for some this reaches the point of being a Earth-centric or Gaian worldview.
- pagans tend to emphasise personal awareness and connection with the divine.

And so on. For bonus points, I'd distinguish neopaganism from reconstructionism and make explicit note of the fact that many unbroken-tradition local religious traditions hate being called "pagan" because of its connotations of being equivalent to "not the religion of the legitimized culture".