What Does "Pagan" Mean to You? .: PaganPages

What Does "Pagan" Mean to You?

The etymology of Pagan is strange, considering its history. Derived from Latin paganus was an adjective that meant “rustic”, ‘rural”, or “of the country”. When the term was used as a noun, to call someone a “country dweller, villager”, was the modern equivalent of calling someone a country bumpkin or a hillbilly.

Just how the term “Pagan” came to describe generally non-Christian beliefs is hazy. It is thought to have likely occurred in the 4th century. Christianity spread quite fast in urban areas. However, this was not the case in rural areas. ‘Pagan” then became a term for the ancient idolatry that lingered in rural areas of the Roman Empire after Christianity was already generally accepted. It has since become synonymous with someone “Not a Christian.”

In modern usage the word is used to refer broad range of spiritual or cultic beliefs, along with all polytheistic religions, & just about anything not of Abrahamic religion, i.e. anything not Christian, Islamic, or Jewish. Thus, someone in Japan practicing the indigenous religion of Shintoism is as much of a Pagan as someone practicing modern Wicca with the inclusion of an ancient god(s) or goddess(es) by these definitions.

However, there is some cases of the Abrahamic beliefs winding up in a bunch of syncretize forms of Neo-paganism, including Wicca. This poses a dilemma, as many Neo-pagans and Wiccans have come to detest anything Abrahamic, particularly Christian. It seems to become “cool” to bash Christians and Christianity, while boasting how “old” your religion, god/dess, and beliefs are. Sometimes this gives rise to anti-Semitism and with anti-Patriarchal beliefs. Other than detestment for Christianity and everything Abrahamic, there is also a large resentment and animosity aimed at Satanism and Satanists in the Neo-pagan community. If it’s not that, then, it seems that there’s this political correctness agenda to make it seem as though Paganism in general is in many ways similar to Christianity or another Abrahamic religion and that Pagans are just about “all the same”, as are all “Pagan” religions.

Unfortunately, all of these views are incorrect. Many modern forms of Wicca are very syncretic and encourage to just believe what ever you wish or to syncretize what ever god from what ever pantheon. This is in contrast to the original Wicca that Gerald Gardner founded in the 50’s. Let’s start off with some history of Wicca and modern Neo-pagan beliefs. It is known today that Wicca is the most influential and popular of all the Neo-pagan religions. In fact many books on Neo-paganism and New Age today seem to incorporate at least one aspect found in Wicca.

The fecund layers of Wicca’s origins are subject of debate to some. Wicca itself claims to be a ‘revival’ or ‘survival’ of an old religion of pre-historic Europe. It was supposedly taught to Gerald Gardner by a woman named “Dafo” or “Old Dorothy”, who has been identified by, Gerald’s associate and co-founder of Wicca, Doreen Valiente as a woman named Dorothy Clutterback. Some scholars theorize, however, that Dafo and Clutterback are separate individuals. In any case, according to Gardner he was initiated into Clutterback’s New Forest coven in 1939, where he stayed for a number of years until England’s witchcraft laws were repealed.

This would be a likely story, if not that there was a similar story, earlier, found else where, and from a place that is an obvious inspiration on Gardner and the development of Wicca and Neo-paganism. It came in the form of a book published in 1899, entitled “Aradia, or the Gospel of Witches”. A man by the name of Charles Godfrey Leland had clamed that Italian witchcraft was forced underground and had survived for centuries, until his discovery of it in the 1890’s in Tuscany. The text is a composite; some of it is translation by Leland from Italian to English. He claimed to have had received this manuscript from a woman named Maddalena, who was his primary informant on Italian witchcraft. The rest of the material was compelled from Leland’s research on Italian traditions, folklore, and some related material from Maddalena.

The contents of the book detail the Roman goddess Diana’s messianic daughter, Aradia’s descent to earth to teach witchcraft to the oppressed worshippers. It contains spells, rituals, blessings, and myths, which suggest influence from Roman mythology, Roman Catholism, and some literary Satanism. Major characters in these myths are the goddess Diana, Lucifer as a sun god, the biblical Cain, as a lunar figure, and Diana’s daughter Aradia, who is an alternative name for Lilith. The book itself is considered to be methods of spell casting and an anti-hierarchical, so-called “counter-religion” to the Catholic Church.

In the appendix Leland writes: “Now be it observed, that every leading point which forms the plot or centre of the Vangel, such as that Diana is Queen of the Witches; an associate of Herodias (Aradia) in her relations to sorcery; that she bore a child to her brother the Sun (here Lucifer); that as a moon-goddess she is in some relation to Cain, who dwells as prisoner in the moon, and that the witches of old were people oppressed by feudal lands, the former revenging themselves in every way, and holding orgies to Diana which the Church represented as being the worship of Satan..

[……]

Aradia is evidently enough Herodias, who was regarded in the beginning as associated with Diana as chief of the witches. This was not, as I opine, derived from the Herodias of the New Testament, but from an earlier replica of Lilith, bearing the same name. It is, in fact, an identification or twin-ing of the Aryan and Semitic Queens of Heaven, or of Night and of Sorcery, and it may be that this was known to the earliest myth-makers. So far back as the sixth century the worship of Herodias and Diana by witches was condemned by a Church Council at Ancyra. Pipernus and other writers have noted the evident identity of Herodias with Lilith. Isis preceded both.”

Diana wasn’t just considered a witches’ goddess, she is also portrayed as primordial creatrix in Chapter III; dividing herself into darkness and light. She eventually gives birth to the sun god Lucifer. She, then, changes herself into a cat and seduces him, thus given birth to Aradia. Demonstrating her power of witchcraft, Diana, creates "the heavens, the stars and the rain” and becomes the “Queen of Witches”.

The original witches, as told in Chapter I, were said to have escaped their masters and took up lives as thieves and evil folk. Diana sends her daughter Aradia to teach these people witchcraft to get rid of the “evil race” (oppressors) and to continue her own worship. Leland stunned by this said: “"In all other Scriptures of all races, it is the male… who creates the universe; in Witch Sorcery it is the female who is the primitive principle".”

Aradia has proved to be the most controversial of Leland’s works, due to the questionable historical claims made by Leland. But the work has been hailed as “the first real text of the 20th century Witchcraft revival" and is likewise citied as being one of the most influential and important books on the development of Neo-paganism and Wicca. According to Doreen Valiente, Gardner was surprised that she recognized some of the material as having come from Leland’s book. Indeed, in one of the earliest Gardnerian rituals used the name Airdia, a form derivate of Aradia. The idea of going “sky clad” appears to have been first suggested by Leland and adopted by Gardner for Wicca and many suggestions about the rituals, myths, and spells appear to have been first inspired by the book of Aradia.

However, not everything was entirely received positively by Gardner from Aradia. One of the most key things is the claim of Lucifer as a solar deity and the stigma associated with Satan, which Gardner maintained that Wicca or witchcraft was not connected with Satanism in any way. Valiente offered a counter explanation that the Lucifer ideal as a god of witches was just "too strong meat" for Wiccans and Gardner, who favored the softer, Romanized version Paganism that was quick to reject a relationship with anything Satanic. This is a bit ironic considering that Gardner drew much inspiration from 19th century occult works and the works of ceremonial magik and Aleister Crowley, a major occultist. Co-founder Valiente had even admitted seeing Crowley’s influence in the works of Gardner’s Wicca. Although, Crowley was not a Satanist in the sense of the word, he was well known for dabbling in dark occult practices and was into some Satanic symbolism. Crowley appeared to be very eclectic in his beliefs, but was known to experiment with demons, devils, and the more Satanic aspect of the occult.

That is to say that these influences are not the only influences that contributed to a lot of modern New Age, Neo-pagan, and Wiccan beliefs. Gardner drew inspiration from the scholar Margaret Murray, who theorized the pan-European, Pre-Christian, pagan religion that revolved around the “Horned God” and witchcraft survival underground during Christian burning times. The main difference between Murray’s thesis and Gardner’s Wicca, is that Murray wrote that these covens of 13 members that survived from the Neolithic age to the medieval period centered on the Horned God, and not a pre-Christian goddess. She did write that these covens, practiced human sacrifice until exposed by the witch hunt craze c. 1450, stressed the importance of freedom of women, open sexuality, and resistance to Church oppression. Murray maintained that the admissions’ during the with trials that people had confessed to, while under torture, about worshipping Satan, proved the existence of this witch cult and worship of the Horned God. Since Murray published her thesis’s she has come across many criticisms. Modern scholars have discredited many of her theories, because evidence is lacking and Murray tended to twist historical evidence to fit her own theories and agenda.

The idea of a supreme Mother Goddess was common in romantic, Victorian, and Edwardian literature at the time. The Horned God idea,(I.e. Pan, Faunus) while of lesser importance, was still common and popular as well. But there isn’t anything on Gardner supporting that belief that all gods/goddesses are really one god or that all gods are one god and all goddesses are really one goddess, there’s also no instances of encouragement syncretic practices and adapting any belief you want to (I.e. Anything goes) or worshipping the earth/Gaia. In fact Wicca originally was a mystery religion that required one to be an initiate to a coven to join, while keeping the oath of not revealing the rituals openly. Leland’s Aradia book, likewise, seemed to be quite polytheistic. All these more modern non-Gardnerian beliefs seem to stem from some of the New Age and hippie movement of the 60’s and in some cases a attempt to water down more non-Christian beliefs.

I’m grateful for Wicca and Neo-paganism to be a step up to ancient reconstruction of old Pagan religions. The profound influence of Abrahamic and other ideals cannot be ignored, however. Lilith is very much adored in modern Neo-paganism, but according to Gardner, Leland, and Valiente all asserted her to be separate from “the Goddess”, although she had a heavy association with witchcraft and was considered a goddess in her own right. Not to mention that the idea of Lilith is drawn upon Judaism, where she was a feared child killing demon similar to Christian notions of Satan, and Romantic artistic sources that show cased her in a positive, feminist light. Lucifer, as the reader well knows is associated with Satan, but that is drawn from Christianity and a misinterpretation of a biblical scripture referring to a Babylonian king. (His fall from paradise due to his pride in Aradia is very similar to Christian legends, likewise.) And Cain, well that should be pretty self explanatory. Basically, what you’re looking at is that some of the early founders of Neo-paganism/Wicca were influenced by Romantic artistic ideals of some very Abrahamic characters, mixed with 19th century occult, some based from Jewish Mysticism, otherwise known as Cabbala, literature on Satan and Satanism, accounts, testimonials, and beliefs of and about witches from during the burning times.

Remember the idea that Diana is a goddess of witches? That’s not from an ancient Roman source; it’s from medieval period folk traditions on supposed witches. According to medieval folklore; the Cult of Herodias was a cult of witches worshipping the goddess Diana and the biblical character Herodias. (The Jewish princess responsible for the death of John the Baptist from the New Testament.) Sound similar to Leland’s Aradia and Aradia being a kind of counter religion to Christianity? That isn’t all; ancient Pagan goddesses such as Holda and Diana were targeted as being goddesses of these supposed witches and in leagues with the devil himself. “Witches” were burned often times for social, land ownership, and economic concerns, under the guise of the Church, God, and religion. Some of the motives were directed by misogyny, because according to the book published 1487, the Malleus Maleficarum, women who were thought to be witches and women in general, are more susceptible to Satan and are weaker willed and more carnal than men. It seems these types of paranoid delusions spread like wildfire across medieval Christian Europe, given rise to the deaths of many innocent men, women, and children. In truth there was no “survival” of any ancient Pagan practices, there was no great lineage line of witch craft that survived into modern era, no one was worshipping any idols or Pagan gods, and all that was the ancient Pagan religion(s) had long since been wiped out or syncretized with some form of Christianity.

As for the (Abrahamic) Monotheism and so called ‘soft” Polytheism that is found among Neo-paganism, at least admit that this is not a “ancient” concept your ancestors had. Most religions in the world, especially “Pagan” ones are highly Polytheistic. Just because some of your beliefs or all of them are “new” doesn’t mean that’s an automatic discredit. I can’t tell you how many sources on certain subjects I have seen, like gods and goddesses, where the author is trying to base “ancient” worship of a mythological figure with little or no archeological evidence or making it sound as though your religion comes from Pre-History in Europe so that it makes you seem bigger, more valid, and better than all the rest of the religions in the world. Newness doesn’t discredit validness, as all the religions in the world were “new” at some point, even yours. Likewise, trying to deny the influence of Abrahamic concepts, ideas, and mythological characters on Neo-paganism is like denying the world is round.

author: Xuchilbara