Month 3, Day 1: Neo-Paganism

Well, it’s a new year, a new month, and a new religion: neo-paganism (or “new” paganism), so we’re all about the new stuff today. I’m very excited about moving on to something new (and finally getting to ignore my old Catholic guilt, which has resurfaced with a vengeance over the past month).

So, today, I’m a pagan. Historically, the word pagan just meant “rustic” or “from the country.” It referred to someone who didn’t live in the city. As someone who lives in the suburbs, I guess I'm kind of between worlds. Anyway, the point is that the word pagan didn't originally have a negative connotation.

Pagans weren’t necessarily seen as “bad” people until Christianity took hold in Europe and the Christians started telling everyone that the gods the non-Christians had been worshipping for as long as anybody could remember were demons. Even today, a lot of people think pagans are devil worshippers, but it’s not true—in fact, pagans don’t even believe there is a devil, which would make it pretty difficult to worship him.

Although the basic ideas of paganism, including the worship of ancient gods and goddesses and a reverence for nature, have probably been around since long before history has been recorded, the neo-pagan movement got its start in the middle of the 20^th century. 

Neo-paganism encompasses several different forms, such as druidism, shamanism, and witchcraft. We'll look at all of them at some point this month. Perhaps the best-known branch of the neo-pagan movement is Wicca, which was established mainly by Gerald Gardner and his associates in the 1940s and 1950s. 

Despite the relative newness of Wicca and other forms of neo-paganism, many of those who practice paganism today refer to their beliefs as “the Old Ways” or the “Old Religion”—which simply means that they believe they can trace their spiritual beliefs and some of their rituals, especially their sabbats (holidays based on the cycle of the seasons), back to pre-Christian and even prehistoric times.

Obviously, it’s only Day 1 and I still have a ton of research to do, but so far, I’ve got to say that I’m really liking paganism. As Carl McColman writes in The Complete Idiot’s Guide to Paganism, “In the pagan way of seeing things, you are your own ultimate authority. You decide what you believe, how you behave, and what spiritual practices you observe.” (Just an aside, but I’m starting to wonder if the fact that I’ve been reading so many of these Complete Idiot’s Guide books lately is some sort of reflection on me . . .)

Unlike Christianity and Judaism, where the “Law” is laid out for you (often in excruciating detail, if you’ll recall our discussion of God’s specifications for building the Ark of the Covenant), paganism basically says that everyone has a choice—choice about how to live, what to believe, whether to acknowledge God (or the Goddess), and everything else. As long as you don’t harm anyone (including yourself), you’re pretty much good to go. 

That kind of freedom appeals to me intellectually, and it also makes me automatically less resistant to whatever the pagan path holds. I think we’ve established by now that I really don’t like being told what to do.

So this month should be an adventure. And, by the way, happy new year (although, to get technical, the pagan new year won’t happen until October 31, but we’ll worry about that another day)!