How I Define Paganism

John Duncan, Riders of the Sidhe, 1911.

I was on study abroad trip following a tour guide down a Paris street and chatting with another member of the group. Learning of my research area, my acquaintance said he wasn't very familiar with Paganism and asked how I would describe it. 

In that moment, it was as if years of research and thought coalesced into a clear definition. What a great moment. When you have been looking at all this data, all these pieces, and suddenly out of the morass, a structure emerges, a set of characteristics that makes sense of something, sheds light and lets you see the thing with clarity. In fact when I got back to the hotel that night, I had to immediately sketch it out. I love it when a definition or a category comes together, especially when it stands the test of time and continued experience. 

What is Paganism? In that  conversation in Paris, this five-point definition emerged and has remained very useful and helpful for quickly describing the main characteristics of contemporary Paganism. So here it is. Pagan religions are those that are . . . 

• Past oriented
• Nature based
• Polytheistic
• Ancestor venerating
• Magical

Past-oriented: Pagan religions look to the past for religious and spiritual inspiration. Pagan religions tend to hold that the cultures and religions of the pre-Christian past were deeper, spiritually richer, socially more integrated, living in closer balance and harmony with nature, etc. Pagan religions seek to discover and recover the spiritual wisdom of these ancient cultures - ideas, practices, lifestyles, spirituality and religion - and bring it into the present. This is in contrast to New Age religions, which tend to look for a future transformation or evolution of human beings into a higher spiritual consciousness, an Age of Aquarius. In my book Being Viking: Heathenism in America, see chapter 4 "Spears and Shieldwalls: The Self and the Struggle of Life" 

Nature based: Pagan religions look to nature in various ways, to see nature as sacred and to live closer to the rhythms and patterns of the natural world. There many different ways that Pagans incorporate the natural - temporally around a nature-based religious calendar,  magically be making use of natural materials, aesthetically by using nature objects in art or symbols drawn from nature, cosmologically through through astrology, seeking places of power in the landscape, communing with nature spirits or taking an animistic perspective on the world, affirm bodily experience, etc. Pagan religions tend to be this-worldly, in contrast to other-worldly religions that prepare their believers to escape the world into a transcendant reality, and tend to see worldly, earthly, bodily realities as impure or sinful. In Being Viking, see chapter 7, "The Wind-Swept Tree: Nature Religion in Asatru."

Polytheistic: Pagan religions see the world as full of gods. They tend to see the divine manifested in many differentiated beings of power. This includes an openness to the divine feminine. Pagans cultivate relationships with many gods through worship, ritual, and offerings. This is in contrast to the dominant monotheistic religions, which see divinity expressed in one deity. Pagans see monotheism as an historical anomaly to how humans have always interpreted the world. See Being Viking, chapter 5 "Hard Polytheism in a Soft World"

Ancestor Venerating:  Pagans cultivate an awareness of ancestral beings and seek to connect to their ancestors in their lives and religious practice. Ancestors are often thought of in three ways: blood ancestors represent the line of biological kinship; ancestors of place represent those who came before oneself on the land, in the place where one resides; ancestors of faith or spirit are those forebears who share a common spirituality or worldview. Of course, this resonates with past-orientation. However, deserves to be it has become such an important part of Paganism, perhaps even more important than polytheism for many. Connection to ancestors is an important part of Pagan identity, of belonging to a family and a tribe, feeling connected to the people, practices, objects - to live in some way like they did, and also to cultivate living relationships with ancestral beings who might give wisdom, courage, strength. This is in contrast to other modern religious and philosophic ontologies that prioritize the individual as an autonomous agent. See Being Viking, chapter 9, "Kith and Kin: Asatru as a Family Religion"

Magical - Pagan religions see the world as functioning magically - understanding that reality is interconnected through correspondences, malleable to the focused will. Pagans make use of a variety of magical practice, from high magic to hedge magic, sigil magic, goddess magic, chaos magic and more. Many of these are drawn from the past, although modern theorists and practitioners of magic such as Aleister Crowley and groups like the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn have also been very influential on Pagan magic. Magical systems and practices might be part of specific Pagan traditions such as seidr in Norse Heathenry; taught and passed down in families in trad Paganism; and developed or innovated through individual discovery, experimentation, and intuition. See Being Viking, chapter 8, Asatru as Magical Religion