Unitarian Universalists look for spiritual inspiration in a wide variety of religious beliefs. From the high Medieval period (950-1350) her story takes the reader through to the renaissance and the reformation, the great witch hunts (1480-1650), the age of reason and science to the principle romantic revival movements of the 19th century; the Druidic revival at Primrose Hill in London in 1792, the romantic notions of Edward Carpenter . An example of a nativistic movement is: . [4] Some favor the term "ethnic religion"; the World Pagan Congress, founded in 1998, soon renamed itself the European Congress of Ethnic Religions (ECER), enjoying that term's association with the Greek ethnos and the academic field of ethnology. [140] Respondents were given the option to select one or more religious affiliations. Because of these different approaches there is disagreement on when or if the term pagan should be capitalized, though specialists in the field of pagan studies tend towards capitalisation.[4]. Heathenry is a term used to describe the religious practices of two main groups of people, one historical and one modern. Conflict naturally arises, however, as some neopagan belief systems and sect ideologies stem from fundamental beliefs in the male-female gender binary, heterosexual pairing, resulting heterosexual reproduction, and/or gender essentialism. Renaissance: Influence and Interpretations. Neo-Druidry is the second-largest pagan path after Wicca,[citation needed] and shows similar heterogeneity. [96], The 1960s and 1970s saw a resurgence in neo-Druidism as well as the rise of Germanic neopaganism in the United States and in Iceland. Paperback. [98] [7] Even within the academic field of pagan studies, there is no consensus about how contemporary paganism can best be defined. [144] They have also been supported by Pagan studies scholar Graham Harvey. [] In the academic community Wicca has also been interpreted as having close affinities with process philosophy. [101], Many Heathen groups adopt variants of Norse mythology as a basis for their beliefs, conceiving of the Earth as on the great world tree Yggdrasil. It's definitely not a Wiccan path, and because of the structure within the spirituality, it's not even something where you can swap out gods of other pantheons and insert the Roman deities. Writing in the 1430s, Matteo Palmieri of Florence celebrated "this new age, so full of hope and promise" with a greater collection of "nobly-gifted souls" than the world had seen in a thousand years.Like others of his day, Palmieri believed he was living in a special time, a period of tremendous intellectual and artistic creativity inspired by the . The Australian academic and practising pagan Caroline Jane Tully argues that many pagans can react negatively to new scholarship regarding historical pre-Christian societies, believing that it is a threat to the structure of their beliefs and to their "sense of identity". 1 January : New Year's Day [174] For instance, Strmiska highlighted instances in both the US and UK in which school teachers were fired when their employers discovered that they were pagan. Pagan beliefs have survived alongside Christianity. Most of what is considered Christian Europe is actually pagan Europe . "[44] Strmiska argues that these two poles could be termed reconstructionism and eclecticism, respectively. In the early medieval ages, these religions were influential, and, in some cases, they were even the official . . [29] In 2015, Rountree opined that this lower case/upper case division was "now [the] convention" in pagan studies. The 2011 census however made it possible to describe oneself as pagan-Wiccan, pagan-Druid and so on. It actually dates back much longer than that: it has roots in Hinduism and old Persian beliefs, but it moved to Northern Europe and mingled with indigenous beliefs . First, it can refer to a belief that everything in the universe is imbued with a life force or spiritual energy. Mari fled here from forced Christianization in the 17th to 19th centuries. The primary forms of Paganism in Europe were Hellenistic religions, including the Roman Imperial cult, mystery religions, local ethnic religions, especially among Anglo-Saxons and the Germanic tribes, Gnosticism and Neo-Platonism. Hutton estimated that there are 250,000 neopagan adherents in the United Kingdom, roughly equivalent to the national Hindu community. [19] He suggests that part of the term's appeal lay in the fact that a large proportion of pagan converts were raised in Christian families, and that by embracing the term "pagan", a word long used for what was "rejected and reviled by Christian authorities", a convert summarizes "in a single word his or her definitive break" from Christianity. [167] Further, the New Age movement shows little interest in magic and witchcraft, which are conversely core interests of pagan religions such as Wicca. This usage has been common since the pagan revival in the 1970s. [172] This animosity is flamed by historical conflicts between Christian and pre-Christian religions, as well as the perceived ongoing Christian disdain from Christians. [66] In fact, many American neopagans first came to their adopted faiths because it allowed a greater freedom, diversity, and tolerance of worship among the community. The largest subgroup was Wicca, with 11,766 adherents. I am somewhat under the impression that paganism, as practiced in Europe, tends to often have a more ethnocentric bend to it because in Europe various pagan sects could be seen as "indigenous" religions. At least three residents of the city have formally complained over the plan to place the sculpture, one of five pieces of art funded by the government with a . Renaissance and revival History of modern Paganism Contemporary Paganism is the restoration of indigenous religion, especially that of ancient Europe. [178] In 2004, the first peer-reviewed, academic journal devoted to pagan studies began publication. [63] Pagans feel that this understanding of the gods reflected the dynamics of life on Earth, allowing for the expression of humour. At the other end are eclectic movements, which blend elements of historical paganism with other religions and philosophies; examples are Wicca, neo-Druidry, and the Goddess movement. 12 October 2016. The modern popularisation of the terms pagan and neopagan as they are currently understood is largely traced to Oberon Zell-Ravenheart, co-founder of the 1st Neo-Pagan Church of All Worlds who, beginning in 1967 with the early issues of Green Egg, used both terms for the growing movement. Many years after the last inscriptions to the Eastern divinities had been dedicated in the provinces, such dedications were sufficiently numerous at Rome, particularly so during the closing years of the fourth century, when the pagan revival reached its culmination. A sociological survey conducted in 2004 found that about 15 percent of the population of Mari El consider themselves adherents of the Mari native religion. [150], The sociologist Regina Oboler examined the role of gender in the US pagan community, arguing that although the movement had been constant in its support for the equality of men and women ever since its foundation, there was still an essentialist view of gender engrained within it, with female deities being accorded traditional western feminine traits and male deities being similarly accorded what western society saw as masculine traits. Further, some convents only accepted women of the nobility or those who . The population of Europe was growing, but in the 12th century the nun's orders on the whole were not opening new convents. ", Religious studies scholar Michael Strmiska[93], The rise of modern paganism was aided by the decline in Christianity throughout many parts of Europe and North America,[91] as well as by the concomitant decline in enforced religious conformity and greater freedom of religion that developed, allowing people to explore a wider range of spiritual options and form religious organisations that could operate free from legal persecution.[94]. [90] At the time, it was commonly believed that almost all such folk customs were survivals from the pre-Christian period. [17] A number of academics, particularly in North America, consider modern paganism a form of nature religion. [164] Ethan Doyle White stated that while the pagan and New Age movements "do share commonalities and overlap", they were nevertheless "largely distinct phenomena. [86] English esotericist Gerald Gardner was at the forefront of the burgeoning Wiccan movement. The first comprehensive study of its kind, this fully illustrated book establishes Paganism as a persistent force in European history with a profound influence on modern thinking. Neopaganist beliefs and practices are extremely diverse, some tending towards syncretic melding of once-diverse practices and beliefs, others bordering on the historical reenactment of meticulously . Contemporary pagan ritual is typically geared towards "facilitating altered states of awareness or shifting mind-sets". [170] The modern pagan writer Christopher Grard has drawn much inspiration from Hinduism and visited Swarup in India. Here is a short list encompassing all European countries. The Mari native religion in fact has a continuous existence, but has co-existed with Orthodox Christianity for centuries, and experienced a renewal after the fall of the Soviet Union. [151], The western LGBT community, often marginalized and/or outright rejected by Abrahamic-predominant mainstream religious establishments, has often sought spiritual acceptance and association in neopagan religious/spiritual practice. It was the outlook of the European religions of classical antiquity - Persia . [162] An issue of academic debate has been regarding the connection between these movements. [47], Strmiska nevertheless notes that this reconstructionist-eclectic division is "neither as absolute nor as straightforward as it might appear". In fact, while the Nazis initially tried to coopt Christianity, their goal was to. Mari anthropologist Nikandr Popov points out that pagan prayer meetings were permitted by decree during the Second World War - with collections being made for the front - and . Increased knowledge of other cultures led to questions of whether their practices even fit into the definitions of religion, and paganism was incorporated in the idea of progress, where it was ranked as a low, undeveloped form of religion. [65] Among many pagans, there is a strong desire to incorporate the female aspects of the divine in their worship and within their lives, which can partially explain the attitude which sometimes manifests as the veneration of women.[]. [27] Conversely, most pagans do not use the word neopagan,[4] with some expressing disapproval of it, arguing that the term "neo" offensively disconnects them from what they perceive as their pre-Christian forebears. [4] Among the critics of the upper-case P are York and Andras Corban-Arthen, president of the ECER. [20] Within linguistically Slavic areas of Europe, the term "Native Faith" is often favored as a synonym for paganism, rendered as Ridnovirstvo in Ukrainian, Rodnoverie in Russian, and Rodzimowierstwo in Polish. Numerous pagan groups primarily Wiccan and Druidic exist in Ireland though none is officially recognised by the Government. The last pagan revival was under the Western Emperor Eugenius, who was a puppet of the Pagan magister millitum Arbogast. [121], In 1925, the Czech esotericist Franz Sttler founded the pagan religion Adonism, devoted to the ancient Greek god Adonis, whom Sttler equated with the Christian Satan, and which purported that the end of the world would come in 2000. [154] Margot Adler noted groups whose practices focused on male homosexuality, such as Eddie Buczynski's Minoan Brotherhood, a Wiccan sect that combines the iconography from ancient Minoan religion with a Wiccan theology and an emphasis on men who love men, and the eclectic pagan group known as the Radical Faeries. The Covenant of Unitarian Universalist Pagans, or CUUPs, encourages its chapters to "use practices familiar to members who attend for worship services but not to follow only one tradition of paganism". The first account of the gods of Irish myth to take in the whole sweep of Irish literature in both the nation's languages, the book describes how Ireland's pagan divinities were transformed into literary characters in the medieval Christian era--and how they were recast again during the Celtic Revival of the late nineteenth and early twentieth . [104] Their main god is Tura, a deity comparable to the Estonian Taara, the Germanic Thunraz and the pan-Turkic Tengri. Wicca has been described as a polytheistic religion. Originally written by Wiccan High Priestess Doreen Valiente in the mid-1950s, the poem allows Wiccans to gain wisdom and experience deity in "the ordinary things in life". Wicca, Druid, Jedi and all of them just a new age fad among bored Europeans. [57], Dennis D. Carpenter noted that the belief in a pantheistic or panentheistic deity has led to the idea of interconnectedness playing a key part in pagans' worldviews. I'd rather beA Pagan suckled in a creed outworn;So might I, standing on this pleasant lea,Have glimpses that would make me less forlorn;Have sight of Proteus rising from the sea;Or hear old Triton blow his wreathd horn. Four groups come to mind: 1. "[72], Another pivotal belief in the contemporary pagan movement is that of animism. Neopagan and other folk religion movements have gained a significant[citation needed] following on the eastern fringes of Europe, especially in the Caucasus and the Volga region. Modern paganism, also known as contemporary paganism and neopaganism, is a term for a religion or family of religions influenced by the various historical pre-Christian beliefs of pre-modern peoples in Europe and adjacent areas of North Africa and the Near East. These open, unstructured or loosely structured traditions contrast with British Traditional Wicca, which emphasizes secrecy and initiatory lineage. [89] Positive identification with paganism became more common in the 18th and 19th centuries, when it tied in with criticism of Christianity and organized religion, rooted in the ideas of the Age of Enlightenment and Romanticism. [71] The prominent Reclaiming priestess Starhawk related that a core part of goddess-centred pagan witchcraft was "the understanding that all being is interrelated, that we are all linked with the cosmos as parts of one living organism. "[13], Discussing the relationship between the different pagan religions, religious studies scholars Kaarina Aitamurto and Scott Simpson wrote that they were "like siblings who have taken different paths in life but still retain many visible similarities". [26], Many scholars have favored the use of "neopaganism" to describe this phenomenon, with the prefix "neo-" serving to distinguish the modern religions from their ancient, pre-Christian forerunners. [123] Nevertheless, there is a slow growing body of data on the subject. "[172] Further, there is a common belief in the pagan community that Christianity and paganism are opposing belief systems. They have also suggested that these could all be included under the rubric of "paganism". Pay Less. Smi people - an Uralic group native to northern Scandinavia and neighboring parts of Finland and Russia. [138] Out of 21507717 recorded Australians,[] they compose approximately 0.15% of the population. . The Contemporary Pagan Revival in Montreal At the Turn of the . [10] A second, less common definition found within pagan studiespromoted by the religious studies scholars Michael F. Strmiska and Graham Harveycharacterises modern paganism as a single religion, of which groups like Wicca, Druidry, and Heathenry are denominations. Adherents rely on pre-Christian, folkloric, and ethnographic sources to a variety of degrees; many follow a spirituality that they accept as entirely modern, while others claim prehistoric beliefs, or else attempt to revive indigenous religions as accurately as possible. Religio Romana is a modern Pagan reconstructionist religion based upon the ancient faith of pre-Christian Rome. [141] A practicing Wiccan herself, Adler used her own conversion to paganism as a case study, remarking that as a child she had taken a great interest in the gods and goddesses of ancient Greece, and had performed her own devised rituals in dedication to them. 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