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Paganism
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Paganism is the broad term used to describe any religion or belief that is not Christian, Jewish or Muslim. Paganism can be traced back to Neolithic times and survived up until the middle ages when Christianity became powerful enough to erase it from existence. Paganism is an earth based religion which lays emphasis on the worship of all aspects of nature. Paganism appeared very early on in the history of the world. Examples of early paganism, can be seen in ancient Greek and Roman religions, as well as in ancient Goddess worship and Druidic religions.
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Definition "Paganism (from Latin paganus, meaning "a country dweller" or "civilian") is a term which, from a western perspective, has come to connote a broad set of spiritual or religious beliefs and practices of natural or polytheistic religions. The term can be defined broadly, to encompass many or most of the faith traditions outside the Abrahamic monotheistic group of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. This group may include some of the Dharmic religions, which incorporate seemingly pagan characteristics like nature-veneration, icon-veneration, polytheism and reverence of female deities, and are ... diametrically opposite to the Abrahamic faiths. Ethnologists avoid the term "paganism", with its uncertain and varied meanings, in referring to traditional or historic faiths, preferring more precise categories such as shamanism, polytheism, or animism. The term is also used to describe earth-based Native American religions and mythologies, though few Native Americans call themselves or their cultures "pagan". Historically, the term "pagan" has usually had pejorative connotations among westerners, comparable to heathen, infidel, and mushrik and kafir (كافر) in Islam.
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Paganism has many traditions with subtraditions. Wicca, a religion on the rise, is a peaceful tradition of Paganism honouring a God and a Goddess (of any choice or the Mother Goddess and Father God). "And Ye Harm None Do As You Wilt" is the policy of Wicca, but ... applied to Paganism. There are Celtic, Egyptian, Norse, Mayan, etc. traditions in Paganism. Native American traditions can also apply in Paganism..
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The word "Paganism" has many definitions, even within academia. However, for those who self-identify as "Pagans", the word is an umbrella term that usually means any religious activity that finds divinity primarily in nature. This is the key criterion; ... many pagan religions are also characterized by having a polytheist and/or pantheist worldview, the integration of esoteric and/or New Age practices, divination (for example, tarot), or a strong emhpasis on metaphysics (for example, magick). But, again, the key criterion that makes something "pagan" is it's focus on the divinity of nature. Paganism celebrates reverence for the Earth and all its creatures, moreover, pagans generally see all life as interconnected, and tend to strive to attune one's self to the manifestation of this belief as seen in the cycles of nature.
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Paganism with all of its pomp, and ceremonies, and holy days crept silently into the Christian Church until it developed into an Apostate system of religious worship. Notice this statement from SCHAFF'S CHURCH HISTORY, page 375; "Not a few pagan habits crept into the church concealed by new names. This is conceded by the most earnest of the Fathers. Leo the Great speaks of Christians in Rome who worshiped the sun, before repairing to the church of St. Peter. In the celebration of Sunday, as it was introduced by Constantine, and still continues on the whole continent of Europe, the cultus of the old Sun god Apollo mingles with the remembrance of the resurrection of Christ."
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The many deities of Paganism are a recognition of the diversity of Nature. Some Pagans see the goddesses and gods as a community of individuals much like the diverse human community in this world. Others, such as followers of Isis and Osiris from ancient times onwards, and Wiccan-based Pagans in the modern world, see all the goddesses as one Great Goddess, and all the gods as one Great God, whose harmonious interaction is the secret of the universe. Yet others think there is a supreme divine principle, that "both wants and does not want to be called Zeus", as Heraclitus wrote in the fifth century BCE, or which is the Great Goddess Mother of All Things, as Isis was to the first century CE novelist Apuleius and the Great Goddess is to many Western Pagans nowadays. Yet others, such as the Emperor Julian, the great restorer of Paganism in Christian antiquity, and many Hindu mystics nowadays, believe in an abstract Supreme Principle, the origin and source of all things. But even these last Pagans recognise that other spiritual beings, although perhaps one in essence with a greater being, are themselves divine, and are not false or partial divinities.
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Paganism