Paganism

[temporal1]

This is all very fascinating, Neto. Thank you!

amazing. incredible.
thanks for the topic, too, HK. it’s going places ..

[RZehr]

Several stories were told about men who ignored the taboo of approaching a young woman who was in the isolation hut after her first period, and went into the hut, and rap3d the confined girl. The cultural taboo teaches that if a girl in this stage looks at a man, his stomach will swell up, and he will die. The isolation period is a large part of dealing with this danger, and is meant to protect the men, and to some degree, the girl, This isolation is nearly total. The walls of the hut are very thick, rendering total darkness inside. There is a single opening, with a thickly woven mat covering it both from the inside and from the outside. The girl's mother removes the outer 'door' to place food in the wall space between the two 'doors', then after covering the opening from the outside, she calls to her daughter, that she can open the inner door and retrieve the food. She blindfolds herself when she needs to leave the hut for bathing and for relieving herself, calls to her mother or a sister, and is lead down the trail by the hand. The isolation period can last up to nearly a year or even longer, depending on the timing of her need to go into isolation in relation to wet or dry season, and the ability of the father to provide the large amounts of food for the feast when she is taken out. On the night before the feast she is brought out, with a tightly woven basket over her head. Dancing and singing go on throughout the night. They dance around a pole, and the girl will be holding onto a cord held in the elbow of her brother, who is holding onto the pole.

This reminds me of an ancient Persian story:
…Now when every maid's turn was come to go in to king Ahasuerus, after that she had been twelve months, according to the manner of the women, (for so were the days of their purifications accomplished, to wit, six months with oil of myrrh, and six months with sweet odours, and with other things for the purifying of the women;)…

[HondurasKeiser]

Isn't paganism just a term invented by Christian philosophers from around the time of Constantine as a blanket term to describe all non-Christian religions? Or at least all non-Judeo Christian religions? So basically Greco-Roman polytheism and the various other more tribal belief systems from groups like the Celts and Norse? None of those people would have described themselves as pagan at that time.

The authors you are citing seem to be making sweeping generalizations about all non-Christian belief systems from the Norse to the Navajo and Hopi to Amazonian tribal beliefs to Hinduism. I expect you will find just as much contrast between say the Navajo ideas of Hózhóójí and the Hindu doctrine of Saṃsāra as you would between Christianity and either one of those.

The authors also seem to be talking largely about a recent uptick in interest in ancient European pagan traditions that were replaced by Christianity during the middle ages or before. There was a wave of the same thing in the 19th Century during when there was a revival of classical literature and architecture. But polytheistic paganism never really disappeared in much of the rest of the world from Hindu India to many parts of Latin America and Africa where older religious were more or less absorbed into Catholicism.

To Ken's assertion that the term is a Constantinian-era construction and elides the distinctives and manifolds of each non-Christian spirituality and thus (to his unspoken yet incessant refrain) "There's nothing to see here.". This ode to paganism, written by a self-professed aspiring pagan, came across my transom this morning. I think it gets to the modern-day fascination with pagan, animistic, natural, astrological, ancestral spirituality. The question of how to push back on this growing fascination is still extant and unanswered here.

And yet I think that the melancholy engendered by the mercurial flux of our world is a particularly post-Christian anxiety, where, though he was an atheist (perhaps especially because he was one), Russell’s despair was born out of the flouted promises of Christian resurrection and eternity. To take atheism seriously is to admit that the abolishment of a belief in objective meaning must alter how we approach the Universe. There is no going back after the death of God, but that death is always experienced through a particular type of absence – the absence of religious belief. Nihilism is always a particular species of frustrated Christianity. Whitman and I don’t labour under those same suppositions because, more than a post-Christian (and I assume that I’m that), I find that the problem of meaning in this void is often best addressed by a type of pantheism, an embrace of that change. More than a former Christian, what I think of myself on some days as is an aspiring pagan.

There is something romantic in the idea of paganism, of embracing the ocean and atmosphere, the day and the night, the Sun and the Moon. An acknowledgement not of abstractions, but of that which one is capable of seeing and hearing, of touching and tasting. Regardless of our own supposed dominion over the environment, we’re ultimately still very small when compared with the grandeur of nature. Because of that clear fact – which is neither doctrine nor axiom but simply observable reality – nature deserves some portion of our pious supplications. There is a spiritual perennialism of genuflecting before something in the Universe so much bigger than yourself, of offering your prayers towards something so tangibly visible. Because of that, even if I’m not a pagan, often I think that I’d like to be. I’d like to consider which spiritual values are conveyed across centuries of time, and what might be enduring about something like paganism.

First, this requires us to define what exactly the word ‘paganism’ means – no easy matter. In the classical world, paganism was contrasted with Judaism and Christianity; it originally constituted the polytheistic folk religions of the ancient Greeks and Romans, but to which later definitions would expand to include cultures as disparate as the Egyptians and the Celts, the Norse and the Indigenous peoples of the Americas. There is a natural flattening in this regard, a reductionism that merges together a tremendous diversity of cultures and belief systems into one homogeneous whole: pagan. Yet there is paradoxically a risk in not acknowledging the similarities as well, in not identifying what is distinctive about the ruptures, first of Christianity, and then its child – modernity.

The anthropologist Marshall Sahlins writes in The New Science of the Enchanted Universe: An Anthropology of Most of Humanity (2022) that the ‘dependent position in a universe of more powerful metahuman beings has been the condition of humanity for the greater part of its history and the majority of its societies,’ for whom people dwelled within a ‘zone of immanence’. Osiris, Dionysus and Loki may be different gods, as surely as Egyptians, the ancient Greeks and the Norse people are different cultures, but, as Sahlins’s argument can be extended, differences in mythology are in some sense superficial. What’s important is that they shared a feeling of sublimity and awe towards the Universe.

[Szdfan]

To Ken's assertion that the term is a Constantinian-era construction and elides the distinctives and manifolds of each non-Christian spirituality and thus (to his unspoken yet incessant refrain) "There's nothing to see here.". This ode to paganism, written by a self-professed aspiring pagan, came across my transom this morning. I think it gets to the modern-day fascination with pagan, animistic, natural, astrological, ancestral spirituality. The question of how to push back on this growing fascination is still extant and unanswered here.

I think contemporary paganism is largely a reactionary movement -- a hodgepodge of beliefs that have been Frankensteined together by people who are searching for a spirituality that is disconnected from organized religion and doesn't carry the baggage of Christianity. In my experience, many contemporary pagans view Christianity as power-hungry, destructive and toxic. In the 1970s, there were a serious of "folk horror" movies that helped popularize paganism. The most famous of these movies was The Wicker Man, in which an English pagan village sacrifices a conservative Christian policeman for their fall harvest. The film is often seen as a critique of Christianity (It's worth pointing out, that the 70s were a time of heightened interest not only in paganism, but also cults and counter-culture Christianity (like the Jesus People). Perhaps we're in a similar moment).

That doesn't mean paganism doesn't have the same problems -- it's my understanding that Wicca has several "schools" of Witchcraft that are just as schismatic and conflict-prone as a Christian denomination (People are people, after all). However, paganism allows people to claim simultaneously something that is "new" (and doesn't have enough history to create baggage) that is somehow connected in an ambiguous, historically disconnected recreation of ancient folk beliefs.

Since I think contemporary paganism is largely a reaction to the "sins" of Christianity, I think pushing back means dealing with our own problems in the faith and demonstrating that Christianity and organized religion is not a power hungry or toxic. Which is an extremely tall order.

Interest in paganism (like most trends) tends to cycle about every 40 or 50 years. I suspect at some point, interest will drop off and cycle back at some point in the future.

[Neto]

Isn't paganism just a term invented by Christian philosophers from around the time of Constantine as a blanket term to describe all non-Christian religions? Or at least all non-Judeo Christian religions? So basically Greco-Roman polytheism and the various other more tribal belief systems from groups like the Celts and Norse? None of those people would have described themselves as pagan at that time.

The authors you are citing seem to be making sweeping generalizations about all non-Christian belief systems from the Norse to the Navajo and Hopi to Amazonian tribal beliefs to Hinduism. I expect you will find just as much contrast between say the Navajo ideas of Hózhóójí and the Hindu doctrine of Saṃsāra as you would between Christianity and either one of those.

The authors also seem to be talking largely about a recent uptick in interest in ancient European pagan traditions that were replaced by Christianity during the middle ages or before. There was a wave of the same thing in the 19th Century during when there was a revival of classical literature and architecture. But polytheistic paganism never really disappeared in much of the rest of the world from Hindu India to many parts of Latin America and Africa where older religious were more or less absorbed into Catholicism.

To Ken's assertion that the term is a Constantinian-era construction and elides the distinctives and manifolds of each non-Christian spirituality and thus (to his unspoken yet incessant refrain) "There's nothing to see here.". This ode to paganism, written by a self-professed aspiring pagan, came across my transom this morning. I think it gets to the modern-day fascination with pagan, animistic, natural, astrological, ancestral spirituality. The question of how to push back on this growing fascination is still extant and unanswered here.

And yet I think that the melancholy engendered by the mercurial flux of our world is a particularly post-Christian anxiety, where, though he was an atheist (perhaps especially because he was one), Russell’s despair was born out of the flouted promises of Christian resurrection and eternity. To take atheism seriously is to admit that the abolishment of a belief in objective meaning must alter how we approach the Universe. There is no going back after the death of God, but that death is always experienced through a particular type of absence – the absence of religious belief. Nihilism is always a particular species of frustrated Christianity. Whitman and I don’t labour under those same suppositions because, more than a post-Christian (and I assume that I’m that), I find that the problem of meaning in this void is often best addressed by a type of pantheism, an embrace of that change. More than a former Christian, what I think of myself on some days as is an aspiring pagan.

There is something romantic in the idea of paganism, of embracing the ocean and atmosphere, the day and the night, the Sun and the Moon. An acknowledgement not of abstractions, but of that which one is capable of seeing and hearing, of touching and tasting. Regardless of our own supposed dominion over the environment, we’re ultimately still very small when compared with the grandeur of nature. Because of that clear fact – which is neither doctrine nor axiom but simply observable reality – nature deserves some portion of our pious supplications. There is a spiritual perennialism of genuflecting before something in the Universe so much bigger than yourself, of offering your prayers towards something so tangibly visible. Because of that, even if I’m not a pagan, often I think that I’d like to be. I’d like to consider which spiritual values are conveyed across centuries of time, and what might be enduring about something like paganism.

First, this requires us to define what exactly the word ‘paganism’ means – no easy matter. In the classical world, paganism was contrasted with Judaism and Christianity; it originally constituted the polytheistic folk religions of the ancient Greeks and Romans, but to which later definitions would expand to include cultures as disparate as the Egyptians and the Celts, the Norse and the Indigenous peoples of the Americas. There is a natural flattening in this regard, a reductionism that merges together a tremendous diversity of cultures and belief systems into one homogeneous whole: pagan. Yet there is paradoxically a risk in not acknowledging the similarities as well, in not identifying what is distinctive about the ruptures, first of Christianity, and then its child – modernity.

The anthropologist Marshall Sahlins writes in The New Science of the Enchanted Universe: An Anthropology of Most of Humanity (2022) that the ‘dependent position in a universe of more powerful metahuman beings has been the condition of humanity for the greater part of its history and the majority of its societies,’ for whom people dwelled within a ‘zone of immanence’. Osiris, Dionysus and Loki may be different gods, as surely as Egyptians, the ancient Greeks and the Norse people are different cultures, but, as Sahlins’s argument can be extended, differences in mythology are in some sense superficial. What’s important is that they shared a feeling of sublimity and awe towards the Universe.

I think that I would start by separating animism from other forms of paganism. If the pre-Christian Banawa religious world is at all typical of animism, then there is a clear difference, one that shouts out as I read this quote above. The main comment I would make in this regard is that the paganism of ancient Egypt, Greece, and Rome (and from what little I read of them, probably also the Norse, Anglo, and Germanic/Teutonic) religious beliefs all have named 'gods'. So also the Philistines, and other ethnic societies with whom the early Hebrews interacted.
In contrast, the Banawa do not name the spirits with whom they deal, at least not beyond a name derived directly from the animal or bird as which the spirit appears to them. Otherwise, there is just a general classification - 'Doni me' - the spirits (plural). Interestingly, when we came across a Biblical text that mentions the Satan, they immediately identified him as 'Doni Erebo', literally, 'the bad spirit'.
Except for very old "interference" from brief and vague encounters with Catholicism during the rubber boom, there is no knowledge of a creation, or of a creator. (When questioned during our initial contact with them, they responded that the creator was "Abi Neme Kai', which is literally "The Father who is a Resident of the Above, or 'Sky'", or roughly, "Heavenly Father", which I consider as derived from the little they could understand of what they were told by Catholic priests with whom they very infrequently interacted. The designation of the Satan as 'Doni Erebo' may well also be from this ancient contact with Catholicism.)
(Regarding these Catholic priests who entered these societies more than one hundred years ago, at least they tried. Meanwhile, where were we?)

Perhaps a distinction could be made with terms like "Classical Paganism" and then something else for the animism typical of tribal societies.

[Outsider]

To me, this seems to be an embrace of #3 - instead of sacrificing one's own children, one fully supports sacrificing one's rivals' children.

This was the way the Aztecs provided sacrifices for their gods- from the "others". In fact, I've heard it proposed that that was the primary reason for Aztec imperialism- to provide sacrificial victims.

It was also the reason all of their neighbors hated them and were easily convinced to join in with Cortez in bringing them down. Even with his cannons and matchlocks Cortez would have been overrun by the vast armies of the Aztecs without the help of the neighboring tribes.

[temporal1]

To me, this seems to be an embrace of #3 - instead of sacrificing one's own children, one fully supports sacrificing one's rivals' children.

This was the way the Aztecs provided sacrifices for their gods- from the "others". In fact, I've heard it proposed that that was the primary reason for Aztec imperialism- to provide sacrificial victims.

It was also the reason all of their neighbors hated them and were easily convinced to join in with Cortez in bringing them down. Even with his cannons and matchlocks Cortez would have been overrun by the vast armies of the Aztecs without the help of the neighboring tribes.

It’s interesting to wonder about the condition of the early “conquerors,” who had to arrive, dirty, tired, ignorant.

[HondurasKeiser]

This essay in First Things linking abortion with the pagan mindset is interesting. It should be noted that the author is an admirer of but not a believer in, Christianity.

In theological terms, pagans are oriented toward the immanent. The pagan gods, in all their beauty and terror, are elements of this world, in contrast to the transcendent God of the Abrahamic faiths. To be sure, Christianity incorporated immanent elements over time. The ancient sacralization of sites such as wells and stones persisted, but with heathen deities replaced by Christian hermits or martyrs. Pagan festivals became entwined with the Christian calendar. The pantheon of deities was replaced by an ever-growing host of saints. Christianity flourished when it permitted followers to incorporate religious practices that were found, not only in Greek and Roman religion, but in many other religions—practices that seem, in fact, to be instinctive in human beings, particularly the veneration of nature and of ancestors.

We should understand Christianity’s impact on morality in much the same way—not as a process of replacement, but rather as a process of blending. The supremely strange thing about Christianity in anthropological terms is that it takes a topsy-turvy attitude toward weakness and strength. To put it crudely, most cultures look at the powerful and the wealthy and assume that they must be doing something right to have attained such might. The poor are poor because of some failing of their own, whether in this life or the last. The smallness and feebleness of women and children is a sign that they must be commanded by men. The suffering of slaves is not an argument against slavery, but an argument against allowing oneself to be enslaved.

Most cultures—perfectly logically—glorify warriors and kings, not those at the bottom of the heap. But Christianity takes a perverse attitude toward status and puts that perversity at the heart of the theology. “God chose the weak things of the world to shame the strong” is a baffling and alarming claim to anyone from a society untouched by the strangeness of the Jesus movement.

The early Christian author Lactantius summarized the pagan objection to this topsy-turviness:

Why did [Christ] render Himself so humble and weak, that it was possible for Him both to be despised by men and to be visited with punishment? Why did He suffer violence from those who are weak and mortal? Why did He not repel by strength, or avoid by His divine knowledge the hands of men? Why did He not at least in His very death reveal His majesty?

[Jazman]

I'll just throw in a source/voice that might speak to this discussion: I'll let you find theologian Richard Beck and his many discussions around the terms, "enchantment vs disenchantment". When you find his blog, put those terms in search: you'll find numerous posts dealing with the subject or related themes of this thread.

[barnhart]

G.K. Chesterton once remarked that the real danger facing those who reject Christianity is not that they will be believe nothing and be atheist, but rather they will believe anything. This is the danger we as a society are approaching, the ancient gods of paganism, or different forms of them will reemerge with their cruelties.

This is a danger and also an opportunity for true pagans often display a transactional relationship with the gods rather than the loyal fidelity of monotheism. Allegiances will shift with new demonstrations of power. As the ancient king said, "None is greater than the God of Daniel, serve him." The stoniest hearts are those embittered against monotheism, true pagans may represent a "field ready for harvest", as Jesus said.