paganism-polytheism-panth

What is Paganism?
Paganism is a religion which has false been related to satanism. Paganism, that does not even recognise satanism, is not satanic at all.
Paganism which comes from the latin word paganus, means country man. In ancient Rome they used this word for the people that lived outside Rome, and later, when christianity came, they used it for people who still believed in the ancient gods.
Some pagan characteristics are:
~ There is no temple, but temple is nature herself.
~ there is no specific dogma, just that holy is not something diferent than us, but that we are part of it and it, a part of us. As this is not only for us, humen, but for everything, everything is holy and respect-worthy.
~ Without dogma, there is no prosylitism. Paganists will never prosylitise anyone and they also hate the ones who do it. Paganism's nature respects every single theophylosophy.
~ There are no leaders. Unity of the pagan with holy is so personal that there is no need for mediums.
~ Which ever god/dess the practicioner believes, there is something comon. Gods, are not evil, nor good. Paganism says that evil and good are 2 sides of the same coin that represents everything. There is no black or white, but grey, for this reason, gods (representations of the holy) cannot be separated as evil ones and good ones, but the unity of both.
~ Paganism leads to harmony with nature.

Pantheism and Polytheism
Paganism is separated in 2 big categories, Pantheism and Polytheism. It's not easy to put a separation line between pantheism and polytheism and some pagan religions use both, making it even harder.
Trying to separate them, we could say that the basic diference is that for Pantheism, holy is everything and there are no gods. For Polytheism holy is everything but there are gods. I will try to be more clear.

Pantheism comes from the words pan and theos. These two words together mean that everything is god. Pantheism is characterised by lack of dogma and holy is used as Holon, the one, etc. This One has no name, gender, human characteristics or shape. It is the that, that moves everything and is moved by everything. That, that created everthing and was created by them.
It is hard for a human to understand this. There comes Polytheism to make it simpler and to fulfill the human need for prayer.

Polytheism has some dogmatic structure but its very general. Polytheists believe in more than one god, who are nothing else but divisions of Holon. These gods fulfill the need to understand a shape, a name, a characteristic. Something that Pantheism does not have. Gods can be represented as mediums.
In other words, imagine Holon as a huge tree with millions of branches and billions of leaves. The trunk is the heart, every branch is a god and every leaf is a human, animal, etc. Which leaf is You, doesnt matter, but as a leaf You cannot see the trunk, but only some branches so, You refer to them (gods) to comunicate with the trunk (Holon).

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'Pagan' is just an offensive term, used by the Christian Church to mock non-Christians. Same thing with other such terms: 'heathen', 'gentile', 'infidel', 'idolater', 'paynim', 'heretic'.

Gentile: This is what I found on the etymology of "Pagan":

"pagan late 14c., from L.L. 'paganus'
'pagan' in classical L. 'villager, rustic, civilian'
from pagus 'rural district'
originally 'district limited by markers' thus related to pangere 'to fix, fasten' from PIE base *pag- 'to fix' (see pact).

Religious sense is often said to derive from conservative rural adherence to the old gods after the Christianization of Roman towns and cities; but the word in this sense predates that period in Church history, and it is more likely derived from the use of paganus in Roman military jargon for 'civilian, incompetent soldier' which Christians (Tertullian, c.202; Augustine) picked up with the military imagery of the early Church (e.g. milites "soldier of Christ," etc.). Applied to modern pantheists and nature-worshippers from 1908."

From: http://www.etymonline.com

So it originated from Ancient PAGAN Rome as a "put down". ;)

Paganism is not really a religion. Rather it is an umbrella term which refers to a large group of religions.

Traditionally it was used to describe any religion other than the so-called "Religions of the Book", in other words religions other than Judaism, Christianity, or Islam. However, many major religions such as Hinduism and Buddhism do not consider themselves to be Pagan.

In modern terminology the term Pagan or Neo-Pagan is used to describe those religions which are rooted in the pre-Christian religions of Europe and the Middle East such as Wicca, Asatru, Druidism, and the various Reconstructionist beliefs.

-Lark-

Great point, Lark!

I'd like to point out that Satanism DOES fall under the umbrella term of paganism, and is inherently a "pagan" religion.

i see many mages here and elsewhere treat satanism with an air of disdain, not because they disagree with it, but because other religions do, and they want to be accepted.

That's a pretty big accusation Epimetheus. Have you polled these people to see if that's their view or are you guessing?

I would find it much easier to believe many people dislike Satanism because of misinformation or programed misinformation stemming from previous religious encounters than I would that they simply want to be in the "in crowd" so to speak.

Isn't accepting misinformation and programmed misinformation the same as just following the accepted norm, seeing as thought most people do honestly just follow what they hear blindly, very few actually put in the effort to do the actual studying for themselves, yes, on this site there are more who study up than in the norm, but if one enters general society all one encounters is misinformation, so i can agree with Epimet there, and no one unfortunately cannot pole it, unless one is willing to make religious generalizations to find the people to poll eg. will all the christians that think the devil is evil please stand up..
no religion likes to be singled out for questions which may go against their own understandings or shatter or shake their belief ''structure'' and i use the term structure very loosely.

Paganism is more a religion though, I think. Some modern versions borrow heavily from neo-Hermetic practices, and even the term Sabbat is essentially JudaioChristian. Then you have those who reject the idea of paganism outside of specific cultural traditions.

Theistic Satanism would most certainly fall under Paganism.