Why do so many people mistakenly believe that Pagans worship Satan?

Answer 1

because some of the pagan symbols resemble "evil" symbols... also (im not saying i do.. but i have known other who have..) believe that paganism is witchcraft.. and therefor associate it with evil.

Answer 2

I've never thought that all pagans worship Satan. Some do,but not all. Even though I'm in love with a Wiccan I don't know all the terminology so forgive me,but that star with the circle around it,has been used in Hollywood as a Satan worshiping sign in the movies. Same with the Tricetra?(sp) People just have to remember that movies aren't real life!

Answer 3

First of all. pay no attention to dez. I have no idea what personal contact he has have had with TRUE Witches, but I am guessing NONE! Maybe he has been in contact with the fluff bunnies! Or in his own fantasies! We do not cast "evil spells"! It is against our very being. We live our religion (24/7) which can be loosely summed up in our "rede" and that is "Do what thou wilt an in it harm none". We believe that everything we do will come back times 3 so why would we ever want to hurt anyone? I can not sum it up in this small forum. If you want to learn about it you can read books by Scott Cunningham & Raymond Buckland. They will dispell any myths that you will be bombarded with by those who are close-minded and ignorant. We do not put evil spells on anyone as some might have you believe. We do not worship the devil. (We don't believe in the existance of a devil) We do our best for humanity and the environment. If we were being influenced or led by the devil, why would he teach us how to use healing herbs and why would he want us to advocate saving the earth? Why would he want us to use our very being to help others? Doesn't that sound more like of "God" than of "Satan"? Can we be so mislead that we spend our entire lives doing good things for people & nature and helping in any way that we can that we are actually doing the work of the "devil"?!? Get real.
Sorry about the ranting. Sometimes the religious reich gets to me.
"A mind is like a parachute, works best when open"
BB
)O(
Addendum: Simply put people have bee brainwashed over the centuries that anything that is not Abrahamic must be of the devil.

Answer 4

Because Christans made that interpretation. All beliefs that weren't Christian were declared to be of Satan.

Some European pagan groups worshipped a horned god called Cernunos. He was also called Robin Goodfellow by the Celts, and these may have been related to the Greek God Pan who was a satyr--half man and half goat, with horns. Occultist Eliphas Levi used the image of an androgenous being with a human body and a goat's head, which was sometimes referred to as "Baphomet" That name might have been a corruption of the name Mahomet or Muhammad. The Knights Templars were accused of worshiping this image (or the image of a disembodied human head) before they were executed by order of King Phillip. This image of the horned man was borrowed and used to represent Satan in Christian art. I don't think either the Bible or the Quran refers to the Satan having horns. A passage in the Quran does refer to someone called Zul Qurnan or "Lord of the Two Horns", which some scholars believe is a reference to Alexander the Great (see Abdullah Yusuf-Ali's translation and commentary of the Holy Quran) and appears to have no connection with the Devil or Satan.

Answer 5

"Pagans" just means "Anybody who does not believe in the same religious beliefs that I do".
.
"Satan" in the Judaic and Christian traditions is just another name for "Set", the evil god in the religions of ancient Egypt, thousands of years before Judaism and Christianity. He is also the bad guy in the Persian religion of Zoroastrianism, which set up the idea of good and evil as opposites, with the Prince of Light being the good guy who later morphed into the Christ figure.
.
An example: The story of Jesus being taken to a high place and tempted by the Devil with the offer of all the kingdoms of the world. This story is taken right out of the Persian scripture, the Vendidad, chapter 19, and the Great Temptation is part of the story of the Buddha as well as of Jesus, both of whom came along much later.
.
The concept of Satan, in other words, is very ancient, and when Christianity was set up it was easily absorbed into the new religion. And calling people who don't follow your own tribe's ways "pagans" leads naturally into accusing them of worshipping your own tribe's ultimate bad guy, your "Satan".

Answer 6

I'm a Christian and I don't believe that Pagans worship Satan- just that Satan is deceiving you. There is a difference.

I just wish you could see through Satan's lies. Maybe someday you will - meanwhile I won't try to force my beliefs on you but I will pray for you.

Answer 7

http://www.geocities.com/expagan4christ/
http://joshuakane.diaryland.com/older.html
http://www.workingpitbull.com/pagan.htm
http://www.goldentreewands.com/wiccaandpagan.htm

Satanism is normally not regarded as a branch of Paganism. The concept of Satan belongs entirely to the Christian religion. Most Pagans either do not believe that Satan exists, or if they do believe in his existence, they do not number him among their gods. Likewise with the concept of Heaven and Hell. Most Pagans believe in reincarnation, the Summerlands (eternal meadow-type afterlife), or a mix of both.

Answer 8

Due to sectarian and short sightedness resulting in misunderstanding that pagans worship satan.

God is one only, not many. Due to differences in languages in one place one calls God in Arabic as Allah, in Bible as Jehovah,
in Sanskrit as Isvara, Bhagavan, Jagannatha, Krishna etc. . .

Not understanding the above fact one mistakenly believes that the people calling out to the same God in different language worship satan.

Answer 9

I suppose that people often do not realize that people worship things other than God and Satan. So realizing that pagans do not believe in God, they assume they worship Satan.

Answer 10

Good question I think that people believe that if you don't worship god than it can only be the devil because he is the opposite but the pagen beliefs where here long be for the belief in god as christens view him as far as I know many pagens worship the things in nature and I don't think that satan created that

Answer 11

For essentially the same reason so many people mistakenly believe Hillary Clinton is a cold-hearted bee-yatch (Yahoo-approved spelling) and a rabid ultra-liberal (simultaneously, no less): years and years of PR effort by the opposition.