What is a pagan?

Question

From my understanding the word "pagan" used to mean someone who lived in the woods and was too far away from the city to attend church. By "used to mean" I'm talking about WAAAY back in the Middle Ages. I also understood that the Catholic Church twisted the word "pagan" to mean a heretic, a heathen, or otherwise anyone who was not a Christian and it became a negative descriptor.

Am I way off base? It seems nowadays that word is used to describe a "witch", Wiccans, etc. Is that correct? What exactly is a "pagan"?

Answer 1

Yes, a pagan used to mean someone who lived in the country. It was the Latin equivalent to "redneck". Now, when Christianity became popular among the Gentile populace, it was first an urban religion. Therefore pagan turned from "redneck" to "non-Christian/heathen".

In modern times, a pagan is someone who is not Christian, Jewish, or Muslim, and who self-identifies as pagan. Many witches consider themselves pagan, although there are witches of every religion and no religion at all. Wicca is a pagan religion. You can believe in one god, many gods, or no gods at all and still be pagan. You are not required to believe in magic or any supernatural creatures or events to be a pagan.

Think of paganism as an umbrella term under which many religions and individuals fall. Some people will call themselves pagans, while other members of their religion with disagree. An example of this is Hinduism. Most Hindus are not pagan (they do not consider themselves to be pagans). Some Hindus, however, consider Hinduism to be pagan, so they are pagan (the Hindu council in Dallas voted and decided they were pagan). Does this make sense? Pagan is just a handy label.

Answer 2

It's got a long history, since it used to be a Roman term. It took on negative meanings with the rise of the Church, though there's been some "reclaiming" of it going on for the past century, give or take.

It's used now to describe a number of pre-/post-Christian religions, typically (though not exclusively) based on pre-Christian European beliefs. Wicca is certainly one of them - and is probably the most common Pagan religion - but it's not the only one, by far. There's a number of other religions that fall under the "Pagan umbrella", some of which bear only a passing resemblance to Wicca.

Answer 3

Pagan literally means country dweller and was used to describe people who practiced their native folk religions. Nowadays, it is an umbrella term of a great many religions which are nature based and based on Pre-Christian concepts and practices.

Now, Wiccan is NOT synonymous with Paganism, it is one of many religions within Paganism. Wiccans are Pagan but not all Pagans are Wiccans or Witches even.

Answer 4

A Pagan is a loose to term to describe a follower of any of the Nature based religions. Some practice witchcraft, some don't (unless you consider herbal medicine to be witchcraft). In general they do good since they believe mal intent comes back to you, as in the Wiccans Creed that everything you do comes back to you 3 fold.

Answer 5

Paganism (from Latin paganus, meaning "an old country dweller, rustic") is a term which, from a Western perspective, has come to connote a broad set of spiritual or cultic practices or beliefs of any folk religion, and of historical and contemporary polytheism religions in particular.

The term can be defined broadly, to encompass the faith traditions outside the Abrahamic monotheistic group of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. The group so defined includes the Dharmic religions, Native American religions and mythologies and Shinto as well as non-Abrahamic ethnic religions in general. More narrow definitions will not include any of the world religions and restrict the term to local or rural currents not organized as civil religions. Characteristic of Pagan traditions is the absence of proselytisation, and the presence of a living mythology which explains religious practice.

The term "Pagan" is a Christian adaptation of the "Gentile" of Judaism, and as such has an inherent Christian or Abrahamic bias, and pejorative connotations among Westerners, comparable to heathen, infidel, and mushrik and kafir (كافر) in Islam. For this reason, Ethnologists avoid the term "Paganism", with its uncertain and varied meanings, in referring to traditional or historic faiths, preferring more precise categories such as polytheism, shamanism, or animism.

Since the later 20th century, however, the words "Pagan" or "Paganism" have become widely and openly used as a self-designation of adherents of polytheistic reconstructionism and neo-Paganism.

Answer 6

Basically, anyone whose religion involves magick (belief in, even if they don't personally use it), reverence for nature, and worship of multiple Gods (two is still "multiple.") So Wiccans are Pagan, but not all Pagans are Wiccans. Of course, today's Pagans can live in big cities or suburbs, just as people now called "Pagans" lived in ancient Athens and Rome.

Answer 7

Pagan is an umbrella term for Pre- and Post- Christian religions of European (and European Diaspora) Extraction and is capitalized.

When not capitalized, as in pagan, it generally refers to the pre-christian beliefs of an area (IE: pagan Europe) but more properly the term is "Pre-Christian."

The practice or non-practice of any metaphysical system is not a requirement for a religion to be Pagan, nor is the worship of the earth or environmentalism.

Answer 8

paganisim is the celebration of the god and goddess ;it is a form of spirituality worshipping the earth and everything she has to offer. There is a good book that will help you understand better called: "Druidcraft, the magic of Wicca and Druidry" By Philip Carr-Gomm.
Another one is "Lindow Man" or read "Avalon", I cant remember who wrote either though.