What are Pagans?

Answer 1

technically and historically the word "pagan" originated in Judaism to describe any and all non-Jewish faiths. much like the word "heathen" was coined by Christians to describe anyone not a Christian. so Jews are heathens and Christians are pagans.

now the word pagan is used to describe an entirely mixed category of dead, mutant, and resurrected gnostic, pantheist, and neo-platonic beliefs.

Answer 2

Because this question was asked very recently, I'll just c/p my answer from that...

According to the dictionary, pagan is a non-Christian (or non-Abrahamic based religion). In the times of old, pagan was a derogatory term. Anyone not Christian was considered a barbarian - almost in-human - pagan. Now, today, those of us that follow those old religions or new religions based on the old religions, consider ourselves Pagan in order to place distinction between ourselves and the Abrahamic religions. But like the Abrahamic religions, the Pagan religious trunk has many branches each with many leaves. They are each very different from the others, but what connects us Pagans is that we tend to believe in many gods and goddesses - or at least aspects of such (as some Pagans do). We are also nature based. This doesn't necessarily mean they worship nature, but they revere it and consider us humans apart of it. We are not above nature.

Besides this, different Pagan beliefs are so different that you'll have to research them as individuals. Every mythological group has a present day religion, and I can't pretend to know what the modern terms are for them. There are Egyptian, Greek, Celtic, Roman, Native American, Norse/Germanic (Asatru or Heathenism), and many more! Wicca tends to worship one or a combo of different pantheons in a more modern way. Other Pagans try to worship their gods as our ancestors did.

Answer 3

Why does this have to be asked every day????

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 polytheistic religions in particular.

The term can be defined broadly, to encompass the faith traditions outside the Abrahamic monotheistic group of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam.

Answer 4

The word Pagan is derived from Latin and means country side or country dweller. It those who lived in the country and still practiced the old religions. Now it describes those practice any religion or way of live that is connected in some way to indigenous religions. This is still not wholly true.

Answer 5

Pagans follow the old religions.

Answer 6

Anyone who belongs to a religion other than Judaism, Christianity or Islam, technically.

Today the term is used to describe religions that are recconstructionist or earth based. Including but not limited to, Wicca, Shamanism, Kemeticism, Heathenry, Druidry, Celtic Reconstructionism, Hellenic Reconstructionism, etc.

Answer 7

There are 3 excepted modern definitions:
1) people who follow earth base spirituality (wicca, druids)
2) People who follow a ancient polytheistic type religions
(Greek, Egyptian)
3) Any one who's not christian (Pat Robertson type answer)

Answer 8

Pagans are, in general, followers of Indigenous European beliefs, reconstructed European beliefs and modern (and post modern) European beliefs and their associated diasporae, generally but not always polytheistic, most assurely not always "earth based" and definately not Abrahamic (Christian, Jewish, Muslim.)

Answer 9

In today's world it means those who follow the Old ways. Breaking it down it means people who follow those ways in different ways.
Kemetic (egyptian)
Hellenistic (Greek)
Wiccan
Eclectic (Thier own path in thier own way)
Heathen/Asatru (Norse/Germanic)
Celtic Reconstructionsalist
Druids
Romano (Roman)
Sumerian
Native American Shaamanism (Though that isn't "re" anythingas it never completly died out)
And many more I can't think of right now

Answer 10

Any religion that is not one of the Abrahamic religions (Christianity, Judaism, Islam).