What Is Paganism? 

Most organized religions can be defined by pointing to their fixed beliefs or scriptures, or to one person revered as the founder or spiritual authority. Paganism, in contrast, has evolved “organically”, we might say, since before the dawn of recorded history; there is no single revered figure, no authoritative set of scriptures, no priestly hierarchy (although modern Pagan priests and priestesses are recognized clergy authorized to perform weddings etc.). Paganism has developed through experience and observation—just like the total body of modern scientific knowledge.

Unitarian Universalists will, of course, recognize strong parallels there with their own free and eclectic spiritual tradition. It is no surprise, then, that many UUs in North America also identify as Pagan, or that many Pagans are also drawn to Unitarian Universalism.

Since the dawn of humanity, people have wondered about the origin of the world and of themselves, and why things are as they are. They have wanted to know what they can do to heal themselves and their loved ones and to make things better for everyone. Lacking modern scientific knowledge, aboriginal peoples invented many fanciful tales to “explain” the world around them, tales which seem quaint to our ears. But these early peoples were also in touch with many realms of reality of which we in our modern scientific sophistication have largely lost our awareness—although theoretical physics, over about the last hundred years or so (with relativity, quantum mechanics, nonlocality theory, etc.), has increasingly come to conclusions similar to what the shamans and eastern mystics have been trying to teach us for many thousands of years—that the most fundamental reality is not the time-space, matter-energy universe of mechanical physics, but consciousness. There are strong parallels in modern physics between that time-space universe and a hologram.

Because early peoples were so closely associated with the cycles of the seasons and other natural processes, the term “Earth-centered religion” is often used either synonymously with Paganism or to refer to one aspect of it. Thus, “Earth-centered religion” is not the same as the materialist philosophy that denies the existence of any aspect of reality other than the physical universe of matter-energy and time-space.

Primitive peoples did not understand quantum mechanics or holograms, but their day-to-day experience did encompass the influence of consciousness on physical reality and the existence of realms and conscious entities beyond the physical. Most aboriginal cultures that survive in our time, including the North American First Nations, still retain this knowledge.

As Christianity was spreading across Europe in the early centuries of the Common Era, this aboriginal worldview came to be associated with the less “cultured” (from Rome’s perspective) rural folk, called pagani in Latin. The modern English word “heathen”, from Germanic roots, is identical in origin, referring originally to people from “the heath”, i.e., rural areas. Of course the paganus worldview was considered ignorant, erroneous, inferior.

As Christianity consolidated its power across Europe, and later in the Americas, it took many measures, some of them vicious and brutal, to suppress those who retained the special knowledge and skills that had been routine and widespread in earlier times. Such lore came to be called “witchcraft”, and was alleged by the authorities always to have the most evil of intent. We all know about the horrific holocaust perpetrated through several centuries against anyone accused of witchcraft by those in religious power who wished to stamp that lore out forever, leaving their own views and authority unchallenged. The fact that a large majority of those tortured and murdered by the religious authorities were women also reflects the virulent antifeminism of that day.

The shadow of that bigotry and that persecution remains to this day, not only in the demeaning caricature of Hallowe’en “witches” with their warts, brooms, and pointy hats, but in the belief still held by many that anything associated with Paganism or witches must be foolish superstition at best or the work of the devil at worst.

So what is modern Paganism, if it is not the vicious caricature that some still hold onto?

While there is no Pagan orthodoxy, we can make some general observations. Modern Paganism is an eclectic, free celebration and exploration of the deepest aspects of reality and of our human place in the cosmos. Paganism does not see the universe as split between good and evil, God and Satan, good people and evil people, living beings and nonliving matter, or between living entities with souls (us) and those without (all other life forms). Paganism is holistic, seeing reality as unified in an infinite spectrum comparable in some ways to the electromagnetic spectrum, of which we humans can directly perceive only a tiny bit in the middle. As Pagans we not only logically infer the consciousness of all of reality, on many levels, from the indivisible oneness of everything; many of us perceive that consciousness directly and interact with it routinely.

We see love as the acceptance of that oneness and goodness of all beings (as Jesus, Mohammed, Buddha, and other great religious teachers tried to teach us), and harmonious interaction within various aspects of levels of the oneness. Evil is the failure to recognize that oneness and the basic goodness of it. We recognize that each of us is incomplete in our individual growth; that our task while we are in the physical plane (if we choose to accept it) is to strengthen our weak areas, heal our hurts, eradicate the divisiveness that we see around us, and in general to make the world a bit better than how we found it.