Pagan religions?

Back before Christians started calling those who followed the old ways "pagans" (a derrogatory term for country dweller, like "hick" or "redneck"), what did they call themselves? Did their religions have names, or what?

 

We called ourselves "people".

 

The term "pagan" derives from the Latin pagus and paganus which mean country dweller, more or less. It became accossiated with non-christian religions early in the Chrisitan period of the Roman Empire. During this time most of the folks in the cities were Chrisitan, while most of the folks living out in the country whatever the local deities happened to be. This is how the word pagan came to mean "non-christian" though it now means someone who is neither Chrisitan, Muslim, nor Jewish. The term "pagan" did not then and does not now refer to any specific religion. Hindus are pagan, Buddahists are pagan, Shintoists are pagan, Wiccans are pagan etc. . . We know of some names of pre-Christian European Religions, but by and large the folks practicing those religions did not see them as being as separate from everyday life.

If you look out side you might see trees, grass, the sun etc. . . The folks that we are talking about would see the gods as simply being other things that were there. Now the gods were incredibly important parts of the world, but folks didn't have "faith" as we talk about it today. The gods were there and that was that, much like the tree and grass and sun are there. People did not relate to the gods through some separate thing called "religion". Ceremonies and such, while again important and often sacred, were something else that had to be done regularly and correctly, such as planting crops. Many such "religions" did not have names for the simple reason that folks did not see worship of the gods as a distinctly separate thing.

 

So "rolling in clover" was a form of worship!:sunglasse

 

i agree with everything you said, except the above: neither jews nor muslims use the word "pagan" to describe someone not of their faith, nor have they ever. furthermore, although i know a taoist and a buddhist who follow mixed paths and also consider themselves pagans, i also know that most of the buddhists i've met, while not particularly objecting to the term, do not feel the word applies to them, and some of the hindus i've met would be positively offended by the label.

"pagan" today refers to "earth-centered faith". it includes religions such as wicca, strega, neo-druidry and asatru, although most of the asatru i've met have voiced a strong preference for the term "heathen", which means pretty much the same thing without the roman-conqueror overtones. the association with lumping together all faiths apart from the religions of abraham under the term "pagan" is incorrect, uneducated and fairly recent, and actually i think it says more about the current them-or-us "one god" political climate than about any religion.

 

grrrrrr,, would you stop that profeser jumbled. the pagans were a people of the british isles who sided with romans against the goths and then in turn were slaughtered themselves. why the people who dont believe in that book are called pagan is a mater of propaganda

 

steffan, I'm certain that you can post some sources to back up this statement. Sounds more like you're describing the Franks or the Britons. I would say the Celts but I doubt there was ever any alliance of consequence between Rome and any Celtic tribe. Druids were held in the highest regard and anyone accused of druidry was instantly executed on the orders of the Ceasars.

Every RELIABLE source I've ever read states that the exact origins of paganism were lost to antiquity. Or is that just another xtian coverup?

Please continue.

 

sorry steffan, but in two college-level history classes and a lot of independent research, i've never heard that one either.

 

I think Pagans are people who understand that The Divine Creative Principle (god?) is found within, through, and around, all of creation.;
That being so, I'm a bloody Pagan!

 

???

That is, I'm afraid, pure fantasy.

 

Who knows? but we aren't exactly those people now, are we?

"They" lived quite some time ago we just liked thier ideas.

And by the by I think there might be a thread here already explaining the term pagan. I'm not sure I might have read it somewhere else. The conculsion though was that pagan ment some one who was not in the military and supposedly most christians were in the military while most others not of christianity were not because they lived out in the counrty and had to work their land and had no time for romans silly wars.

Let's put it this way you are still "you" even if we call you Mr. Chair just now you are the owner of an interesting nickname. A religion is not the name it's the actions.

 

You have it exactly backwards.

As a Celt, I can tell you that nothing instilled more pride in a family than to lose one of their own in battle. As far back as the 3rd century AD, when the Celts displaced the entire Etruscan nation from the area of that is now southern Italy, the motto was, "To the courageous, all things belong" meaning, I'm brave enough to fight you, kill you, and take whatever you have of value. Even the word "Celt" is derived from the Greek "Keltoi" meaning "barbarian". Celts went into battle armorless, stripped naked, painted with woad and their hair spiked with lime to be bright yellow-orange. And their women fought side by side with the men. They held Rome under seige for 8 months, the Romans just couldn't send legions out faster than they were cut down.

We also know that this was true of the Norse, another Pagan people. They raided most of coastal Europe for centuries, sacked entire cities, made off with anything of value including women. This continued until the last vestiges of Celts, who by the 10th century had retreated from Rome to what is now Ireland, England, Scotland and the Isles, were so interbred with raiding Vikings that they were essentially one people. By then, yes, they were simple farming and fishing folk.

As to Rome, anyone who bore the label "Pagan" had much to worry about as far as the Romans were concerned, even though prior to the establishment of the "Holy" Roman Empire the Romans were themselves Pagan. Anyone NOT Roman was either fodder for slavery, breeding stock or was slaughtered rather than waste the expense of feeding. When the Holy Roman Empire was established in 962 AD, anyone in territories held by Rome who refused to accept Christ and convert to Christianity was summarily put to death.

It was always the Christians who were poor farmers, working the land. Remember, they were taught by Jesus to "beat swords into ploughshares", giving up war for farming.

OK, I've sufficiently bored you all. History lesson over. Hope this helps.

There still is no origin for Pagans. We've been around sooooo long that no one remembers how it started. But I have some thoughts on that... for another day.

Edit: I know some statements above slightly contradict each other. Please remember that history is linear. What was true in the 3rd century was not in the 5th century. *yawn, boring myself*

 

While all of that is true, it is still the case that the term "pagan" means (in its most common usage) someone who is neither Christian, Muslim, nor Jewish. That it may offend some folks or that some folks don't like to be called "pagan" is irrelevant to the meaning of the word. For example, "goyim" is a Hebrew word for a non-Jew. Now I am not a Jew and I don't go around calling myself a "goyim" either, I may even oject to the term (which I don't) but that does not mean that the word "goyim" don't apply to me. Furthermore, that Jews and Muslims don't use the word "pagan" is not surprising, it is a word developed and used (until recently) exclusively by Christians. That Jews and Muslims do not use the word is again irrelevant to its meaning.

p.s. Here is a link to the dictionary.com defintion of "pagan" http://dictionary.reference.com/search?q=pagan

 

Impossible by your own argument. The Goths became a problem for the Romans at about the same time as they withdrew from the British isles, so you see the difficulty there. If the Romans slaughtered the "pagans" after having sided with them against the Goths as you claim they would then have had to return to the British isles simply in order to slaughter the pagans; a propsition that is prima facia absurd. That does not really matter though since it assumes an equally absurd alliance against the Goths. As it stands, the Goths originally inhabited the areas east and south east of present day Germany. This is much too far from the British isles for inhabitants thereof to have had anything whatsoever to do with a conflict between the Romans and Goths. The Goths were only able to move into areas west of the Rhine subsequent to the disintergration of the larger part of the western Roman Empire.

 

The Romans themselves were pagans!

 

Yeah, but it's not like the death sentence was immediately carried out. The logistics would have been staggering. So you can see that many people in the countryside would be quietly continuing their old religion. You're right though, once Charlemagne took over, it turned into a bloodbath.

Until then, Christians tended to be in the cities, and so did the governments, the cities quickly converted (reletively speaking) while the countryside was slower in that respect. So the term "pagan" (from latin "paganus") was used to describe the country bumpkin farmers who still held to the old ways. It was a derrogetory term like redneck or hick is today, and encompassed more than just religion.

 

I don't think that is quite right. In Roman Britain, most of the populous were in fact very eager to embrace the Roman lifestyle. Witness the number of Roman style villas built here which were inhabited by Britons, not Romans.
In fact, the Romans brought many good things to these Islands, many of which were subsequently lost for centuries. Proper houses, central heating, baths, decent roads and water supply system, not to mention civil order.
I think the Romans have had a bad press, and I put this down partly to Christian historians who want to show the superiority of Rome under Constantine's somewhat politically expedient form of Christianity. But the great days of Rome were when the Romans were 'pagan'.
The Holy Roman Empire represents a much later period, when all Europe was pretty well christianized anyway.

It's interesting to see the ideas about paganism that abound these days - it seems that only certain 'pagans' are acceptable to their modern descendents. So they think the Goths (who never got anywhere near Britain), the ancient British tribes like the Icenii who practised horse sacrifice by implalation are cool, whilst the Romans were bad.
Scratch a pagan and you'll find a romantic just below the surface....

 

i got that off of the tv,one of those educational shows, dont see how i could have missunderstood them, I'm seriously curious now, but without the chance to realy research it. So much of the history of those people has been basterdized its its tough to sort it all out

 

Bill, I think that the main problem is that every different people (Franks, Celts, Gauls, Goths, Visigoths, and the various Germanics) all practiced their beliefs in a slightly different way. So, much like the Spanish-speaking peoples of Latin America each say their dialect is most correct, yes, we all argue that our individual way of practicing neo-Paganism in the 21st century is the better way even though we don't truly know what those ways were in the 5th century. Much of that, as I posted earlier, has been lost to antiquity as well as specific histories of those people. All that is left is history from the Roman POV and a few fragments of those they oppressed.

I clearly stated this because it DOES make a difference as to how the Romans are seen in history (hypocrites). You must admit that while advanced for that era, Rome was intolerant of anything and anyone who did not conform to their specific way of life. It wasn't about advancement, it was about expansion.

Again, Roman history paints a pretty picture. Everyone else's certainly does not. Revisionist history is almost as old as prostitution.

 

Trouble is that a lot of what passes as paganism to-day probably has no relation to pre-christian practice, but is a 20th century construction.

I don't understand why you say the Romans are seen as hypocrites. The fact that they were intolerant of dissent doesn't make them so.
As regards advancement, it may not have been the motivation behind imperial expansion I agree, but nonetheless the conquest of Britain did lead to much advancement here as I said in my earlier post.

On the historical front, it seems that the ancient Brits didn't really record history in the way the Romans did, hence all our evidence comes from Roman historians, but also, there is a huge amount of archaelogical evidence for the real advances the Romans introduced.

But one further point - towards the end of the Roman period here, came the raids of the Vikings. They were just as brutal and intolerant as the Romans, and yet to the modern pagan they are acceptable whilst Rome is not. That is why I say that the whole of mod. paganism is really romanticism, and has very little in the way of historical authenticity.