addition, folklore that is not any longer perceived as holding any religious significance

can, in some instances, be traced to pre-Christian or pre-Islamic origins. In Europe, this

is particularly the case with the various customs of Carnival like the carnival in the
Netherlands or Fasnacht and the Yule traditions surrounding Santa Claus/Sinterklaas.
By contrast, in spite of frequent association with Thor's Oak, the Christmas tree cannot
be shown to predate the Early Modern period.
[citation needed]

Contemporary paganism[edit]
Main article: Modern paganism

Children standing with The Lady of Cornwall in a pagan ceremony in England

Pagan handfasting ceremony at Avebury (Beltane 2005).
Contemporary Paganism, or Neopaganism, can include reconstructed religions such as
the Cultus Deorum Romanorum, Hellenic polytheism, Slavic Neopaganism
(Rodnovery), Celtic Reconstructionist Paganism, or Germanic religious
reconstructionism, as well as modern eclectic traditions such as Discordianism, Wicca
and its many offshoots.
However, there often exists a distinction or separation between some polytheistic
Reconstructionists such as the Greek or Hellenic Polytheistic Reconstructionists of the
Hellenismos religion and revivalist Neopagans like Wiccans. The divide is over
numerous issues such as; the importance of accurate orthopraxy according to ancient
sources available, the use and concept of magic, which calendar to use and which
holidays to observe, as well as the use of the term pagan itself.
[44][45][46]

Many of the "revivals", Wicca and Neo-druidism in particular, have their roots in 19th
century Romanticism and retain noticeable elements of occultism or theosophy that
were current then, setting them apart from historical rural (paganus) folk religion. Most
Pagans, however, believe in the divine character of the natural world and Paganism is
often described as an "Earth religion".
[47]


The hammer Mjllnir is one of the primary symbols of Germanic Neopaganism.
There are a number of Pagan authors who have examined the relation of the 20th-
century movements of polytheistic revival with historical polytheism on one hand and
contemporary traditions of indigenous folk religion on the other. Isaac Bonewits
introduces a terminology to make this distinction,
[48]

Paleopaganism: A retronym coined to contrast with "Neopaganism", "original
polytheistic, nature-centered faiths", such as the pre-Hellenistic Greek and pre-
imperial Roman religion, pre-Migration period Germanic paganism as described
by Tacitus, or Celtic polytheism as described by Julius Caesar.
Mesopaganism: A group, which is, or has been, significantly influenced by
monotheistic, dualistic, or nontheistic worldviews, but has been able to maintain
an independence of religious practices. This group includes aboriginal
Americans as well as Australian aborigines, Viking Age Norse paganism and
New Age spirituality. Influences include: Freemasonry, Rosicrucianism,
Spiritualism, and the many Afro-Diasporic faiths like Haitian Vodou, Santera
and Espiritu religion. Isaac Bonewits includes British Traditional Wicca in this
subdivision.
Neopaganism: A movement by modern people to revive nature-worshipping,
pre-Christian religions or other nature-based spiritual paths, frequently also
incorporating contemporary liberal values at odds with ancient paganism. This
definition may include groups such as Wicca, Neo-Druidism, satr, and Slavic
Rodnovery.
Prudence Jones and Nigel Pennick in their A History of Pagan Europe (1995) classify
"pagan religions" as characterized by the following traits:
polytheism: Pagan religions recognise a plurality of divine beings, which
may or may not be considered aspects of an underlying unity (the soft
and hard polytheism distinction)
"nature-based": Pagan religions have a concept of the divinity of Nature,
which they view as a manifestation of the divine, not as the "fallen"
creation found in Dualistic cosmology.
"sacred feminine": Pagan religions recognize "the female divine
principle", identified as "the Goddess" (as opposed to individual
goddesses) beside or in place of the male divine principle as expressed in
the Abrahamic God.
[49]

In modern times, "Heathen" and "Heathenry" are increasingly used to refer to those
branches of paganism inspired by the pre-Christian religions of the Germanic,
Scandinavian and Anglo-Saxon peoples.
[50]

In Iceland, the members of satrarflagi account for 0.4% of the total population,
[51]

which is just over a thousand people. In Lithuania, many people practice Romuva, a
revived version of the pre-Christian religion of that country. Lithuania was among the
last areas of Europe to be Christianized. In originally Anglo-Saxon nations such as
Australia, Odinism has been established on a formal basis since at least the 1930s.
Christianity as pagan[edit]
Christianity itself has been perceived at times as a form of polytheism by followers of
the other Abrahamic religions
[52]
because of the Christian doctrine of the Trinity (which
at first glance might suggest Tritheism,
[53]
) or the celebration of pagan feast days
[54]
and
other practices through a process described as "baptizing"
[55]
or "Christianization".
Even between Christians there have been similar charges of idolatry levelled, especially
by Protestants,
[56][57]
towards the Roman Catholic and Orthodox Churches for their
veneration of the saints and images. Some scholars think that the essential doctrines of
Christianity have been influenced by pre-Christianity, paganism, or European occults.
[58]

Ethnic religions of pre-Christian Europe[edit]
Further information: Christianization

Cuman statue, 11th century, Ukraine
Albanian mythology
Armenian paganism
Baltic paganism
Basque mythology
Celtic polytheism
Etruscan religion
Finnic mythology
Germanic paganism
Norse mythology
Religion in ancient Greece
Religion in ancient Rome
Slavic paganism
Vainakh mythology
See also[edit]
Crypto-Paganism
Animism
Barbarian
List of pagans
Myth and ritual
References[edit]
Notes
1. Jump up ^ Lewis, James R. (2004). The Oxford Handbook of New Religious
Movements. Oxford University Press. p. 13. ISBN 0-19-514986-6.
2. Jump up ^ Hanegraff, Wouter J. (1006). New Age Religion and Western Culture:
Esotericism in the Mirror of Secular Thought. Brill Academic Publishers. p. 84.
ISBN 90-04-10696-0.
3. Jump up ^ Dennis D. Carpenter. "Emergent Nature Spirituality: An Examination of the
Major Spiritual Contours of the Contemporary Pagan Worldview". In James R. Lewis.
Magical Religion and Modern Witchcraft. State University of New York Press. p. 40.
ISBN 978-0-7914-2890-0.
4. Jump up ^ Augustine, Confessions 1.14.23; Moatii, "Translation, Migration, and
Communication," p. 112.
5. ^ Jump up to:
a

b

c
Cameron, Alan G.; Long, Jacqueline; Sherry, Lee (1993). "2:
Synesius of Cyrene; VI: The Dion". Barbarians and Politics at the Court of Arcadius.
University of California Press. pp. 6667. ISBN 9780520065505.
6. ^ Jump up to:
a

b
Cameron 2011, pp. 1617.
7. Jump up ^ Simon Swain, "Defending Hellenism: Philostratus, in Honour of
Apollonius," in Apologetics, p. 173.
8. Jump up ^ Treadgold, A History of the Byzantine State, p. 5.
9. Jump up ^ Millar, A Greek Roman Empire, pp. 9798.
10. Jump up ^ Millar, A Greek Roman Empire, p. 98.
11. Jump up ^ Peter Brown, in Glen Warren Bowersock, Peter Robert Lamont Brown,
Oleg Grabar, eds., Late Antiquity: a guide to the postclassical world, 1999, s.v.
"Pagan".
12. ^ Jump up to:
a

b
Harper, Douglas. "pagan (n.)". The Online Etymology Dictionary.
Retrieved 18 July 2013.
13. ^ Jump up to:
a

b

c

d
Cameron 2011, pp. 1415.
14. Jump up ^ De Corona Militis XI.V
15. Jump up ^ Ante-Nicene Fathers III, De Corona XI
16. Jump up ^ "Theodosius I", The Catholic Encyclopedia, 1912
17. Jump up ^ "The City of God". Britannica Ultimate Reference Suite DVD, 2003.
18. Jump up ^ Orosius Histories 1. Prol. "ui alieni a civitate dei..pagani vocantur."
19. Jump up ^ C. Mohrmann, Vigiliae Christianae 6 (1952) 9ff; Oxford English
Dictionary, (online) 2nd Edition (1989)
20. Jump up ^ The OED instances Edward Gibbon's Decline and Fall of the Roman
Empire (1776): "The divisions of Christianity suspended the ruin of paganism."
21. Jump up ^ Eisenstadt, S.N., 1983, Transcendental Visions Other-Worldliness and
Its Transformations: Some More Comments on L. Dumont. Religion13:117, at p. 3.
22. Jump up ^ Harper, Douglas. "heathen (n.)". The Online Etymology Dictionary.
Retrieved 18 July 2013.