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What is Paganism?
Dec. 19th, 2022 11:14 amAhh, the million cattle-head question.
According to my own peculiar definition of paganism, a “pagan” today might simply be anyone who has spiritual beliefs that are not dependent upon agreeing with or assenting to specific dogmas, doctrines, metaphysical propositions, or special dispensations. This Minimalist Pagan believes that existence is more than just material properties; there is something more out there, but there’s no compulsion to harbor a specific belief about or define what exactly that is. Rather, there’s myriad metaphysical models available to explain or speculate about supersensory phenomena. In essence, specific schools of thought can and do exist within this pagan umbrella, but participation in or adherence to such schools is entirely voluntary.
The following metaphysical propositions can be said to be pagan according to the above definition:
Psychism – is the first level of metaphysical belief above that of crude materialism. It’s the belief in the most rudimentary conception of “soul,” which could be said to be an immaterial “psychic” property or substance; this is a consciousness principle which either animates or supersedes matter. Modern psychism tends to favor an “archetypal” model for explaining such phenomena, and adherents of this line of thinking tend to see psyche as an impersonal force or collection of forces.
This type of belief is adjacent to atheism, agnosticism, and deism, though the admittance of a layer of reality above/beyond matter “psyche” as something that sets psychism apart from the prevailing Scientific Materialist Orthodoxy of this era. In some corners of Establishment Academia, an open belief in Psychism is permitted, or at least tolerated to some degree, though it’s long been fully excised from the field of Psychology – which is of course farcical, considering the fact that “Psychology” according to its etymological roots means, “the study of the soul.” Of course, what passes for “official” psychology today is vehemently hostile toward anything that materialist scientism can’t (or simply refuses to) explain.
Psychism can be both metaphysically-assertive and agnostic. The former approach usually coincides with a position which can be termed Panpsychism, which is the idea that everything in the universe is foremost comprised of Psyche (Soul-stuff). Whereas the latter position refrained from imposing any particular metaphysical proposition.
Spiritualism – is the belief in nonphysical, personal beings who can and do interact with our own world. In it’s modern form, Spiritualism is (1) the belief in nonphysical spiritual entities which are human-like and usually said to be the souls of deceased humans; and (2) the notion that living humans can communicate with these spiritual beings through mediumistic methods (this sometimes involves trance-inducement). Overt Spiritualism of this type became quite popular during the 19th century, through the early 20th, though it has long since fallen into obscurity. Much of this movement has shown itself to metaphysical investigators as being fraudulent, in addition to its practices being rife with psycho-spiritual dangers. Practically speaking, we could say that unacknowledged and semi-acknowledged Spiritualism does indeed play a role in a number of alternative religion/spirituality movements, especially the “devotional” end of Neopaganism, in addition to a few other syncretic neo-religions.
Animism – simply the belief that everything in Nature is “alive with spirit.” There is spiritual essence and even sentient intelligence in and around everything beyond what is apparent to our five senses. Unlike in Spiritualism, sentient spirit entities are not necessarily souls of the human dead, though they can be; in fact most spirits are non-human entities. This is the default belief system of most of the world’s ancient cultures, though animism often overlapped with polytheism. Two clear examples of this blend; (1) the (pre-Greek) ancient Roman religion, and (2) Shinto, which is the indigenous religion of Japan that survives to this day.
Theism – belief in one or more Deities. Of course, what defines a Deity (a God or Goddess) is open to a whole world of debate and well beyond the scope of this analysis. Perhaps a general definition is that a Deity is simply a “divine” being; that is, a nonphysical being who wields an immense degree of knowledge and power compared to human beings and ordinary spirits. Typically, theistic belief differs from that of the preceding tiers, in that worshippers assign archetypal and mythological characteristics to their Gods and Goddess. Deities are specific to an entire culture or polity, whereas a spirit is usually just relevant to a specific locale, physical object, deceased person, or ancestral figure. Traditional cultures the world over have almost always grouped their Deities into distinct pantheons.
Over time, polytheistic religions sometimes morph into more specific approaches like Henotheism (worship focused on just one of the deities), and Monolatrism (belief that only one of the deities is worthy of worship). Eventually this might further narrow into Monotheism, which is a theological arrangement that retains god-status for only one of the original deities of the culture in question. In practice though, Monotheism seems to be built on a bed of semantic gamesmanship. What this means is that monotheistic systems usually retain other entities from their source culture’s original pantheon, though the other divinities are demoted to a “non-god” category of one type or another. The less-than-god entities are re-imagined as being mere aspects, hypostases, emanations, or creations of the (now) “one, true god.” Once we take a few steps back from the new categorization scheme, the monotheistic system seems like an exercise in sophistic gimmickry. In traditional polytheist cultures, the differences between Gods, demigods, spirits, angels, heroes, dignified ancestors, and other entities, were often nuanced, fluid, and full of overlapping definitions and criteria. Taking all of this into account, we can see that what is to be considered a god and not-a- god is more or less a matter of crafty wordplay, not to mention a product of the opinions and agendas of those who get to define who/what is and isn’t “the one, true god.”
Theism (especially Polytheism) can be inclusive of all the prior layers of metaphysical recognition. For example, most polytheisms are infused with varying degrees of psychism, spiritualism, and animism. Thus we can see how this entire schema is somewhat hierarchical.
According to my own peculiar definition of paganism, a “pagan” today might simply be anyone who has spiritual beliefs that are not dependent upon agreeing with or assenting to specific dogmas, doctrines, metaphysical propositions, or special dispensations. This Minimalist Pagan believes that existence is more than just material properties; there is something more out there, but there’s no compulsion to harbor a specific belief about or define what exactly that is. Rather, there’s myriad metaphysical models available to explain or speculate about supersensory phenomena. In essence, specific schools of thought can and do exist within this pagan umbrella, but participation in or adherence to such schools is entirely voluntary.
The following metaphysical propositions can be said to be pagan according to the above definition:
Psychism – is the first level of metaphysical belief above that of crude materialism. It’s the belief in the most rudimentary conception of “soul,” which could be said to be an immaterial “psychic” property or substance; this is a consciousness principle which either animates or supersedes matter. Modern psychism tends to favor an “archetypal” model for explaining such phenomena, and adherents of this line of thinking tend to see psyche as an impersonal force or collection of forces.
This type of belief is adjacent to atheism, agnosticism, and deism, though the admittance of a layer of reality above/beyond matter “psyche” as something that sets psychism apart from the prevailing Scientific Materialist Orthodoxy of this era. In some corners of Establishment Academia, an open belief in Psychism is permitted, or at least tolerated to some degree, though it’s long been fully excised from the field of Psychology – which is of course farcical, considering the fact that “Psychology” according to its etymological roots means, “the study of the soul.” Of course, what passes for “official” psychology today is vehemently hostile toward anything that materialist scientism can’t (or simply refuses to) explain.
Psychism can be both metaphysically-assertive and agnostic. The former approach usually coincides with a position which can be termed Panpsychism, which is the idea that everything in the universe is foremost comprised of Psyche (Soul-stuff). Whereas the latter position refrained from imposing any particular metaphysical proposition.
Spiritualism – is the belief in nonphysical, personal beings who can and do interact with our own world. In it’s modern form, Spiritualism is (1) the belief in nonphysical spiritual entities which are human-like and usually said to be the souls of deceased humans; and (2) the notion that living humans can communicate with these spiritual beings through mediumistic methods (this sometimes involves trance-inducement). Overt Spiritualism of this type became quite popular during the 19th century, through the early 20th, though it has long since fallen into obscurity. Much of this movement has shown itself to metaphysical investigators as being fraudulent, in addition to its practices being rife with psycho-spiritual dangers. Practically speaking, we could say that unacknowledged and semi-acknowledged Spiritualism does indeed play a role in a number of alternative religion/spirituality movements, especially the “devotional” end of Neopaganism, in addition to a few other syncretic neo-religions.
Animism – simply the belief that everything in Nature is “alive with spirit.” There is spiritual essence and even sentient intelligence in and around everything beyond what is apparent to our five senses. Unlike in Spiritualism, sentient spirit entities are not necessarily souls of the human dead, though they can be; in fact most spirits are non-human entities. This is the default belief system of most of the world’s ancient cultures, though animism often overlapped with polytheism. Two clear examples of this blend; (1) the (pre-Greek) ancient Roman religion, and (2) Shinto, which is the indigenous religion of Japan that survives to this day.
Theism – belief in one or more Deities. Of course, what defines a Deity (a God or Goddess) is open to a whole world of debate and well beyond the scope of this analysis. Perhaps a general definition is that a Deity is simply a “divine” being; that is, a nonphysical being who wields an immense degree of knowledge and power compared to human beings and ordinary spirits. Typically, theistic belief differs from that of the preceding tiers, in that worshippers assign archetypal and mythological characteristics to their Gods and Goddess. Deities are specific to an entire culture or polity, whereas a spirit is usually just relevant to a specific locale, physical object, deceased person, or ancestral figure. Traditional cultures the world over have almost always grouped their Deities into distinct pantheons.
Over time, polytheistic religions sometimes morph into more specific approaches like Henotheism (worship focused on just one of the deities), and Monolatrism (belief that only one of the deities is worthy of worship). Eventually this might further narrow into Monotheism, which is a theological arrangement that retains god-status for only one of the original deities of the culture in question. In practice though, Monotheism seems to be built on a bed of semantic gamesmanship. What this means is that monotheistic systems usually retain other entities from their source culture’s original pantheon, though the other divinities are demoted to a “non-god” category of one type or another. The less-than-god entities are re-imagined as being mere aspects, hypostases, emanations, or creations of the (now) “one, true god.” Once we take a few steps back from the new categorization scheme, the monotheistic system seems like an exercise in sophistic gimmickry. In traditional polytheist cultures, the differences between Gods, demigods, spirits, angels, heroes, dignified ancestors, and other entities, were often nuanced, fluid, and full of overlapping definitions and criteria. Taking all of this into account, we can see that what is to be considered a god and not-a- god is more or less a matter of crafty wordplay, not to mention a product of the opinions and agendas of those who get to define who/what is and isn’t “the one, true god.”
Theism (especially Polytheism) can be inclusive of all the prior layers of metaphysical recognition. For example, most polytheisms are infused with varying degrees of psychism, spiritualism, and animism. Thus we can see how this entire schema is somewhat hierarchical.
