LJ Idol - Topic 5 - Old Timey Religion

[aggienaut]

   "Let's get back to the city, the religious nuts out here kind of freak me out" says the girl, grasping the boy's arm.

   "Oh, they're just, you know, old timey" reassures the lad, as if this explains it. "They mean well, really"

   "They're so damn conservative though, lord knows what I might accidentally do and have them accusing me of sorcery." Coming upon the edge of town she was relieved to look up and see the city itself not too far off.

   "Haha no one's going to be burning anyone at the stake" says the lad, giving her a playful bump sideways as they walked, "they're just, you know, farmers, and things are slow to change out here."

   "Just as long as the religious nuts don't get control of the government again!" exclaims the girl, feeling more at ease to speak freely now that they were away from the nearest houses.

   "I don't think that could happen again," speculates the lad, recalling a recent leader who had started an unsuccessful war in the Middle East.. and died there. "Valentinian's got a handle on things, I don't think it will ever happen again" notes the boy.

   "Damn pagans," grumbles the girl, adjusting her tunic. "How much further to Rome?"

---

   I don't understand people who call themselves "Pagans." The word "pagan" comes from latin "pagus," meaning literally "peasants." The modern day "pagans" wouldn't be the new agey hippies of Santa Cruz with their vague supplications to "the Goddess," it would be the "rednecks" and "hillbillies" of the deep Christian backwaters. "Pagan" means simply "the religion of the backwaters."

   Or at best, it is not a specific religion. Saying you're "a pagan" is like a Christian describing himself as an infidel because that's what an intolerant Muslim might call him.

   Yet still you see people, including many here in LJ Idol (at least last year) who will go on seriously about how their religion is "Pagan." THIS IS NOT A RELIGION. You can be wiccan or norse or believe in Celtic or Gaulish druidism, or one of hundreds of other things that have been called pagan throughout history, or you can be something new agey you're making up as you go along based on whims as they come to you, but I feel like if you call yourself Pagan you are probably keeping alive an insult that the original believers of the religion you're trying to follow would not have appreciated at all.


   In other news, a few years after the above narrative takes place, Valentinian ("the Last Great Roman Emperor") dies and his son Valentinian II has his power usurped by a "pagan" chief of the military. And around it goes.


Picture of the Day

Winged Athena
Roman ruins of Ephesus, near Selcuk, Turkey

And here's a kitten

(and in a continuing series of animals in ruins, a (emo?) snail, a (electric!) hornet, and a zombie.)

***EDIT: NOW WITH A SEQUEL!

Comments

[fox-bard.livejournal.com]

The thing I love most about words is that lexicons in every language change over time with the ebb and flow of human events, even the arbitrary reclamation of certain words by fringe social factions seeking belonging followed by the need for motivated empowerment. Then words become deeper, more potent symbols that link like-minded individuals into a cohesive network. At this stage of linguistic evolution (and there are quite a few current examples besides the modern usage of the term "pagan"), it does not matter what the words originally meant - all that matters is what they mean now to the people who use them regularly and thus keep those words alive within a brand new context.

(Said as a linguist, a Latin translator [nothing beats reading Caesar's Gallic Wars in the original!], a historian very familiar with the Italian peninsula, a modern Druid Bard, and a Deist/Pantheist [with just a little dab of atheism] within what is now called the neo-pagan community.)

[emo-snal.livejournal.com]

Ah well, I think its one thing if someone knows they're something more specific and uses pagan as an umbrella term. What gets me as people who call themselves "pagan" and think that that in itself is a specific religion. That's like saying "I belong to abrahamic religion!" and thinking that about covers it.

[fox-bard.livejournal.com]

Quite a few fringe groups in history have adopted names that were deemed offensive for various reasons. Reclamation is one (the free usage of the 'N' word used in African-American subculture, to give one example). Shock value is another (terms like Nazi and Witch, within their respective subcultures). A snub in the face of authority is very common - especially among revolutionaries who began as disaffected intelligentsia trying to break through a political glass ceiling (like Whigs and Tories, each in their turn, proving again that politics, landed interests and money make for some exciting bedfellows).

But, all that drivel aside, I've never met a pagan who called themselves a member of the "pagan religion" and didn't mean it as an umbrella without having to put it in so many words. It's rather like saying you're Christian, but not defining it has Catholic or Protestant, or any of the subgroups within each philosophy of ritual and service. As an international motley assortment of free-thinkers, every self-proclaimed 'pagan' has a separate definition of what all this means and what sort of spiritual practice they perform as individuals or as a group of individuals (such as a coven in the Wiccan tradition), or even both. One of the draws is the lack of uniformity, although a great spectrum of uniform groups do exist that provide such structure for those who seek it. We have our conservatives of the old school Gardnerian variety, as well as the free-for-all folks who snag whatever is appealing and work with it. The eclectic nature of the movement makes it hard to pin down and define anything, and people have tried. It's also growing and evolving very quickly with each successive generation since it's upsurge/Renaissance in the 1930s thru 1950s, making it even harder to define.

In terms of social psychology and fringe behaviour, it's really fascinating. And it must be said that most people whom I've had the pleasure of acquainting went through life as social outcasts and misfits in school before they found 'paganism'.