Modern paganism

[10] Contemporary paganism has been defined as "a collection of modern religious, spiritual, and magical traditions that are self-consciously inspired by the pre-Judaic, pre-Christian, and pre-Islamic belief systems of Europe, North Africa, and the Near East.

[24] Critics have pointed out that such claims would cause problems for analytic scholarship by lumping together belief systems with very significant differences, and that the term would serve modern pagan interests by making the movement appear far larger on the world stage.

Capitalizing the word, they argue, makes "Paganism" appear as the name of a cohesive religion rather than a generic religious category, and comes off as naive, dishonest or as an unwelcome attempt to disrupt the spontaneity and vernacular quality of the movement.

[14] Strmiska also suggests that this division could be seen as being based on "discourses of identity", with reconstructionists emphasizing a deep-rooted sense of place and people, and eclectics embracing a universality and openness toward humanity and the Earth.

[42] He cites the example of Dievturība, a form of reconstructionist paganism that seeks to revive the pre-Christian religion of the Latvian people, by noting that it exhibits eclectic tendencies by adopting a monotheistic focus and ceremonial structure from Lutheranism.

[42] Similarly, while examining neo-shamanism among the Sami people of Northern Scandinavia, Siv Ellen Kraft highlights that despite the religion being reconstructionist in intent, it is highly eclectic in the manner in which it has adopted elements from shamanic traditions in other parts of the world.

[74] Animism was also a concept common to many pre-Christian European religions, and in adopting it, contemporary pagans are attempting to "reenter the primeval worldview" and participate in a view of cosmology "that is not possible for most Westerners after childhood.

The animistic aspects of pagan theology assert that all things have a soul – not just humans or organic life – so this bond is held with mountains and rivers as well as trees and wild animals.

[80] Sociologist Margot Adler highlighted how several pagan groups, like the Reformed Druids of North America and the Erisian movement incorporate a great deal of play in their rituals rather than having them be completely serious and somber.

[82] It typically involves offerings – including bread, cake, flowers, fruit, milk, beer, or wine – being given to images of deities, often accompanied with prayers and songs and the lighting of candles and incense.

[89] Another reason for change was the circulation of ancient writings such as those attributed to Hermes Trismegistus; this made paganism an intellectual position some Europeans began to self-identify with, starting at the latest in the 15th century with people like Gemistus Pletho, who wanted to establish a new form of Greco-Roman polytheism.

I'd rather beA Pagan suckled in a creed outworn;So might I, standing on this pleasant lea,Have glimpses that would make me less forlorn;Have sight of Proteus rising from the sea;Or hear old Triton blow his wreathèd horn.

[99] Historian Ronald Hutton has argued that many of the motifs of 20th century neo-paganism may be traced back to the utopian, mystical counter-cultures of the late-Victorian and Edwardian periods (also extending in some instances into the 1920s), via the works of amateur folklorists, popular authors, poets, political radicals and alternative lifestylers.

Published in the Atlantic Monthly in 1902, the Native American activist and writer outlined her rejection of Christianity (referred to as "the new superstition") in favor of a harmony with nature embodied by the Great Spirit.

A mysterious document published in Krur in 1929, attributed to orientalist Leone Caetani, suggested that Italy's World War I victory and the rise of fascism were influenced by Etruscan-Roman rites.

[104] With the growth and spread of large, pagan gatherings and festivals in the 1980s, public varieties of Wicca continued to further diversify into additional, eclectic sub-denominations, often heavily influenced by the New Age and counter-culture movements.

[114] While potentially considered a peculiar form of Tengrism, a related revivalist movement of Central Asian traditional religion, Vattisen Yaly (Chuvash: Ваттисен йӑли, Tradition of the Old) differs significantly: the Chuvash being a heavily Fennicised and Slavified ethnicity and having had exchanges also with other Indo-European ethnicities,[115] their religion shows many similarities with Finnic and Slavic paganisms; moreover, the revival of Vattisen Yaly in recent decades has occurred following modern pagan patterns.

[120] In the 1990s, Wiccan beliefs and practices were used as a partial basis for a number of US films and television series, such as The Craft, Charmed and Buffy the Vampire Slayer, leading to a surge in teenagers' and young adults' interest and involvement in the religion.

'"[158] A practicing Wiccan herself, Adler used her own conversion to paganism as a case study, remarking that as a child she had taken a great interest in the gods and goddesses of ancient Greece, and had performed her own devised rituals in dedication to them.

Other ways in which many North American pagans have gotten involved with the movement are through political or ecological activism, such as vegetarian groups, health food stores, or feminist university courses.

[166] Magliocco came to a somewhat different conclusion based upon her ethnographic research of pagans in California, remarking that the majority were "white, middle-class, well-educated urbanites" but that they were united in finding "artistic inspiration" within "folk and indigenous [American] spiritual traditions,"[167] The sociologist Regina Oboler examined the role of gender in the American pagan community, arguing that although the movement had been constant in its support for the equality of men and women ever since its foundation, there was still an essentialist view of gender ingrained within it, with female deities being accorded traditional western feminine traits and male deities being similarly accorded what western society saw as masculine traits.

[170] German occultism and modern paganism arose in the early 20th century, and they became influential through teachings such as Ariosophy, gaining adherents within the far-right Völkisch movement, which eventually culminated in Nazism.

[181] Völkisch thinkers tended to idealize the myth of the "original nation", which they believed could still be found in rural Germany, a form of "primitive democracy freely subject to its natural elite".

[176] To recreate the religion of the ancient Germans, List used the Scandinavian epic and the work of contemporary theosophists, in particular Max Ferdinand Sebaldt von Werth, who described the eugenic practices of the "Aryans", as well as The Secret Doctrine by Helena Blavatsky and The Lost Lemuria by William Scott-Elliot.

[204] Practicing universalists such as Stephan Grundy emphasize that ancient northern Europeans married and had children with members of other ethnic groups, and in Norse mythology, the Æsir did the same with the Vanir, jötnar, and humans, so these modern pagans criticize racist views.

[229] The lines between this form of modern paganism and Nazism are "extremely thin"[230] because its adherents praise Adolf Hitler and Nazi Germany,[230] claim that the "white race" is threatened with extinction by the efforts of a Jewish world conspiracy,[231] and dismiss Christianity as a work of the Jews.

[239] In the post-Soviet period, in the conditions of the loss of the great "empire" (USSR), land, and influence and in search of internal and external enemies, neopaganism became widespread among nationalist ideologues, just like in Germany in the 1930s.

[248] The Austrian occultist Guido von List, who created the doctrine of Ariosophy, argued that an ancient developed "Ario-Germanic" culture reached its dawn several millennia before Roman colonization and Christianity.

[170] The idea of the Jewish-Khazar origin of Prince Vladimir the Great is popular, explaining why he introduced Christianity, an instrument for the enslavement of the "Aryans" by Jews, and staged the genocide of the pagan Slavs.

Pagan-specializing religious scholar Christine Hoff Kraemer wrote, "Pagans tend to be relatively accepting of same-sex relationships, BDSM, polyamory, transgender people, and other expressions of gender and sexuality that are marginalized by mainstream society."