Principles of Paganism Lesson 6:  Greek Domestic Religion Introduction Those of us interested not only in studying but emulating ancient religion naturally take an interest in the domestic religion of ancient peoples, for unless we live among surviving or revived pagan communities, we are reduced to celebrating ancient piety in solitude, or with our families.  Judging by recent scholarship, there has been a steady increase of interest in sacra privata, the sacred privacies, and though evidence for such is scanty compared to that available for ancient civic religion, more is being revealed by the efforts of archæologists, epigraphists and scholars as time goes on. The information available on domestic religion…

Lesson 5: Why the Hebrews Ceased to be Pagans In his monumental contribution to UNESCO’s History of Mankind, volume 2, The Beginnings of Civilization, Sir Leonard Woolley presents an interesting hypothesis regarding the origin and early development of Judaism.  Because the ancestors of the Hebrews were pagans, we should concern ourselves with the question, How did they lose their religious allegiance to ancestor-worship and temple worship of many gods and goddesses? The Book of Genesis, which is full of pagan traditions from the earliest stratum of Hebrew oral tradition (and which is a political hot potato if a scholar attempts to translate it honestly), states that Abram (later Abraham) came…

Lesson 4: Daimones Daimon. This Greek word has a long history, and the surer people became as to its meaning, the further they were from its original senses.  In Homeric or archaic times (ca. early 8th century BCE) it seems to have had two primary meanings: a being higher than a human but less than a god or goddess (nymph would perhaps be an approximate female equivalent); and an expression meaning ‘some god or other,’ where the identity or name of the spiritual agency is unknown. Daimoni in Homer is an adjective meaning ‘strange’.   The presence of a daimon or a spirit was uncanny, and the sign of a spirit’s…

Principles of Paganism Lesson 3:  Pagan Psychology Part One: Reading Between the Lines I am currently re-reading a very interesting book, The Greeks and the Irrational, by E.R. Dodds, that throws a lot of light upon ancient Greek religious psychology.  Like many other accounts of ancient and “primitive” religion, it interprets the evidence in terms of our own cultural prejudices, such as our assumption of psychic unity and the subjective nature of religious phenomena.  By being alert to certain expressions, however, we can catch the instances where a scholar or anthropologist is wearing his cultural blinkers and discount his self-imposed limitations of understanding. For instance, in chapter 1 of Dodds,…

Lesson 2 Will and Fate In pagan religion the future is fated, but this should not be understood in a straight-line sense.  The mind of Moira, [1] the dark goddess of fate in Greek religion, is incredibly complex.  She does not prescribe one series of events only, but allows for certain forkings to occur for each person at certain critical moments.  When one is born, his or her fate is merely sketched out by Moira; in the course of life one will make decisions, and in response to these she will begin filling in details in the picture of one’s future. Will is of the spirit, and spirit, like everything…

Introduction In this course we shall be concerned with getting to the roots of pagan religion.  We shall clear away anachronisms and deceptions in an attempt to uncover the historical origins of nature religion before these were obscured by empire-builders and hierarchical priesthoods. I say ‘the historical origins,’  because it is no use trying to get hold of the religion of prehistoric peoples.  Marija Gimbutas has made a valiant effort along those lines in her Language of the Goddess, but until we come to written records we really have only shards of pottery and old bones, and not much else to deal with. Writing in the Western world began with…