Pagan History
By Joy J. Fine
To understand Pagan history, one must first understand where the term itself came from initially. The word pagan has its origins in the Latin word paganus, which meant one who dwells in the country. When looked at closely this term makes complete sense. When Christianity spread it began in the bigger towns and cities. These places had larger populations making spreading the word easier. When the Christian missionaries journeyed to spread the word of their one god, trying to convert people to their religion, it was more logical to take their message to the places that were more heavily populated instead of the tiny villages where only handfuls of people lived. So, these country dwellers retained their customs and religious practices for much longer without the intervention of the Christians.
Polytheistic Worshippers
In the villages the people believed in more than one god; they were polytheistic. They worshiped a god or goddess for various aspects of nature because they believed that this helped them in their lives. There were harvest goods, gods of the sea, the hills and the forest and gods that protected them in other aspects in their lives. These country dwellers were not prepared to give up all of them to worship one god simply because they were told by the Christians that their god was better. It was important to these people to keep their gods and goddesses happy. So they preformed many rituals to honor and worship them, to appease and please them so they would continue to grant the people good fortune, good health, fertility, successful crops, and anything else the people believed their gods would give to them. Everything they did hinged on their gods and what they did for their lives. Their laws were made to honor their gods as well as protect themselves. Paganism influenced everything they did in their daily lives, the unions that were made even where they lived.
As the world changed for them and certain aspects of life became more important so did the gods who influenced them. Tracing pagan history we see that some of their older gods lost their importance while new gods came up to replace or at least assist them. Gods of milling were needed and so they appeared and even a god to help the blacksmith do their jobs emerged. Some of the older gods changed based on what the villagers had to deal with. This included Aries and Mars the gods of war. As fighting amongst neighboring people became something they had to conquer their war gods grew stronger, more important in their roles and so worshiped more.
Reincarnation
Unlike Christians, the pagans never believed in heaven or hell. Instead their belief was in reincarnation. This belief was that once a person died they would return just in another form. By the Middle Ages paganism had pretty much been wiped from the world as a religion despite the fact that pagan history dates as far back as the ancient Greek and Roman religions
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Modern Pagans
In modern times the term pagan has taken on a different context. It is often used now to refer to anyone who does not practice Christianity, Judaism, Hinduism, Buddhism or other Eastern religions. The current definition tends to identify those who do not practice religion or who still worship more than one god as pagans. Despite pagan history showing us that this practice has disappeared, there are those who do practice this religion. They are now more often called neo-pagans and they either worship multiple gods or no god at all.
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