[Serious] Opinions on paganism?

[A. Secular Human]

Some pagans are atheists, but most believe in divine beings.
Some pagans are physicalists/materialists but most believe in the supernatural.

I think belief in either deities or the supernatural is most likely erroneous, and that is an issue for me.  I'd be more sympathetic towards agnostic or atheistic paganism.

Other than that, the term 'paganism' is very broad and can encompass a huge range of beliefs/ religions which can vary enormously in detail.  Some branches have ethical issues which bother me, like the neo-nazi connections of certain kinds of wodenism, or those forms that have animal sacrifice or whatever.

 Agnosticism and atheism are not an either-or proposition.

Gnosticism is about knowledge.  Atheism is about belief.  They are not on a spectrum (together) about god belief.

Think of "agnostic" as a adjective to describe the theistic position.  For example, I'm an agnostic atheist...I have no knowledge of gods, and I lack belief in them.

I'm also agnostic about brain surgery...I have no knowledge about it, either.

YMMV.

[Anomalocaris]

Some varieties of paganism don’t require interventionist supernatural forces, but view the non-natural world as existing side-by-side with the natural one (the pages of a book analogy). In these views, supernatural forces are not interventionist, but immanent. 

Boru

Even more to the point, nature intervenes, and the sacred is immanent.  Gods, even for those who believe in them, tend not to be supernatural.  A god isn't over nature or in nature and beyond nature.  It -is- nature.  When a god blows, that's the wind at work.

if god was nature then there is no need to or purpose in talking to it, or practice any separate ritual to venerate it or appease it beyond normal productive interaction with it.   The reason why it is called god and not nature is because there is a supposition of emotionally sensitive agent beyond the tangible nature.

I doubt “you should plant a tree for every one you cut down” would have been considered pagan even by the church.   it is when you have to make an offering to a tree spirit that might be considered pagan.

[The Grand Nudger]

The christers do think that climate change and climate activism is a pagan religion. They're pretty sure "saving the earth" was the gateway drug that the secular conspiracy used to groom their children into witchcraft and satanism. It's banapants, but it's informed by a credible underlying fear. That natural religions are vicous competition for their childrens hearts and minds. As OI mentioned before, their demographics are cratering and paganism keeps blipping in and out as the fastest growing religion for usians. If captain planet saw jesus choke that fig tree, he'd have fucked him up.....with the power of heart, ofc - and we'd all cheer.

At any rate, sure, thinking of gods as personal and intervening is the definition of theism - and some pagans are theists and they'll see it that way. Others see nature as impersonal and intervening. Gods stand in for the sacred masculine, the sacred feminine. For a particular relationship we experience. They serve a ritual, ideological, or narrative purpose as a focal point for abstract and concrete ideas about the world and our interactions with it. On the other end, as far as you can get from theism, that everything we attributed to gods and the supernatural, both actions and the awe and reverence they've enjoyed, were misattributions of sacred nature.

It helps to keep in mind that superstition and religion are not interchangeable. All pagans are religious, not all pagans are superstitious.

[The Grand Nudger]

I can give you a really solid timeframe on the point of no return, too. 2013-2015. There was a cultural debate within christendom about "the dominion verses". One side thought these should be the stewardship verses - and saw our climate crisis as an opportunity to express their own contemporary christian values. This isn't the first time this had been doiscussed and it wasn;t the last.....buuuuuut.....Unfortunately, in the us at least - the climate crisis is team blue - and christendom had thrown it's hat in with team red. Godless kenyan socialism lost that argument and twittler would go on to wreck the conservation state to the sound of glorious christian applause.

[Bucky Ball]

The term "pagan" and "paganism" are no longer used in academia.
It's a biased word used to denote a god or gods that simply are not "your" set of gods.
One god is as good as another until you demonstrate ANY of them are real.

The origins of the Hebrew / Christian god Yahweh is the 40th son of El Elyon, the chief Babylonian god, (or was he the 70th ?), the god of war, the Lord of Hosts.
(A "host" is an army in battle formation). No one really knew where Yahweh came from, until in the late 1800s the Royal Library of Ashurbanipal was discovered near Nineveh.

Yahweh is the "realized" (phonetic) form of the "tetragramaton", (ie 4 letters), (YHWH), ... YaHWeH ... which represented the Hebrew deity, commonly called the Abrahamic god, or in the West, just, .. God. Some say the shortened form, without the vowels inserted, is/was a mark of respect, and that they did not want to actually pronounce the real name. There is some evidence that may not be the whole story.

The first time the name is used in the bible is Genesis 2:4. BUT, the books of the Bible were NOT written in the order we have them today. So the naming of the god in Job is important, and I don't have that information, in terms of translational texts. I'd have to look that up, and see what they called that god. I don't remember. The first chronological use is Genesis, which in the Hebrew version, is YHWH-Elohim, (which is translated, "Lord God"), thereby loosing all it's historic meaning and context. There is a lot of controversy about what this means, but it's fairly clear that the Judean priests, (since there are so many other elements of the Sumerian myths in Genesis), took the council of gods in Samaria, (the Elohim, plural), and identified it purposely with the Yahweh god, into a singular being. So basically it's the god of the Old Testament. When the Moses stories where written, they had Moses ask the name of the god, and he self-identifies himself as Yahweh. Thus the authors created, a heretofore non connected myth, with the new one, by use of the name.

How, and why that got to be that way, is rather complicated.
In short, the idea, probably originated in the Sumerian myth system, (it was found as one of the 70 sons of El Elyon), in the Enuma Elish, (the Sumerian Creation myth), found in the Royal Library in Ashurbanipal, by archaeologists, near ancient Nineveh. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Library_of_Ashurbanipal , in the mid 1800's

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yahweh
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/En%C3%BBma_Eli%C5%A1

Yahweh, for much of the time had a wife, (Ashera, or Ashura).
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asherah

How, and why THIS god got assigned to the Hebrew peoples, (or they assigned it to themselves), has to do with the fact that Yahweh was the god of the armies, (you probably have heard "Lord of Hosts"), if you are a religious/church attending person. (A "host" is an assembled army) and they wanted help in the battles with their neighbors.

So that the basics.
Watch this video, if you care to. It has some of the Yahweh history. (Some of the video is not quite correct, but the origins parts are).
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kZY2eeozdo8&t=116s

I group this information, in my head, as the Northern Sources, (the Babylonian/Sumerian) myth sources, as Babylonia/Assyria was to the North and East of Ancient Israel.
Actually even that name Isra-EL, retains some derivative relationship with the "EL" gods in the ancient myths, as does "Beth-EL", (Bethel), which we see all over the place today. Beth El was a site in the old Northern kingdom where Yahweh was worshiped.

There was also another god, (combo), called Javeh, which came from Southern Canaan, and the Jordan Valley. Javeh was the Edomite "mountain god", and is also thought to have origins associated with the Egyptian "volcano god". These traditions had within them the Moses stories, and so the origins of Moses, (Mosheh was a common Egyptian name), came from the South, and some from Egypt.

When the Judean priests were assembling the texts and myths, (around 550-575 BCE), of Genesis, they combined the materials .. which came from about 5 sources, in some ways, which are known, leaving many of the origins evident still in the texts. Scholars have known about this for about 150 years, and there isn't much dispute about it, except in very fundamentalist schools, who deny it all, a priori.

There is a tiny remnant that remembers this in Deuteronomy.
Deuteronomy 32:8-10
"When the Most High gave the nations their inheritance, when he divided all mankind, he set up boundaries for the peoples according to the number of the sons of Israel.
For the LORD’s (mistranslated) portion is his people, Jacob his allotted inheritance.
In a desert land he found him, in a barren and howling waste. He shielded him and cared for him; he guarded him as the apple of his eye,"

[The Grand Nudger]

The paganism we're discussing is a contemporary social phenomena. Distinct from the ambiguous historic derogative that grants it's name, referring specifically a handful of nature based religions and quasi-religions infiltrating abrahamic religious ideation and outperforming abrahamism in the us in it's youngest and largest demos.

A good number of the self identifying christians in this country are pagans. Christo-pagans. The majority of self reporters, in fact. You can get a pretty comprehensive view of neo-paganism from the (now defunct) https://witchvox.com/

Anecdotally, pagan forums have dropped off a cliff in the last few years, owing, imo, to the infiltration/contamination mentioned above. It's just not weird or noteworthy anymore.

[Silver]

Lots of people got interested due to the movie The Craft. Albeit, they were confusing witchcraft for paganism and neo-paganism and Wicca.

[The Grand Nudger]

To some extent, and especially at that time, they were interchangeable. A single publisher, Llewellyn, created that impression and market. They had a ready made stable of authors. Scott Cunningham, Silver Ravenwolf. Raymond fucking Buckland. If you wanted a side hustle worth serious coin, wiccan detritus on etsy goes for many times more than identical products...on etsy.

If you can sell mint to kroger or some lovesick teenager trying to fashion a love charm, pick the second option.

[Gawdzilla Sama]

Pagans are serious.

[Silver]

To some extent, and especially at that time, they were interchangeable. A single publisher, Llewellyn, created that impression and market. They had a ready made stable of authors. Scott Cunningham, Silver Ravenwolf. Raymond fucking Buckland. If you wanted a side hustle worth serious coin, wiccan detritus on etsy goes for many times more than identical products...on etsy.

If you can sell mint to kroger or some lovesick teenager trying to fashion a love charm, pick the second option.

I bought Cunningham's solitary practitioner book.

I knew a girl in a D.C. college who was a fan of Ravenwolf. She ended up giving the book to me, but I never read it.