ok.. the whole "reconstruction" thing has lost me a bit... I tend to work with small words.... so I'll answer the question what does pagan mean to you? If you call yourself one, why? Why not?

I consider myself Pagan rather than call myself a more descriptive lable for a reason. I look around me and my pagan friends and I see some who have chosen a very distinct path, i.e. druidry, heathenry or something similar to coven style wicca (although they are not of the gardnerian lineage) and I can see very specific things that link them to that lable. For instance, the druids talk about Awen and they are connected to groves. The heathens talk about the sagas, the wyrd and use runes. The coven "wiccan" is just that, in a coven, is very ritualistic and talks about different gods and goddesses.

These things allow me to very loosly group these people together in my mind as "types of pagan"... but I (and some of my other pagan friends) are very different... there is no common theme. Some of us use runes but aren't interested in the sagas. Some are ritualistic but do not believe in pantheonic gods and goddesses. Others don't even relate to the necessity of having a god and goddess.

Some of us draw in eastern influences, one of my friends is drawing in concepts of buddhism, I am very interested in ascended masters and the angelic realms, I had one friend who was also taoist.

But, what we all have in common is a love for the land and a relationship with the cycle of the seasons and the festivals. To me, this is the thing that makes someone pagan. What they bolt onto their faith is what leads to a more defined nomenclature (ok, I do like some big words, but they may be the wrong ones).

I run a group for pagans in my area and in the last 8 years we have had hundreds of people pass through the group. All of them called themselves pagan, very few went on to call themselves anything else... unless they were new to the path and had been indoctrinated into the american use of the term wicca. In the time we have been running we have discussed what it is to be pagan as we only allow people into the group that are loosly pagan or very interested in paganism... We decided to only use the concept of a connection to the land and the importance of the cycle of the seasons as the gauge, nothing more.

This says to me that the term Pagan is VERY applicable, but most of the people that would use it are quietly following their paths. It's the ones that add the layer of definement of Druid/Wicca/Heathen/Kemetic/Etc that make the noise and overshadow those of us that are more than happy to simply be called Pagan.

Another thing to think about.... quite often on my forum there is talk about labels and every single time the conversation has boiled down to... you are what you are, there is no need for a lable. So I wonder, who are the people that want to put us all in boxes and why do they want to do it?