What do Paganism's believe in?

[Enchanted_DreamFaerie]

I never quite understand what Paganism meant to be honest.. I've always got lost in what they believed in. What do they follow? Any special traditions? Are they earth witches? There's so many questions I have & I feel quite confused. Some people say it's like Wican's only slightly different. Not sure if this is true or not though. I've tried to look it up but I got quite confused about it: I have a hard time understanding things sometimes. Could someone explain it for me, so that way where I can understand a little better. Usually take things in little by little. Hope I won't be laughed at for asking such a question but this has been on my mind for awhile now. If anyone could help clear this up for me I'd be very grateful, thank you! :)

[norseman]

"Pagan" is a catch-all word which covers a whole raft of ideas, life styles, faiths. In it's simplest form, pagan just means Country Dweller as opposed to Urban Dweller.

[Jenny Crow]

All Wiccans are Pagans but not all Pagans are Wiccan. (Sorry, couldn't help that )

Paganism is an umbrella term for religions that are not Christian, Judaism or Islam.

There are wide variety of traditions, that more often than not, are polytheistic (meaning - many gods), for example Asatru, Druidry, Wicca etc.

[Enchanted_DreamFaerie]

Oh okay, thank you!

Is there any good books about Paganism? I'd like to read a few but not sure which ones to order from Amazon.

[Albalida]

Originally Posted by Enchanted_DreamFaerie

I never quite understand what Paganism meant to be honest.. I've always got lost in what they believed in. What do they follow? Any special traditions? Are they earth witches? There's so many questions I have & I feel quite confused. Some people say it's like Wican's only slightly different. Not sure if this is true or not though. I've tried to look it up but I got quite confused about it: I have a hard time understanding things sometimes. Could someone explain it for me, so that way where I can understand a little better. Usually take things in little by little. Hope I won't be laughed at for asking such a question but this has been on my mind for awhile now. If anyone could help clear this up for me I'd be very grateful, thank you! :)

Paganism is an adjective, not a religion. Basically it's the "miscellaneous" box on the census. There are Neo-Pagans who are sort of a modern mix. But there are also pagan reconstructionists (who are more into the history of the way a religion was practiced) and pagan polytheists (who might be less about the history and more about their interpretation of the mythology--literally they recognize more than one god.)

Because of the adjective, many pagans can get together and cross paths, so sometimes someone who started off as Wiccan would become a Hellenic polytheist, then a Hellenic reconstructionist, then get "thwapped" by the Kemetic (Egyptian) gods and convert to the practice of worshipping them...and, sometimes, they'll remain pagan without really having any gods. (Or, with a common henotheistic habit, without dedicating themselves to one god.) They could be in-between, or just resting.

So...there's secular paganism.

There's also these different kinds of paganism:

Hellenismos (Greek mythology)
Heathenry (Norse mythology: Asatru, Vanatru, Rokkatru)
Celtic (Brythonic, Gaelic, and maybe even Gaulish paganism)
Kemetic (Egyptian)
Mesopotamian (...just what it says)
Suomenusko (Finland)
Dievturiva (Latvia)
Romuva (Lithuania)
Maausk (Estonia)

Non-European paganism could include Hinduism (although many born and bred Hindus don't like being called pagans or heathens for being Hindu; this usually comes from Theosophy Hindu-Buddhist influenced Neopaganism), Shinto (usually Jinja Shinto, which is an open lineage of Shintoism which is Japanese paganism), and Native American reconstructionism (Aztec, Mayan, Incan, maybe even some Canadian or Statesian Native practices can be considered so--but, like Hindus, some don't like it being considered paganism. To self-identify as pagan is the main feature, there's no rule like "non-Abrahamic and European only")

There's also pop-culture paganism which might be related to tulpamancy and chaos magick.

So, again, paganism is an adjective...it's not one single church or temple. So, all of the practices I listed above will have very very different ways of seeing the world and practicing. Wicca is probably the best gateway (in my humble opinion, which is very debatable because Wicca's been getting some flack among reconstructionists for not being well-researched and for being culturally appropriative and gender essentialist.)

I was bounced between Celtic and Norse until I threw my hands up in surrender and became a Faelatrist. This seemed to be the common "low" mythology between the two, so there might be a difference between the "high" mythology and the "low" mythology of whichever path you choose.

[norseman]

Originally Posted by Enchanted_DreamFaerie

Oh okay, thank you!

Is there any good books about Paganism? I'd like to read a few but not sure which ones to order from Amazon.

One hint ! Do not buy books written by people with silly, made-up names. Look for books coming out of British Universities.

[Albalida]

Originally Posted by norseman

One hint ! Do not buy books written by people with silly, made-up names. Look for books coming out of British Universities.

I don't know about that. Academic books are expensive, and they're not usually written by pagans for pagans.

I think academic texts are a good supplement for paths that a practitioner has already decided on.

Dion Fortune, Starhawk, and Lupa (Rebecca Luxa) are pretty good authors that I can recommend who are/were practicing pagans with made-up names, for people seeking a little bit of this and that. My favorite author of all time ever is Christopher Penczak, who has his fingers in many different pies so to speak, and can mix them in a confusing way because he's syncretized so many paths in his own personal belief system. But I like that when he writes, he challenges subcultural conventions of modern practicing pagans (urban paganism? oh my stars! gay witchcraft empowering the tribe?? well I never! ascension philosophy represented as pagan??? how dare he bring tin foil hats into this! the nerve of that man!)

[norseman]

"they're not usually written by pagans for pagans"

And all the better for that !

There are two books in paper back from, £7.99 each from Amazon by Brian Bates, Visiting Professor at the University of Brighton.
The first is "The Real Middle Earth", an examination of the Dark Ages.

The second is "The Way of Wryd" which tells the journey of a young christian scribe sent on a mission to pagan Anglo-Saxon England with Wulf, a sorcerer - mystic as his guide. This is fiction based around a hard core of facts.

If you are buying books, it is better to buy stuff where some research has been carried out.

[Albalida]

Originally Posted by norseman

"they're not usually written by pagans for pagans"

And all the better for that !

For some aspects, yes. For others, no. I mean, I recommend The Fairy Faith in Celtic Countries for Faelatrists because it's academic and free, but the scholarly conjecture that Danu and Brighid were the same goddess rather rightfully get the side-eye from actual practicing pagans with their unscholarly personal gnosis (UPG) of these being very different goddesses. Community can be an important aspect of faith. There's no study that I've seen on the personal gnosis (really, UPG is supposed to stand for Unverified Personal Gnosis) of modern pagans.

Even scholars can make mistakes. See Professor Andy Orchard's translation of the Lokasenna-- Way to regress the political progress of the entire Heathen community!

The academic world can provide wonderfully profound insight and support of paganism, but it's completely out of the touch with the living faith. They aren't how-to manuals on being pagan, and how-to manuals are usually what neophytes are actually looking for. It would be a disservice to limit recommendations to the hermeneutics of people with tangential goals.

[norseman]

We have different views on what being a pagan means. There are no manuals or teachers for this. Being pagan comes from the heart, not from knowledge - it's comes from experience of living a pagan life style. I have never had teachers or even read a "pagan" book, I just wandered the Land for decades and found where I belonged, and listened to what Nature had to tell me. Being pagan is an emotional thing ! You have to listen carefully to what Nature tells you.