And What They Mean To Us

1. Outline

Religion, like individuals, should be introspective. The words of Apollo, “Know Thyself” are applicable across the landscape of human experience. Religion should look at itself and it should know what it is about. Such an approach has been used by Christian sects seeking to “get back to the original message” and it should be particularly recommended and helpful to modern Pagans who, in reviving an ancient religion, are trying to find their way, trying to understand their own religion and how to make it relevant for today.

Perhaps by reviewing what Paganism has been historically it will be possible to understand what it is or what it should be today. Since it is also useful to agree on what our terms mean, by Paganism I mean Pierre Chuvin’s definition of ethnic religion,[1] and specifically, with a focus on European and Mediterranean Paganism. The list below is given in no particular order and note that it is by no means meant to be exhaustive.

1. Belief in a multiplicity gods (this goes without saying)
2. Tolerance/acceptance of other religions
3. Diversity (inclusive vs. exclusive)
4. Belief in an afterlife
5. Veneration of ancestors
6. Veneration of the Natural World
7. Divination
8. The efficacy of magical practices
9. Ritual Purity
10. Belief in spirits
• Hearth
• Nature

11. Devotion to those gods through cultic acts
• Sacrifice
• Oratory
• Prayer
• Feasting (including drinking/toasting)
• Dancing
• Song
• Performances

In my opinion, none of these elements are out of place in today’s world; there is no compelling reason to banish any of them from our own religious landscape. They are all relevant and should have a role in modern Pagan practice if any claim is to be made to “authenticity” – that is, if we are attempting to reconstruct or revive historical polytheism. Obviously, a religion is not really an ancient religion if everything about it is new, and many Pagans today seem to rely more on unverifiable personal gnosis (or what “works” or what “feels good”) than on the historical record. Some I’ve met (even those belonging to or heading local groups of Pagans) are abysmally ignorant of historical Paganism, and most of the popular literature is of little or no help in this regard (I am thinking particularly of the unfortunate books published by Llwellyn which form the staple for modern Pagans). All this is fine, I suppose, if you don’t pretend to be practicing ancient Paganism and just admit that you’ve created a new Paganism.

2. Specific Observations and Explanations:

1. Belief in a Multiplicity of Gods
Some modern Pagans express belief in a single deity or in a single deity represented by various aspects (often a male and female – see note 28 below) but in historical terms it is clear that a belief in many gods, not just one or two, was normative. Philosophers might express ideas about creative forces (demiurge, the Neoplatonic “One”, etc) but this is more a product of “intellectual” than “popular” or “folk” religion. But even philosophers who expressed some suspicion of the traditional cults paid lip service to the traditional cults and did not advocate their replacement or elimination (see as an example the discussion of Porphyry in #2 below). In polytheism, all gods exist. There is no need to subsume the many into one or two. After all, as Jonathan Hirsch says: “Nothing in human nature…suggests the inevitability of the notion that there is only one god,”[2]

2. Tolerance/Acceptance of Other Religions
Jan Assmann has persuasively argued that ancient polytheism was a means of translation between cultures – an “ecumene of nations” as he puts it. All gods exist and different cultures can identify with each others gods, seeing the same gods with different names or aspects. It was not until the arrival of monotheism that “Paganism” was invented, insofar as anything that was outside of monotheism was seen as the “Other”. Jan Assmann correctly identifies monotheism as “counterreligion” as opposed to religion, “because it not only constructed but rejected and repudiated everything that went before and everything outside itself as ‘paganism.’”[3] Regina Schwartz argues that “Violence is not only what we do to the Other. It is prior to that. Violence is the very construction of the other.”[4] As Bart Ehrman notes, “basic tolerance was one of the central aspects of ancient Greco-Roman religion…There was no reason that everyone should worship the same gods any more than everyone should have the same friends. All the gods deserved to be worshipped in ways appropriate to them.”[5]

The important point is that a polytheist can recognize he existence of a monotheistic god, and even offer devotion to it, but a monotheist will reject all other gods. After all, “false gods cannot be translated.”[6] But even in rejecting the idea of a single god, therefore, a polytheist shows tolerance of belief in that single god. Greco-Roman culture and religion allowed for the concept of a “divine man” as in Hercules or the emperors themselves and Porphyry would call Jesus himself such a “divine man” but not a God in an attempt to accommodate Jesus and Christianity within a polytheistic framework. It does not matter what Porphyry’s motives were, only the fact that the attempt could be made and that no similar effort can be made, obviously, from the restricted monotheistic thought-world.[7] Some “monotheists” have, in the past, and some do currently, accept the reality of “lesser” gods, as they are called, but any such admission renders the speaker a polytheist since by definition in monotheism there can be only one god.

Arguments made from the point of view of Christian apologia that polytheism was intolerant of monotheism are mistaken. There is no record of persecution. For example, Origen (Third century), though he seems obsessed with the idea of martyrdom, has little to say about any persecutions, saying only that “a few, whose number could be easily enumerated, have died occasionally for the sake of the Christian religion.”[8] And as Crake tells us: “As most scholars recently have argued, there was no law, either existing section of criminal law, or special legislation directed against the Christians under which Christians were prosecuted in the first two centuries.”[9] French historian Maurice Sartre states that “The spread of Christianity did not encounter any pronounced opposition from the Roman authorities, except in brief and violent crises…In general…until the middle of the third century we find no general persecution. On the contrary, like other members of the Christian community, bishops were able to lead their lives quite openly.”[10] Even when Roman law directly impacted Christians, as in the reign of Decius, those laws were not directed against anything but for something – namely, loyalty to the empire, and the accusations against Diocletian are problematic in that our sources for his actions (and the reasons for them) come solely from hostile Christian sources.

In general, Roman Pagan objections to Christianity were not religious at all, but political (the question of loyalty), or criminal (misbehavior by individual Christians breaking the law by disrupting religious rituals and acts of violence, such as vandalism or assault).[11] In other words, the only prosecution (not persecution) of Christians took place under existing civil and criminal law. It would be absurd to suggest that upholding the law is not an act of intolerance or that laws that had been in place for decades or even centuries could be directed against the activities or beliefs on a group that had not yet existed when those laws were enacted.[12]

3. Diversity (inclusive vs. exclusive)
There was no idea of “ownership” of gods and religion. Where all gods exist all gods can be worshiped. It was understood that there were local cults, or gods of certain places, but even this did not exclude worship. Rules of individual shrines/temples aside, there were no exclusions to worship and even those local exclusions dealt with who could enter the shrine, not who could worship the god or goddess venerated there. There is no evidence I know of that any group said, “These gods are ours and you cannot worship them.”

Perhaps the best evidence for this is Hellenism. Originally an ethnic designation, it came to denote culture – a culture open to all – not simply Greeks. In the later Roman Empire, it came to be synonymous with “Pagan”. The Emperor Julian called himself a Hellene. Another example can be found in the Heathen Norse acceptance of people from other cultures into their own, including former slaves, an event which obviously included the worship of Norse gods. There is no ancient justification for modern forms of exclusion based on race/ethnicity, for example, “metagenetics.”

At the same time it must be observed that Pagan religions are not “for export”. There is no idea of a universal “truth” that is true for all. Pagan religion, as ethnic religion, is linked closely to the society in which it exists. “They think of their religion as true, but they don’t think of it as uniquely true; in particular they don’t think of it as something for export.”[13] Abrahamic monotheisms are, however, specifically intended to be exported, to be true not only for those in whose society it originated, but true for all – whether they want it to be or not.[14]

4. Belief in an afterlife
Most polytheists seem to have accepted the probability of some sort of afterlife, whether it is the shadowy Sheol of ancient Judaism (abode of righteous and sinner alike), Elysium, Hades, the halls of one’s ancestors, or Valhalla (abode of heroes). This belief has been amply attested to not only through ancient literature but through archaeological and epigraphical evidence.[15] It was by no means commonplace to think a person had to earn their way into such a place, nor was it necessarily either “good” or “bad” or as “punishment” or “reward”; it was simply “where you went” when you died. Opinions varied widely of course; there was no set doctrine or monolithic entity known as Paganism. As Martin Goodman states of one culture along, “Romans espoused quite radically varied ideas about what would happen to them when they died.”[16] DuBois observes that a similar diversity of thought obtained in Northern Europe: “All the Nordic peoples, pagan and Christian alike, possessed concepts of multiple otherworlds awaiting them after life, generally located beneath or above the earth and ruled by particular beings.”[17]

5. Veneration of ancestors
Ancient peoples venerated their ancestors. In fact, ancestor worship is universal.[18] Ancestors were not simply names of people who had come before us, but people who had contributed to the family, clan, or community through their lives and actions. Lineage was important in a way that it is not today. With regards to the Norse, DuBois says that “Ancestors constituted one of the most ancient and widespread types of deity worshipped in the Nordic region.”[19] And the Norse were hardly alone: “Ancestors are particularly important to indigenous societies because they are the source of a society’s traditions: ‘a system of information, support and guidance.’”[20] We tend today to think of the dead as being “gone” but for many ancient peoples the dead were still very much a part of the kinship group. At a recent family reunion, I went to the cemetery to pay respects to the dead, in particular my grandparents, parents and brother. Unfortunately, following the ancient practice of leaving offerings for the dead is unlikely to be well received by most cemeteries. Sleeping on the grave would likely get you arrested, or at least physically removed from the premises.

6. Veneration of the Natural World
Ancient polytheists venerated the natural world and Paganism is seen by most as an “earth-centered” religion. They were by no means radical environmentalists as can be demonstrated by examination of the historical record, not only through science but through the testimony of ancient authors themselves. Though nature was held in a higher regard than following monotheism’s normative inversion, the planet itself was not seen as inviolable or as a victim of oppression and a target of “liberation”. Trees were cut down to build homes and boats and animals were killed to eat and to make use of various animal byproducts for other purposes.[21] Views held by some modern Pagans of an almost elf-like veneration of nature are mistaken (and it should be noted that even Tolkien’s elves cut wood to make their tree homes). Any attempt to make the ancient polytheists acceptably “green” by radical modern standards will have to proceed in ignorance of or despite history. We cannot discount the possibility or even the likelihood of polytheism becoming more radical in its views towards nature but neither can we prove it, and as always, an argument from ignorance is unconvincing.

7. Divination
It was accepted that the gods knew more than humans. Even if fate was not planned out in intricate detail, or “fixed” still the gods knew what was going to happen. And if the gods are beneficent it follows that the gods are willing to share this information with us. Divination could take the form of oracles or readings of entrails or sticks or stones, the flight of birds, etc.[22] In Norse culture this was often a woman (seidh-working)[23]

8. The efficacy of magical practices
A belief in the efficacy of magic was commonplace.[24] Magic was related to but was no substitute for religion. It could be seen as selfish, an attempt to manipulate the gods or spirits or elements in order to force an outcome favorable to yourself and at the expense of others, including family and community. Sometimes, magic practitioners lived on the fringes of society, not entirely trusted since magic had negative as well as positive associations. The extent to which magic is part of religion continues to be debated in scholarly circles.[25] What is important to observe here is that in contrast to modern practice, magic in the ancient world was the property of the specialist. In the Mediterranean the “sorcerer” was as often a man and witches and witchcraft were not always seen in a positive light, contrary to the suppositions of many Wiccans. For example, in the Roman Twelve Tablets there is a clause about not “enticing” the crops of others. Magic, for the Romans, could be and sometimes was seen as a form of deviant religious behavior.[26] Nor were the Romans alone, as noted by Clyde Pharr: “The antisocial use of magic was universally condemned and it was legally prohibited in the various ancient peoples,-Egyptians, Babylonians, Hebrews, Greeks, and Romans.”[27] They key here is not that magic was universally condemned but that individuals – and governments – tended to be suspicious of its use and of its practitioners because of the very real possibility of its misuse. For modern Pagans to pretend to a long and hallowed tradition of magic as the central component of ancient Paganism is mistaken thinking and ancient Pagans most certainly did not engage in 19th century forms of ceremonial magic.[28]

9. Ritual Purity
Ritual purity seems to be misunderstood in modern Pagan discourse and literature. Even where it applied its used seems more pro forma than based on an actual understanding of what is being done, and why (let alone when). Yet ritual purity was very much a part of the ancient religious landscape. The idea behind purification is that any number of things could defile or render a person unclean and thereby give offense to a deity. “Pollution was that form of ‘dirt’ that prevented participation in the realm of the sacred; impurity at any level was simply incompatible with sanctity.”[29] Yet you can find Wiccan rituals where the altar is set up and then a bath for purity is attended to. Purification rites make sense only if they are carried out before approaching the sacred area. Laying out a sacred area and then purifying oneself would be considered pointless in ancient religious thought. Some acts could render a person unclean and require purification, including birth, menstrual cycles and sex. Yes, sex was polluting. Modern Pagans, with ideas that sex is always sacred, are apparently unaware that even in Pagan societies such actions required purification before entering sacred precincts.[30] It should be noted that different cultures had different ideas about pollution and purification and that various temples and shrines had different rules as well. There was no hard and fast rule in place and we should not expect there to be now and we must resist the idea that one set of ideas is inferior to another.

10. Belief in spirits
Spirits were an accepted reality to our ancestors. There were all sorts of spirits. These were beings that existed between the level of the gods and our own level. They were not necessarily seen as either beneficent or malign though monotheistic thought later demonized them all, as it did the gods, as “demons.” Spirits are often propitiated through sacrifice (as in the case of Norse landvaettir) or coerced (through magic). Of the landvaettir, H.R. Ellis Davidson says, “But when it came to the practical needs of every day, the people seem to have turned to a company of local spirits closely linked with the land itself, whose favour could bring them good fortune in farming, hunting and fishing and protect their children and animals.”[31]

11. Devotion to those gods through cultic acts
Obviously, devotion to the gods can be shown in many ways. It is not necessary to sing or dance to show devotion to the gods, but for the ancient polytheists, sacrifice was inseparable from religion. This is demonstrated by the historical record, not only by the importance given it by our Pagan sources but by the fact that Paganism was first attacked under Christian auspices through the act of sacrifice. Tertullian particularly denounced sacrifice and feasting (Tertullian, Apologeticum 35). Walter Burket in his study of Greek religion states that “Libation, sacrifice, first fruit offerings – these are the acts which define piety”[32] and Fritz Graf of Mediterranean religion, “sacrifice was at the center of cult.”[33] Prayer was inseparable from sacrifice. As Burket says, “there is rarely a ritual without prayer”[34] and Sallustius wrote that “Prayer divorced from sacrifices are only words, prayers with sacrifices are animated words, the word giving power to life and life animation to the word.”[35] Today, many Pagans ignore sacrifice and think in terms of magic, often more related to ideas of 19th century ceremonial magic than anything from the ancient world (see note 28 below). Many of the other elements of polytheistic cultic acts are forgotten completely, if modern Pagans are aware of them at all. Singing and poetry were banned to women by early Christianity “for its presumed effects”[36]Another forgotten aspect of ancient ritual is procession, which as Jan Bremmer writes, are “found all over the world and a good example of a more limited ritual, which often does not last longer than a few hours.”[37] As Jan Assmann points out, “Every major Egyptian religious feast was celebrated in the form of a procession.”[38] Christianity has co-opted this polytheistic practice but one has to wonder how many modern Pagans are aware of its ancient antecedents. And who drinks for religion anymore? An obvious exception is the modern Heathen embrace of toasting.[39]

3. Summary and Analysis

This is a snapshot of ancient polytheism. It is of necessity a brief overview. Some people might, in reading it, claim important elements were left out. But I did not include vegetarianism or feminism because they were not part of ancient religion. I also, pointedly, did not include pacifism. These are modern innovations. The idea that you have to be a vegetarian or a feminist or a pacifist to be a Pagan cannot be historically supported. That said, most Pagan groups I am aware of stress at the very least an acceptance of feminism and for good reason – in many polytheistic cultures women were held in higher regard and according more status than in later Christian cultures. So feminism, at least, if not present, at least has antecedents in polytheism. This modern inclusion of feminism is only to be expected in a society which largely embraces equal rights concepts. As for vegetarianism, there were dietary restrictions to be found at times in ancient religion but nothing widespread, and certainly no denunciation of meat as a food. In fact, meat played an important role in the ancient diet since most people subsisted largely on vegetables and had access to meat infrequently, but particularly at times of sacrifice, when all would share in the sacred feast. This consumption of meat was hallowed. As Burket says, the rite was a sign of the sacred.[40] Philosophers, playwrights and poets could mock it at times, but it was a ubiquitous and necessary component of popular religion. I know of no one outside monotheists denouncing it and even the monotheistic Jews practiced it until the destruction of the Temple in 70 CE and in Acts Paul is required by James to go to the temple, be purified and make blood sacrifice (21:26). Ancient polytheists were not pacifists. This does not mean they were war mongers either. There will always be those, in any society, who lean more strongly towards war or more strongly towards peace. But there was nothing in ancient religion that argued for pacifism. Athena was the goddess of war and wisdom, after all, and Odin was a god of war but also a god of wisdom.

If you ponder what we’re doing today as Pagans, and why, think about this: “Ordinary pagan worship was a matter of offerings (sacrifices, libations, incense) and petitionary prayer, on solemn occasions a choir might sing hymns praising the gods and asking them to be present at the sacrifice and favor the petitioners”[41] and what Harl says about the tenacity and nature of Pagan religion in its death throes: “Even in their final hours of defeat, pagans still venerated the gods as the protectors of the Roman order, and they defied their imperial persecutors by offering the gods their due sacrifice and libations.”[42] Now consider the nature of much of modern Paganism, and claims of carrying forward ancient customs and traditions. How far different a modern focus on magic! This is only my opinion, but there is something far less touching in the image of the last Pagans defying their persecutors so that they can continue to cast spells. The historical Pagans were showing devotion to their gods…can those who cast spells be shown to be doing the same thing? I would argue that there is a serious disconnect in modern Paganism, as I will argue further below with regards to modern points of focus.

Naturally a living, as opposed to a static religion will reflect the society that hosts it. Christianity has changed greatly since the first century CE. It is different in what used to be the Eastern Roman Empire than it is in the former Western provinces. Judaism has also changed greatly since the 12th century BCE when it was polytheistic and has undergone drastic changes several times since. Clearly, polytheism would have undergone change as well over the centuries. Allowing for a skip-over of many centuries’ duration, we modern Pagans are picking up where our ancestors left off, and in a very different world and without any real sense of continuity. We have seen often how far Christianity and Judaism have drifted off their original focus and that is without any interruptions in development. How much greater are the risks to modern Pagans? The expression that you must know where you have been to know where you are going has never been more true.

My question then for modern day Pagans, without diminishing the importance of ecology and women’s rights or the cause of peace is this: why is a particular focus placed on these and not on aspects of religion that pertain directly to honoring the gods? It seems at times that social issues are more important than cultic acts, more central to modern Paganism than showing our devotion to the gods. That is not to say that we should not strive to recognize the equal rights of women or that we should not take care of our world, but where is the stress on the gods themselves? Where is ritual purity? Where is feasting? Where is devotion to ancestors and where, above all, is sacrifice? Are we to imagine that somehow by engaging in casting spells we are showing devotion to the gods? Certainly not when some people believe they are actually causing (forcing) the deity to act on their behalf. How is coercion a form of respect, even among equals?

I think we can easily get out of focus by politicizing religion. It is true that ancient religion was tied closely to the community or the city, a means of bringing about unity. Yet our ancestors did not die to defend social causes, but rather their right to honor the gods according to the customs and traditions of their ancestors. Paying attention to other aspects of our religion need not come at the expense of social causes like equality, environmental pollution and world peace. But Eco-Feminism is not the historical face of Paganism. When you describe yourself as a Pagan the other person should not be saying, “Oh! You’re an Eco-feminist!” I would be horrified. Neither Eco-feminism nor some other cause should define what modern Paganism is about to the exclusion of what is truly central to Paganism. If religion is about humanity’s interaction with divine beings,[43] then what must be central to Paganism is what was always central to Paganism, and that is devotion to the gods. Otherwise we run the risk of becoming a political party that has nothing to do with our ancestral customs and traditions and the things our ancestors were willing to die for, and everything to do with social causes, and the gods will have gone missing altogether. What then, I ask, is the point?

Notes:

[1] Pierre Chuvin, A Chronicle of the Last Pagans, tr. B.A. Archer (Harvard University Press, 1990).

[2] Jonathan Hirsch. God Against the Gods: The History of the War Between Monotheism and Polytheism (NY: Viking Compass, 2004), 1-2.

[3] Jan Assmann, “The Mosaic Distinction: Israel, Egypt, and the Invention of Paganism,” Representations 56 (1996), 48-67.

[4] Regina Schwartz, The Curse of Cain: The Violent Legacy of Monotheism (University of Chicago Press, 1997), 5.

[5] Bart D. Ehrman, The New Testament. A Historical Introduction to the Early Christian Writings, Third Edition, (Oxford University Press, 2004), 30.

[6] Assmann, (1996), 48-67. For Pope Benedict XVI’s objections to Assmann’s thesis see Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger, Truth and Tolerance. Christian Belief and World Religions (San Francisco 2004), 210-214, 221-222.

[7] It should be noted here that Porphyry is an example of “intellectual” Paganism rather than “popular” Paganism and that as a Neoplatonist he accepted the idea of one supreme god, but at the same time in his Philosophy from Oracles defended the idea many gods. He defended the traditional cults and believed in the efficacy of sacrifice. In his view, Jesus followers were apostates from the worship of the gods. For a discussion, see Elizabeth DePalma Digeser, “Lactantius, Prophyry, and the Debate over Religious Toleration,” Journal of Roman Studies 88 (1998), 129-146.

[8] Origen, Contra Celsum 3.8.

[9] J.E.A. Crake, “Early Christians and Roman Law” Phoenix 19 (1965), 70.

[10]Maurice Sartre, The Middle East Under Rome (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2005), 338.

[11] It was this sort of behavior, MacMullen suggests, that “got Christians onto the north African police lists as early as Tertullian’s time.” By the third century things had gotten so bad that in 305 CE the church in Spain felt compelled to take action. Denied martyrdom are those who “anyone who breaks idols and gets killed at it” (MacMullen 1997, 15).

[12] On the other hand, much has been written of the intolerance inherent in monotheism. See Regina Schwartz, The Curse of Cain: The Violent Legacy of Monotheism (University of Chicago Press, 1997) and R. Joseph Hoffmann, ed., The Just War and Jihad: Violence in Judaism, Christianity, and Islam (Amherst, NY: Prometheus Books, 2006).

[13] Raymond Firth, “Conversion from Paganism to Christianity,” RAIN 14 (1976), 3-7.

[14] In particular see Ratzinger (2004). Ratzinger (now Pope Benedict XVI) asserts that there is no real freedom without Christian truth and that therefore Christian truth trumps tolerance of other religions. An unsurprising viewpoint for a former head of the Inquisition.

[15] See Walter Burket, Greek Religion (Harvard University Press, 1985), 194-215.

[16] Martin Goodman, Rome and Jerusalem. The Clash of Ancient Civilizations (Alfred A. Knopf, 2007), 239.

[17] Thomas A. DuBois, Nordic Religions in the Viking Age (University of Pennsylvania Press, 1999).

[18] Lyle B. Steadman, Craig T. Palmer and Christopher F. Tilley, “The Universality of Ancestor Worship,” Ethnology 35 (1996), 63-76.

[19] Dubois (1999), 47. See also H.R. Ellis Davidson, The Road to Hel. A Study of the Conception of the Dead in Old Norse Literature (Greenwood Press, 1968).

[20] Steadman, et al (1996), 73, citing P. Hefner Myth and Morality: The Love Command (Zygon 1991), 123.

[21] See for example, J. Donald Hughes, “How the Ancients Viewed Deforestation, Journal of Field Archaeology 10 (1983), 435-445.

[22] See Michael Attyah Flower, The Seer in Ancient Greece (University of California Press 2008).

[23] Dubois (1999), 123. For a survey of Norse ideas about divination see Davidson (1988), chapter 5.

[24] As Sarah Iles Johnston, “Magic” in Ancient Religions (2007), 140, points out, “magic” must be a shorthand way to refer to a variety of ancient terms.

[25] See in particular Georg Luck, Arcana Mundi. Magic and the Occult in the Greek and Roman World (John Hopkins University Press, 2005). William G. Dever makes stresses the point that magic is a characteristic of what he calls “folk” religions and is less likely to be associated with “state religion” See Did God Have a Wife? Archaeology and Folk Religion in Ancient Israel (William B. Eerdmans 2005), 5-6.

[26] James B. Rives, “Magic in Roman Law: The Reconstruction of a Crime,” Classical Antiquity 22 (2003), 313-339.

[27] Clyde Pharr, “The Interdiction of Magic in Roman Law,” Transactions and Proceedings of the American Philological Association 63 (1932), 269-295.

[28] For modern Pagan witchcraft see Ronald Hutton, “Paganism and Polemic: The Debate over the Origins of Modern Pagan Witchcraft,” Folklore 111 (2000), 103-117. Hutton emphasizes “the essential modernity of Wicca and its distance and difference from the paganism of antiquity.” This is a point I have often made myself. In fact, Hutton goes so far as to see Wicca as “a form of ritual magic” (p. 105). Another consideration for those laying claim to historical Paganism while focusing on magic is that as Johnston (2007) points out, sacrifice “stood at the center of magical practices.”

[29] Harold W. Attridge, “Pollution, Sin, Atonement, Salvation,” in Ancient Religions, ed. Sarah Iles Johnston (Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2007), 72.

[30] Attridge (2007), 72-73.

[31] H.R. Ellis Davidson, Myths and Symbols in Pagan Europe (Syracuse University Press, 1988), 102.

[32] Walter Burket, Greek Religion (Harvard University Press, 1985), 73.

[33] Fritz Graf, “What is Ancient Mediterranean Religion?” in Sarah Iles Johnston, ed. Ancient Religions (The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2007), 13.

[34] Burket (1985), 73.

[35] Sallustius, De deis uniersio, xvi. Translation from Sallustius, On the Gods and Universe, ed. and trans. A.D. Nock (Oxford, 1925), 29, cited in K.W. Harl, “Sacrifice and Pagan Belief in Fifth- and Sixth-Century Byzantium” Past and Present 128 (1990), 27.

[36] MacMullen, “What Difference Did Christianity Make?” Historia: Zeitschrift für Alte Geschichte 35 (1986), 326.

[37] Jan Bremmer, “Ritual” in Ancient Religions, ed. Sarah Iles Johnston (Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2007), 39.

[38] Jan Assmann, Moses the Egyptian. The Memory of Egypt in Western Monotheism (Harvard University Press, 1997), 26.

[39] For toasting among the Heathen Norse see DuBois (1999), 47. For this see also Davidson (1988), chapter 2.

[40] Burket (1985), 57.

[41] Morton Smith, “Pauline Worship as Seen by Pagans,” HTR, 73, (1980), 245.

[42] K.W. Harl (1990), 27. Harl observes that this “persistence of pagans in sacrificing to the gods is astonishing and perplexing” and notes that “far too often the last generations of pagans have been dismissed as curious survivals, or the defenders of a hopeless cause” (pp. 7-8).

[43] See William G. Dever, Did God Have a Wife? Archaeology and Folk Religion in Ancient Israel (William B. Eerdmans, 2005), 1-31. Dever endorses Hans H. Penner’s definition of religion as a “verbal and non-verbal structure of interaction with superhuman being(s)” and the Romans certainly defined religion in this way, as “proper and reasonable awe” of the gods.

Disclaimer: I in no way mean to pick on Wicca as a religion but it is difficult to find fault in some of these areas with modern Pagan movements more dedicated to historical Paganism. Nova Roma, for example has a nice page on how to sacrifice while I’ve been hard-pressed to find any mention at all of sacrifice on Wiccan sites or in Llewellyn books I’ve read or owned. I also fail to find any heading for feminism, ecology or pacifism under the Roman Religion category on Nova Roma. The obvious conclusion is that modern Pagan movements with a historical outlook tend to resemble historical Paganism to a greater degree than more modern movements, of which Wicca is a prominent example. That is in no way a denigration of Wicca as a religion; it is simply a modern religion, and not a historical religion, not the “Old Religion” it is sometimes made out to be.