So What Is A Pagan?
The whole concept of Paganism started with the attempt of the Established Church which dominated Europe and the Middle East for 2,000 years to wipe out all competition and to become the largest Monopoly that ever existed; they failed, of course. Microsoft and eBay are neck-and-neck in that arena, making the Catholics look like children at play.
According to the Catholic Church, all Pagans were heretics, pure and simple, and merely calling someone a “Pagan” gave authority to their persecutions, just as it does today in some very unenlightened and uptight countries. Of course, this could never happen in a Free country like America.
Paganism originally meant “outside the Establishment”, and referred to the Old Religions of Western Europe as practiced by the Appolonians and Dionysians of Greece and the Cults of Roman times.
Today, the term “Pagan” has taken on a whole new meaning, as things tend to do; language develops — it doesn’t remain static.
Today’s Pagan can be defined, if define we must, as someone who follows religious practices that are Outside the Box of State-Sponsored Establishment Religious Organizations. In many areas, if you are a business person who doesn’t belong to the religious businesspersons’ group of choice, nobody will do business with you. This is one way in which the Establishment has maintained dominance over the past 20 centuries, and in some countries one must be at least seven generations Catholic to hold a job of any kind.
Within Paganism itself there are very profound differences, in the sense that Pagans might be under the influence of Pan, of Circe, of Ariel, of Isis or, indeed, any God, Goddess, Entity or Power that happens to fall outside the Approved Doctrine of the current Political-Religious Establishment.
Pagans tend to associate with one another in much the same way that all groups tend toward one form of protective cover or another; ethnic groups, religious groups, intellectuals, gays — all tend toward shying away from the mainstream and eventually form into an actual or virtual form of ghetto.
Actually, the fact is that Christianity, which prides itself on the persecution of anything not resembling itself, is not merely a Cult in the original sense of the word (look it up in the dictionary — it doesn’t mean what you think it does), but a DOOMSDAY CULT. If you doubt that, just read the New Testament, particularly the part about what happens immediately after The Second Coming. “…And what rough beast, its hour come ’round at last, shuffles toward Bethlehem to be born?”
Pagans don’t get all hung up about Doomsday; as anyone who actually reads the Bible in the original Coptic is aware (the King James Bible was written solely to justify remarriage in the case of failure to produce a male heir), Doomsday doesn’t spell Doom for all except those who could swim, as did the Great Flood, which wiped out all the evil people and beasts and left millions of evil fish, ducks, swans and floating insects alive; to Pagans, Doomsday, which is properly called “Domesday”, is just another Festive Gaian Holiday, which in this case involves not being trapped inside a body. Try going Out of Body once in a while; you might grow to like it.