Talk:Modern paganism

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Thelema?

Isn't Thelema a significant neo-pagan religion? 2603:6011:A400:8873:C831:5028:5BE1:4F7A (talk) 23:51, 13 August 2022 (UTC)

Not the way it's defined here. Thelema is a revealed religion, which often (but not always) is contrasted with paganism. Ffranc (talk) 09:34, 17 August 2022 (UTC)
There's no one authority what paganism is; the only standard (OED, MW, and maybe definitive ones in mainly-English-speaking countries and Italy) dictionary (one-word simplification) definitions are 'country-dweller', 'non-Abrahamic' so almost all philosophies/religions are pagan: if Thelema is non-Abrahamic it fits some such article (things like El & Yahwism, and Christo-paganism, Universal Sufism and similar West Asian hybrid religions are other issues in which definition fits for adherents but not others). If I recall correctly, Thelema used/inverted Abrahamic material as anti-Abrahamism, which moreso falls under 'non-Abrahamic' except (by using the material, like Satanism/Luciferianism which fall under same definition but many pagans say aren't pagan) that's about as problematic as Abrahamism to pagans who'd rather have nothing to do with it--dchmelik☀️🦉🐝🐍(talk|contrib) 10:06, 17 August 2022 (UTC)
This is about neopaganism/modern paganism though, so what matters here is what distinguishes those movements. The origin of the word pagan is a separate issue. (The common theories created by Andrea Alciato ("civilian", opposite of miles Christi) and Caesar Baronius ("country-dweller") may be applicable to some texts but have chronological problems. There is a good summary of the confused academic discourse in Elogio del politeismo by Maurizio Bettini.) The idea of paganism as non-Abrahamism is itself modern, and modern paganism has never operated on that premise. Ffranc (talk) 11:40, 17 August 2022 (UTC)
According to current first sentence of paganism, 'non-Abrahamic' meaning dates to fourth century CE--not modern at all!--dchmelik☀️🦉🐝🐍(talk|contrib)
The concept Abrahamic was created in the 1700s and was a product of particular ecumenical trends within Christianity at that time (The Oxford Handbook of the Abrahamic Religions). Historically, Jews, Christians and Muslims have sometimes referred to each others as pagan (and overlapping terms like gentile, mushrik and idolator). When they haven't, they have also classed other groups such as Manicheans as distinct from pagans. The people this article sets out to cover are defined also by what they affirm, not only by how other groups reject them. Ffranc (talk) 11:44, 18 February 2024 (UTC)

Requested move 24 March 2023

The following is a closed discussion of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on the talk page. Editors desiring to contest the closing decision should consider a move review after discussing it on the closer's talk page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

The result of the move request was: No consensus. While the proposed title "Neo-Paganism" is generally rejected, some editors favored "Neopaganism" as the alternative. However, others pointed out that any form of "neo(-)paganism" is often considered pejorative by the proponents and is thus avoided by scholars, and that argument has not been addressed. I don't find a sufficient consensus in this RM to move away from the long-standing title. No such user (talk) 11:19, 3 April 2023 (UTC)

Modern paganism → Neo-PaganismNeo-Paganism – Per WP:COMMONNAME. Based on the Google Ngrams, "Neo-Paganism" is the most common term for this topic. Britannica also titles their article on this topic as Neo-Paganism. Rreagan007 (talk) 22:34, 24 March 2023 (UTC)

Confirmed by the material quoted below, it also appears that some practitioners would find the term Neo-Paganism insulting/pejorative, as the term seems to imply they are participating in a new fashion trend rather than following an ancient tradition. It seems like a term that might be used more by non-adherents than by adherents. I think it's generally best not to use terms for a religious phenomenon that its adherents might find insulting. —⁠ ⁠BarrelProof (talk) 16:53, 25 March 2023 (UTC)
  • Oppose Neo-paganism is not identical with paganism in the modern era. Laurel Lodged (talk) 10:49, 25 March 2023 (UTC)
    But which of those two topics is this article primarily discussing? – •Raven  .talk 04:35, 3 April 2023 (UTC)
  • I'm more-or-less neutral on the question, but I don't think Google Ngrams is a useful way of assessing this. For one thing, sources that use the term "modern paganism" will often add "also called neo-paganism", while those that prefer "neo-paganism" don't mention the alternative names, so that skews the results. Secondly, we should only be considering which term is used more often in scholarly contexts, whereas the raw Google results are going to include a lot of "Witchcraft for Beginners"-type books. The best way to assess the scholarly consensus is to find sources that tell us what it is.
    The article section #Reappropriation of "paganism" cites three sources that bear upon this question; since they aren't freely available, I'll provide quotes from each:
More information Quotes from article sources ...
Close
So as of 2015, there appears to have been no general consensus. More recent sources would be helpful. The only other useful source I found with an online search was from Doyle White in 2016 ("Theoretical, Terminological, and Taxonomic Trouble in the Academic Study of Contemporary Paganism: A Case for Reform", The Pomegranate 18(1), doi:10.1558/pome.v18i1.28457): [In the academic field of Pagan studies] there has been a general preference for the terms "modern/contemporary Paganism" over "Neopaganism" ... However, certain academic authors continue to use "Neopaganism".
This work was cited in 2020 by Pavel Horak ("Who Is, and Who Is Not a Pagan? Struggles in Defining Contemporary Paganism: A Response to Ethan Doyle White", The Pomegranate 22(2), doi:10.1558/pome.39673), who doesn't indicate that the situation has changed in the intervening years: Ethan Doyle White summarized the various attempts in defining contemporary Paganism thus: to put it generally, scholars prefer the usage of the term "contemporary Paganism" over "Neo-Paganism" to emphasize and stress the similarities of contemporary and ancient Paganism.
These two sources would seem to indicate that "modern" or "contemporary pagan" is preferred, but as I say, additional sources would be helpful to confirm this. Sojourner in the earth (talk) 13:07, 25 March 2023 (UTC)
See the start of your own first cite/quote: "The revived Paganism of modern times has sometimes been referred to as Neopaganism or Neo-paganism...." [boldface added] — the significant modifier is "revived"; that doesn't cover religions which never needed to be "revived" because they never "died" but remain continuously held/practiced since their origins. This article primarily discusses the "revived" or "neo-" pagan faiths, only glancingly touching on continuous older faiths like Hinduism (either comparing their population numbers, referring to a Hindu who reached out to neo-pagans and other pagan faiths, or to a "neo-Hinduism" — ironically, that term redirects to "neo-Vedanta", despite the fact noted there that the coiner of "neo-Hinduism" made a clear distinction between it and "neo-Vedanta"!) It would have to be a much longer and broader article to actually merit the title "modern paganism". – •Raven  .talk 04:56, 3 April 2023 (UTC)
  • Oppose as stated Support alternative Neopaganism. Per the n-gram evidence here neo[-]paganism is substantially more WP:COMMONNAME than either modern or contemporary paganism. Neopaganism and neo-paganism are minor variations of the same term and should be treated together when comparing against the other terms. Comparing the hyphenated and unhyphenated terms, there is no clear distinction to be made from the ngram evidence (see also with increased smoothing). However, looking at usage in related Wiki article titles for neo-pagan and neopagan, the unhyphenated form does appear to be more common in article titles. Per WP:CONSISTENTCY, a strong case can be made to prefer the unhyphenated term. It should be noted, that the ngram evidence does not show that neopaganism is consistently capped in sources - per MOS:CAPS. This does not affect the capitalisation for the article title that uses sentence case but it does affect capitalisation in prose ie - use lowercase). In the case of the hyphenated term, we would not capitalise pagan per MOS:HYPHENCAPS and MOS:ISMCAPS. Paganism is not normally capped per MOS:CAPS and the ngram evidence. There is no exception to be made to the guidance. I also note that the ngram evidence provided by the OP here omitted the search term neo-paganism (all lowercase). This ngram show all of the capitalisation variations. None of the capitalised varients reach the level of consistent usage (per MOS:CAPS) that we would use (prefer) any of the capitalised forms over the uncapitalised form (neo-paganism) in article prose. This also makes it quite clear (per WP:NCCAPS and MOS:CAPS) that Neo-Paganism has no place as an article title. Cinderella157 (talk) 02:47, 26 March 2023 (UTC)
  • Oppose as proposed, per MOS:ISMCAPS, WP:NCCAPS, etc. Alternatives neo-paganism or neopaganism are fine. I lean toward the former because n-grams show it to be more common in source material . I see above a WP:CONSISTENT argument to use Neopaganism because more WP articles use that spelling, but WP is not a source for itself (WP:CIRCULAR), so really we should be moving the on-site spelling to "neo-paganism" to agree with actual sources. As for the other question, n-grams show that neo[-]paganism dwarfs both modern paganism and contemporary paganism in actual usage . — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  06:53, 27 March 2023 (UTC)
    Hi SMcCandlish, might you comment on usage in prose for neo[-]paganism please. Cinderella157 (talk) 00:00, 28 March 2023 (UTC)
    Not sure what you're looking for that's not clear from the n-grams. The two I linked both show that "neo-paganism" (lowercase, with hyphen) is the most common term, though "Neopaganism" (capital N, no hyphen) had its day in the early 2000s (but that probably also reflects a lot of usage capitalized in titles/headings not in running prose). PS: The second n-gram suggests that 'scholars prefer the usage of the term "contemporary Paganism" over "Neo-Paganism"' simply isn't a true assertion. So do these Google Scholar results, rather undeniably: , though they show a scholarly preference for neopaganism over neo-paganism, which contradicts the more general (journalism-influenced) n-gram results. PPS: Looking through the results of those GS searches shows clearly that the terms are not consistently capitalized (in any way) in independent-source research except in title-case titles/headings. Some capitalization does appear, but it's in the minority. I still lean toward neo-paganism as overall the most common spelling, and it is also semantically clearer (not everyone is an expert in Latinate prefixes).  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  01:58, 28 March 2023 (UTC)
    I am preempting the question of how neo[-]paganism if moved to one of these titles should be capitalised in prose, ie not at the start of a sentence. Based on the evidence and prevailing P&G, would we capitalise these terms in prose in the article? Regards, Cinderella157 (talk) 07:54, 28 March 2023 (UTC) Add ping SMcCandlish. Cinderella157 (talk) 12:02, 31 March 2023 (UTC)
    Tim/Otter/Oberon [G']Zell of the Church of All Worlds has repeatedly claimed to have coined the term "Pagan" as a modern religious category. (Per Margot Adler's Drawing Down the Moon, he was NOT the first to do so.) Zell and his church capitalize it; many others do not, or prefer neo-pagan as distinct from paleo-, meso-, or civilo-pagan (each prefix indicating a time or setting of origin). Given that a sentence beginning with that word (e.g. "Pagans are..." or "Paganism is...") is capitalized no matter whether it would be lowercased elsewhere in a sentence, the opportunities for confusing ambiguity abound. In my opinion, [neo-]pagan[ism] as a non-proper noun should not be capitalized mid-sentence. That said, over 21 years ago the FAQ file for the moderated Usenet group soc.religion.paganism offered an exception: "5a) What is Paganism? How is it different from paganism? / Paganism (with a capital "P") is one strand of neopaganism which strives to allow each person to draw from whatever religious and cultural traditions are meaningful for the individual. The practices of Paganism derive from those of Wicca, but are not identical with those of Wicca. Some people view Paganism as a non-initiatory form of Wicca, or Wicca as an initiatory form of Paganism." (See also question 6, about types of [lowercase-p] paganism.) – •Raven  .talk 05:46, 3 April 2023 (UTC)
  • Oppose per MOS:HYPHENCAPS and MOS:ISMCAPS. However, I would support a move to either neo-paganism or neopaganism as those two titles are preferable to the article's current title, modern paganism. – Treetoes023 (talk) 21:51, 27 March 2023 (UTC)
  • Oppose - as stated by @BarrelProof, the term "neopaganism" be it capitalised in places or not is often seen as derogatory by those it describes, with "modern paganism" (capitalised in places or not) preferred by adherents of the religions, see quote below

The previously cited distinction between the terms Pagan and Neopagan (or Neo-pagan) is still more controversial. Many modern Pagans reject the term Neopagan... The title of the current volume as well as several of the chapters here avoid the term Neopaganism at the explicit request of modern Pagans to not be classified as "Neo," which they see as derogatory and unnecessary.

Modern Paganism in World Cultures: Comparative Perspectives page 9
Modern paganism makes a clear distinction between this topic and ancient paganism and is used by scholars, making it, to me, a good title. The book goes on to explain that Neopaganism is also used by a number of scholars and that the debate is ongoing - I don't wish to pretend it is not or that it is clear cut but I think we should er on the side which isn't seen as pejorative by adherents. Ingwina (talk) 07:35, 28 March 2023 (UTC)
> "Many modern Pagans reject the term Neopagan..." — Well, many "modern pagans" (Hindus, Buddhists, Taoists, Confucians, Shintoists, current traditionalists among Native Americans / Australian Bushmen / etc.) are in fact NOT neo-pagan but rather civilo-pagan or meso-pagan or paleo-pagan. Which group(s) does this article primarily discuss? – •Raven  .talk 05:07, 3 April 2023 (UTC)
  • Oppose any change per Ingwina, and per my comment above about ngrams not being a useful way of settling this question. Sojourner in the earth (talk) 12:14, 31 March 2023 (UTC)
  • Support (without capitalization) due to WP:PRECISION, since the actual topic clearly is covered by the term "neo-paganism", but not so clearly the term "modern paganism" — which seems also to cover other categories of paganism surviving in the modern era, like paleo-paganism (the indigenous faith-traditions of Australian Bushmen, etc.), meso-paganism (not formed in, but affected by, civilization; arguably including many Native American tribal religions), and civilo-paganism (e.g. Hinduism, Buddhism, Taoism, Confucianism, Shinto). Unless these all are to be discussed in this article, the title should be (as Confucius himself would say) "rectified". – •Raven  .talk 04:31, 3 April 2023 (UTC)
    Do modern-day scholars actually apply the label "pagan" to Hindus and Australian Bushmen? The last paragraph of our "Definition" section would suggest not. Sojourner in the earth (talk) 06:00, 3 April 2023 (UTC)
    Then how dare we even call them "Hindus", when (1) that was not their own name for themselves, and (2) it was originally applied to them with the meaning "pagan" (of India)?
    • Elst, Koenraad (2001-11-02). "2. Hindus as 'Indian Pagans'". Who is a Hindu? Hindu Revivalist Views of Animism, Buddhism, Sikhism and Other Offshoots of Hinduism. New Delhi: Voice of India. In Hindu scriptures, the word 'Hindu' is not to be found. Yet, long before Western scholars sat down to invent definitions of 'Hindu', the term already carried a definite meaning. The normal procedure ought to be, to listen to this original version first. It was brought into India by the Islamic invaders, and meant: 'Indian Pagan'. ... / The Muslim invaders called the Pagans of India sometimes 'Kafirs', unbelievers in general, i.e. the same religious designation which was used for the polytheists of Arabia; but often they called them 'Hindus', inhabitants of Hindustan, i.e. an ethnic-geographical designation. Thereby, they gave a fixed religious content to this geographical term: a Hindu is any Indian who is not a Jew, Christian, Muslim or Zoroastrian. In other words: any Indian 'Pagan', i.e. one who is not a believer in the Abrahamic religions nor an Iranian Pagan, is a Hindu. In its definition as 'Indian Paganism', Hinduism includes the whole range from animal worship to Upanishadic monist philosophy, and from Shaktic blood sacrifice to Jain extreme non-violence. / The term Hindu was used for all Indians who were unbelievers or idol-worshippers, including Buddhists, Jains, 'animists' and later the Sikhs, but in contradistinction to Indian Christians (ahl-i Nasâra or Isâî ), Jews (ahl-î-Yahûd or banû Isrâîl ), Mazdeans (ahl-i Majûs or âtish-parast ) and of course Muslims themselves. This way, at least by the time of Albiruni (early 11th century), the word Hindu had a distinct religio-geographical meaning: a Hindu is an Indian who is not a Muslim, Jew, Christian or Zoroastrian. ... / All Indians who were not Parsis, Jews, Christians or Muslims, were automatically Hindus. So, the original definition of Hindu is: an Indian Pagan. Since the earliest use of the term Hindu in India, a clear definition has been given with it, and of every community it can easily be decided whether it fits that definition or not. It does not matter if you do not like the name-tag: if you fit the definition, you fall within the Hindu category. The Hindus have not chosen to be called Hindus: others have conceived the term and its definition, and Hindus simply found themselves carrying this label and gradually accepted it.
    You can pick up much of this from
    • Lorenzen, David N. (October 1999). "Who Invented Hinduism?". Comparative Studies in Society and History. 31 (4): 630–659. JSTOR 179424. [... though his point is chiefly to debunk the idea that the 19th-century English "invented" Hinduism!] – •Raven  .talk 07:03, 3 April 2023 (UTC)
The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

majority category since 2010s (and a couple comments about odd direction of articles)

Significant disparities exist between 'modern paganism', 'paganism', 'major religious groups' & etc. articles, with more general/historical articles describing the second definition of 'pagan/heathen' (after 'country-dweller' like on the heath) being when Roman empire Christians called everyone else (except Jews) 'pagan [non-Abrahamic]', including various pagan philosophers (pantheists, atomists, etc.) and atheists who didn't believe in their God (so also such agnostics), and that this definition continued through modern age of Christian European worldwide empires, and continues (among stricter Abrahamics) to current-day.

 From enlightenment era to 2010s Abrahamism was decreasing, and if one investigates statistics, in mid-to-late 2010s was only roughly 45% (44% or 46%... forgot which)... this figure was arrived at from statistics (probably still on older Wikipedia, and Pew Research Forum, etc.) the Islamic world has overall/average 25% of their population atheists (I can possibly recheck exactly where I found this, but I don't edit this article)... normally still pretending to practice Islam (otherwise in Islamic theocracies (Islamocracies) would be shunned, jailed or executed) so apparently for that reason are still counted as Muslim in statistics, but really aren't... so subtracting 25% from Islamic percentage one arrives that only about 45% the world is Abrahamic. Since 2010s it's been increasing again (counting children born/indoctrinated into religion, which significant number later leave) but last I checked is still not over 48%. Going by original religious (exclusion) definition, paganism since at least mid-2010s is the largest category of (dis)beliefs/(ir)religions/philosophies in the world. With cases like Denmark that 99% citizens are in the state Christian church (registered on birth) but only something from 8% to about 1/4 consider religion important, which it's similar (without registration) in many 'Christian' countries, the shift may have actually been sometime 1800s to perhaps 1960s rise of 'New Age', and percentages (considering presumably very large number of agnostics/atheists who were told they were Christian but never really went along with that, or partly or fully stopped... likely even larger percentage wrongly counted 'Christian' in the West than atheist in the Islamic world) might be significantly different, but as the 'major religious groups' article says, it's hard to tell and there isn't agreement how to measure.

To me paganism always included not just historical European philosophies/religions but all non-Abrahamism, including secularism (agnosticism/atheism, pantheism) and all other worldwide religions. I didn't see any source in 'modern paganism' article why it's contradicting the 'paganism' one with this new term 'secular paganism' supposedly has to do with other pagan (than agnostics'/atheists' own) 'principles/virtues'--never heard of any such thing until reading that today, and no seculars/agnostics/atheists identifying with the term 'pagan/heathen' ever told me that--makes no sense to me; they've always been pagan/heathen, and any their irreligious principles/virtues are as relevant to be in the category. It's not necessarily so important pagan/heathen scholars don't apply the term worldwide, because that's simply how the term has been applied 1600+ years to this day (as an exclusion term) even if not to large extent in some areas of the world (but generally some extent). Of course, on one hand, some Hindus (even when not mixing in Christianity) don't like the term 'pagan/heathen', and even some Greek and Slavic polytheists don't like the Latin/Roman/English term, when that term more recognizably applies in the term's languages... on the other hand, other Greek and Slavic polytheists and Dharma practitioners (and people in other tribal and ancient middle to far Eastern religions/philosophies) prefer to identify with the term. They and agnostics/atheists who identify with the term consider it relevant as a group of (dis)beliefs/(ir)religions alernative to the formerly majority Abrahamism that had near-worldwide genocidal militarist imperialism with lasting effects to this day such as places that still have witch-hunts (Saudi Arabia, some Christian parts of Africa, etc.) and/or punish/execute people for paganism (in this case not just polytheism/witchcraft but also secularism/agnosticism/atheism). I've talked to many agnostics/atheists, Dharma practitioners, other worldwide philosophy/religion practitioners who identify with the term 'pagan/heathen' on this basis as well as seeing religious pagans/heathens trying to co-opt the term to exclude those people and to de-emphasize philosophy. Of course, one would want to find academic sources the original term (or equivalent) is still used not just among adherents of European pagan religions, but philosophy, other religions, and atheism/agnosticism... I just don't see a reliable source that the term became more limited rather than that being an attempted co-option.

There are undue modern focuses on religion and nature/Gaea, when for example pagan ancient/Classical Greek/Roman/Hellenistic Philosophy (as well as Dharma/etc.) is a vast subject that continues to modern philosophy, and for example an ancient Athenian who worshipped Goddess Athena rather than Gaea might not have had a significant nature focus, nor worshippers of Goddess Roma (of Rome) nor worshippers of some of the Hindu gods associated with cities, etc.... even since ancient times, the urban was equally as important as the rural/naturalist/country-dwelling in pagan/heathen polytheism.--dchmelik☀️🦉🐝🐍(talk|contrib) 14:55, 17 February 2024 (UTC)

Do you have any suggestions for how the article can be improved? It's very true that approaches, conceptions and terminology vary. The article should ideally make this clear and cover the whole field in a balanced way. Which is easier said than done. Ffranc (talk) 11:52, 18 February 2024 (UTC)
I think it should stick to the two simplest/widest definitions or at least simplest/widest religious ('non-Abrahamic') definition, but as some still consider 'pagan' an insult, this update may not happen... this article's original name was 'neopaganism' which is debatable could be specific (term from higher academic scholar of Eurocentric but also worldwide pagansim) but 'modern paganism' isn't actually specific: an informal/worldwide term. Apparently I misremembered what I read, and the roughly 25% figure is USA apostates (similar for Christianity & Islam) which I'll post some citations/references from article I read... in most Islamic world apostatsy might be single-digits except in Iran 60% don't practice religion (except when forced) and 72% want secular state, but as Iran was made progressive by mid-1900s USSR influence, it's probably outlier... more research needed on Christianity.
  • Besheer Mohamed and Elizabeth Podrebarac Sciupac, “The Share of Americans Who Leave Islam Is Offset by Those Who Become Muslim,” Pew Research Center, January 26, 2018, http://www.pewresearch.org
  • Pooyan Tamimi Arab and Ammar Maleki, “Iran’s Secular Shift: New Survey Reveals Huge Changes in Religious Beliefs,” The Conversation, September 10, 2020, http://theconversation .com/.
  • Hasan Suroor, “Why Are Young Muslims Leaving Islam?,” The Telegraph Online, September 11, 2019, http://www.telegraphindia.com/.
  • Kate Hodal, “Arab World Turns Its Back on Religion—and Its Ire on the US,” The Guardian, June 24, 2019, http://www.theguardian.com/.
  • Ahmed Benchemsi, “Invisible Atheists: The Spread of Disbelief in the Arab World,” The New Republic, April 23, 2015, http://newrepublic.com/. --dchmelik☀️🦉🐝🐍(talk|contrib) 01:57, 22 April 2024 (UTC)

Paganism is a religion, and its name should be capitalized

I practice the religion of Paganism. The only reason why the word has not been capitalized until recently is because of academic and social bias which favors Abrahamic religions and other classes of major world religions. Other new religious movements, such as Mormonism, have always been capitalized. This discussion is not over. Sierkejd (talk) 23:14, 16 February 2025 (UTC)

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Political bias

The section on paganism and it's political association is clearly biased toward the far-left, like everything else on wikipedia. ~2025-33509-63 (talk) 04:32, 14 November 2025 (UTC)

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