“And yet had not a pagan the right to be a pagan?”

Alex Haley

What is Neo-Paganism

Neo-Paganism, is an umbrella term for new religious movements influenced by or derived from the various historical pagan beliefs of pre-modern peoples. Although they share similarities, contemporary Pagan religious movements are diverse, and do not share a single set of beliefs, practices, or texts.

Adherents claim to be followers of pre-Christian, traditional folk practices, but they have actually grown out of 19th century Theosophical groups and follow a spirituality that is entirely modern, while claiming prehistoric beliefs, or else they attempt to revive indigenous, ethnic religions of which they are often not a part. They are more likely to center their "rituals" more on interpretations of Arthurian legend and Eastern mysticism than on the traditions of the local wise women and cunning folk of their native land.

These movements attempt to represent a close relationship with the practices of ritual magick and traditional witchcraft, but Neo-Paganism differs from them, however, in mimicing authentic pantheons and rituals of ancient cultures, though often in deliberately eclectic and reconstructionist ways, Neo-Pagans center their dramatic and colourful rituals around the changes of the seasons and the personification of nature as full of divine life, as well as the holy days and motifs of the religions by which their own groups are inspired.

Some Neo-Pagan groups that arose in Europe before World War II were associated with extreme nationalism, as the members of the Vril Society and the Asatru were with the Aryan Nazi movement, but contemporary Neo-Paganism is for the most part a product of the 1960s counter-culture New Age movement and influenced by the works of the psychiatrist Carl Jung and environmentalist Rachel Carson. Today's Neo-Pagans are more interested in archetypal psychology and ecological concerns than in nationalism.

“When a person assumes that his or her revelation is the only true one,
it only says that this person has had very few religious revelations
and hasn't realized how many there are.”

Margot Adler: Drawing Down the Moon

Neo-Paganism
Historical Inspiration & Contemporary Creativity

https://neo-paganism.org/neo-paganism-and-the-new-age/

Neo-Pagans are often lumped together with the New Age move­ment (such as in national surveys). While the two movements do overlap somewhat, they are distinguishable. Neo-Pagans are typi­cally critical of the New Age movement for its emphasis upon light, mind, spirit, and transcendence, to the detriment of darkness, body, matter, and immanence. Neo-Pagans reject the New Age quest for perfection and mastery, and seek rather an engagement with ambiguity and finitude.

Many New Agers believe there is a cosmic struggle between the forces of Light and Darkness, and human evolution depends on humanity thinking positively, embracing the “light” and spirit, and abandoning the darkness and earth. Neo-Paganism, on the other hand, rejects this gnostic denigration of matter and darkness, and celebrates the world as it is. New Agers seek to escape into an eternal existence of light. For Neo-Pagans, however, darkness is necessary. Life is born in the dark womb. Seeds germinate in the dark soil. It is in the dark night that we dream. And it is the Dark Goddess who is our origi­nal Mother. Neo-Pagans celebrate the beauty of nature and do not flinch from the fact that it is “red in tooth and claw.” In the eyes of Neo-Pagans, the dark is seen, not as evil, but a neces­sary part of our natural world and our spiritual being.

How Neo-Paganism and the New Age movement are simi­lar:Both movements arose out of the Sixties Counterculture movement.

• Both draw upon the 19th century Romantic Movement.
• Both reject traditional Abrahamic religious practices.
• Both were strongly influenced by Jungian psychological the­ory.
• Both are concerned with experiencing a regeneration or re­newal of life.

How Neo-Paganism and the New Age movement are different:

• Neo-Pagans are more overtly religious than New Agers.
• New Agers tend to eschew religious ritual, while Neo-Pa­gans embrace it.
• Neo-Pagans emphasize links with ancient pagan reli­gions, ritual celebration of the cycles in nature, and polythe­istic conceptions of divinity, while New Agers do none of this.
• Neo-Pagans give the Goddess a central role in their concep­tions of divinity, whereas the many New Agers are more patriarchal.
• New Agers tend to dismiss this world as illusory, adopt­ing a transcendental attitude, whereas Neo-Pagans em­brace the New Agers tend to eschew psycho-spiritual darkness for light, whereas Neo-Pagans embrace darkness as part of the natu­ral cycle.
• New Agers place greater emphasis on union with the ulti­mate divinity than do Neo-Pagans.
• New Agers conceptualize personal growth more in terms of ascent or transcendence, whereas Neo-Pagans con­ceptualize it as cyclical, involving a descent into the dark unconscious, followed by a return.
• Although both Neo-Pagans and New Agers encourage a journey to the inner self, Neo-Pagans also encourage a jour­ney outside the self to commune with the Other, in­cluding other people and the natural world.
• Neo-Pagans place greater emphasis on one’s responsibil­ity to other beings, human and non-human, and the envi­ronment, than do New Agers.

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“There is something pagan in me that I cannot shake off.
In short, I deny nothing, but doubt everything.”

Lord Byron

Additional Links

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Neo-Pagan (New Age) Movements

Paganism and Witchcraft

Pagan Festivals

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Pagans in the Classroom

 Pagans in the Workplace

Pagans in the Military