by Autumn Barnett

Created on: October 30, 2008

It is the worshippers of the Greek gods who were pagans. One could say that the gods in both Roman and Greek mythology were projections of the pagan mind, representing internal and external archetypal forces. Through the personification of these forces, pagan people could worship Mother Nature while dealing with the challenges of human nature and experience. The pagan mind recognizes - consciously or unconsciously - that exterior circumstances are reflective of inner human conditions and vice versa.

Astrologer Caroline Casey recently shared in one of her lectures that worship in the ancient Mediterranean was much more collaborative than we are used to seeing and taking part in today. Pagans practiced a loose subservience to their gods and goddesses, but it was also part of their belief that the Divine needed and wanted to be invited in by acknowledgement of their existence and through ritual participation. This participation was sensuous and sensual. Ritual worship included music, dance, food, and oftentimes lovemaking. Pagan peoples, being so connected to the body of Mother Earth, were in touch with their own bodies and considered them sacred. Although they would not have used the word "sacred" because they did not intellectualize their spiritual experiences the way modern Western man does - it was simply the way they lived, oblivious to the fact that their beliefs were un-codified. The whole world was their church.

The word "pagan" comes from the Latin paganus or "country dweller". It is now an umbrella term used to identify earth-based and/or polytheistic religion and practice. From this spiritual perspective, all of nature - and therefore human nature and our impulses - is sacred, as is the relationship between human activity and the elements of our planet (Earth, Air, Fire and Water). This is the fundamental "heresy" proclaimed by the Christian Church and, it is argued, a philosophy that would have kept Western modern man from achieving its perceived dominant position over nature. Our current environmental crisis is perhaps the main reason we are seeing such growth and interest in religious and spiritual traditions that are essentially pagan. Even Christian evangelicals are going green.

Folk religions and the spiritual beliefs of indigenous cultures are pagan. The mystical traditions of the three main monotheistic religions - Christianity, Judaism and Islam - have elements of paganism and polytheism, even though the orthodoxy of these three religions is antithetical

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