Paganism - Contemporary Paganism

Contemporary Paganism

Contemporary Paganism, or Neopaganism, includes reconstructed religions such as the Cultus Deorum Romanorum, Hellenic polytheism, Slavic neopaganism (i.e. Slavianstvo, including Rodnovery), Celtic Reconstructionist Paganism, or Germanic religious reconstructionism, as well as modern eclectic traditions such as Discordianism, Wicca and its many offshoots.

Many of the "revivals", Wicca and Neo-druidism in particular, have their roots in 19th century Romanticism and retain noticeable elements of occultism or theosophy that were current then, setting them apart from historical rural (paganus) folk religion.

Neopaganism in the United States accounts for roughly a third of all contemporary Pagans worldwide, and for some 0.2% of US population, figuring as the sixth largest non-Christian denomination in the US, after Judaism (1.4%), Islam (0.6%), Buddhism (0.5%), Hinduism (0.3%) and Unitarian Universalism (0.3%).

In Iceland, the members of Ásatrúarfélagið account for 0.4% of the total population, which is just over a thousand people. In Lithuania, many people practice Romuva, a revived version of the pre-Christian religion of that country. Lithuania was among the last areas of Europe to be Christianized.

There are a number of Pagan authors who have examined the relation of the 20th-century movements of polytheistic revival with historical polytheism on one hand and contemporary traditions of indigenous folk religion on the other. Isaac Bonewits introduces a terminology to make this distinction,

• Paleopaganism: A retronym coined to contrast with "Neopaganism", "original polytheistic, nature-centered faiths", such as the pre-Hellenistic Greek and pre-imperial Roman religion, pre-Migration period Germanic paganism as described by Tacitus, or Celtic polytheism as described by Julius Caesar. Among extant "major religions", Bonewits would count as Paleopagan Hinduism as it stood prior to the Islamic invasions of India, Shintoism and Taoism.
• Mesopaganism: A group, which is, or has been, significantly influenced by monotheistic, dualistic, or nontheistic worldviews, but has been able to maintain an independence of religious practices. This group includes aboriginal Americans as well as Australian aborigines, Viking Age Norse paganism and New Age spirituality. Influences include: Freemasonry, Rosicrucianism, Theosophy, Spiritualism, and the many Afro-Diasporic faiths like Haitian Vodou, Santería and Espiritu religion. Isaac Bonewits includes British Traditional Wicca in this subdivision.
• Neopaganism: A movement by modern people to revive nature-worshipping, pre-Christian religions or other nature-based spiritual paths, frequently also incorporating contemporary liberal values at odds with ancient paganism. This definition may include groups such as Wicca, Neo-Druidism, Ásatrú, and Rodnovery.

Prudence Jones and Nigel Pennick in their A History of Pagan Europe (1995) classify "pagan religions" as characterized by the following traits:

• polytheism: Pagan religions recognise a plurality of divine beings, which may or may not be considered aspects of an underlying unity (the soft and hard polytheism distinction)
• "nature-based": Pagan religions have a concept of the divinity of Nature, which they view as a manifestation of the divine, not as the "fallen" creation found in Dualistic cosmology.
• "sacred feminine": Pagan religions recognize "the female divine principle", identified as "the Goddess" (as opposed to individual goddesses) besides or in place of the male divine principle as expressed in the Abrahamic God.

In modern times, "Heathen" and "Heathenry" are increasingly used to refer to those branches of Paganism inspired by the pre-Christian religions of the Germanic, Scandinavian and Anglo-Saxon peoples.