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The Triumph of Christianity over Paganism, a painting by Gustave Doré (1899). Paganism is commonly used to refer to various religions that existed during Antiquity and the Middle Ages, such as the Greco-Roman religions of the Roman Empire, including the Roman imperial cult, the various mystery religions, religious philosophies such as Neoplatonism and Gnosticism, and more localized ethnic ...
Christo-Paganism is a set of beliefs held by some neopagans that encompasses Christian teachings. Christo-Pagans may identify as witches, [1] [2] druids, [3] [4] or animists. [5] Most, but not all, worship the Christian God. [1] Some Christo-Pagans may consider the Virgin Mary to be a goddess, or a form of the Goddess.
Ritual sacrifice was an integral part of ancient Greco-Roman religion [4] and was regarded as an indication of whether a person was pagan or Christian. [4] Paganism has broadly connoted the "religion of the peasantry". [1] [5] During and after the Middle Ages, the term paganism was applied to any non-Christian religion, and the term presumed a ...
[51] [52] The Latin church adopted aspects of Platonic thought and used the Latin names for months and weekdays that etymologically derived from Roman mythology. [53] [54] Early depiction of Eucharist celebration found in catacombs beneath Rome. Christian art in the catacombs beneath Rome rose out of a reinterpretation of Jewish and pagan ...
Church of All Worlds, formed 1962, formerly the largest of all the pagan movements, which centres on worship of the earth-mother goddess [5] Circle Sanctuary, based in Wisconsin; largest Neo-Pagan organization in the US; its newsletter, Circle Network News, has some 15,000 subscribers (as of 1992) [6] Council of Magickal Arts, Texas [citation ...
Pagan studies scholar Chas S. Clifton argued that the discipline had developed as a result of the increasing "academic acknowledgement" of contemporary Paganism's "movement into the public eye", referring to the emergence of pagan involvement with interfaith groups and the pagan use of archaeological monuments as "sacred sites", particularly in the United Kingdom. [7]
According to Gerald Gardner, who popularised Wicca in the twentieth century, the religion is a survival of a European witch-cult that was persecuted during the witch trials (sometimes called the Burning Times), and the strong element of secrecy that traditionally surrounds the religion was adopted as a reaction to that persecution.
The publications of studies into European folk customs and culture by scholars like Johann Gottfried Herder and Jacob Grimm resulted in a wider interest in these subjects and a growth in cultural self-consciousness. [94] At the time, it was commonly believed that almost all such folk customs were survivals from the pre-Christian period. [95]