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Norse religious worship is the traditional religious rituals practiced by Norse pagans in Scandinavia in pre-Christian times. Norse religion was a folk religion (as opposed to an organized religion), and its main purpose was the survival and regeneration of society.
Since Hellenic culture was the dominant pagan culture in the Roman east, they referred to pagans as Hellenes. Christianity inherited Jewish terminology for non-Jews and adapted it to refer to non-Christians with whom they were in contact. This usage is recorded in the New Testament.
The right half of the front panel of the 7th-century Franks Casket, depicting the Anglo-Saxon (and wider Germanic) legend of Wayland the Smith. Anglo-Saxon paganism, sometimes termed Anglo-Saxon heathenism, Anglo-Saxon pre-Christian religion, Anglo-Saxon traditional religion, or Anglo-Saxon polytheism refers to the religious beliefs and practices followed by the Anglo-Saxons between the 5th ...
These writers often presented paganism as being based on deceit or delusion; [99] some stated that the Old Norse gods had been humans falsely euhemerised as deities. [100] Old Norse mythological stories survived in oral culture for at least two centuries, being recorded in the 13th century. [101]
Pagan ritual can take place in both a public and private setting. [70] Contemporary pagan ritual is typically geared towards "facilitating altered states of awareness or shifting mind-sets". [79] To induce such altered states of consciousness, pagans use such elements as drumming, visualization, chanting, singing, dancing, and meditation. [79]
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 ...
A priest of Svantevit depicted on a stone from Arkona, now in the church of Altenkirchen, Rügen.. Slavic paganism, Slavic mythology, or Slavic religion is the religious beliefs, myths, and ritual practices of the Slavs before Christianisation, which occurred at various stages between the 8th and the 13th century.
A female ritual specialist named Gambara appears in Paul the Deacon (8th century). [316] A gap in the historical record occurs until the North Germanic record began over a millennium later, when the Old Norse sagas frequently mention female ritual specialists among the North Germanic peoples, both in the form of priestesses and diviners. [317]