Some suggested reading
Books to Read Instead of Triumph of the Moon
1. Chronicle of the Last Pagans by Pierre Chuvin
Pagans didn't go down without a fight.
2. The Morality of Happiness by Julia Annas
Ethics and virtue before Christianity.
3. Religions of the Hellenistic Roman Age by Antonia Tripolitis
A broad and accessible overview of the religions of the Roman Empire - including Christianity and Judaism. There is an especially good treatment of the "Hellenizing" influences on Judaism.
4. Against the Christians by Thomas Taylor
The final volume of the Prometheus Trust's monumental collected works of the British Pagan Platonist, Thomas Taylor.
5. Christianity and Paganism in the Fourth to Eighth Centuries by Ramsay MacMullen
MacMullen tells the story of how Christianity went about systematically persecuting all religious competitors.
6. What is Ancient Philosophy? by Pierre Hadot
Ancient Philosophy was a coherent spiritual tradition that played a critical role within the broader tradition of Paganism - read all about it.
7. How the Idea of Religious Tolerance Came to the West by Perez Zagorin
Sometimes a title says it all.
8. There is no Crime for Those Who Have Christ by Michael Gaddis
Sometimes a title really does say it all!
9. Hekate Soteira by Sarah Iles Johnston
The role of the Goddess Hekate in Late Antique Platonism - especially Theurgy. A lot of interesting material on the Chaldean Oracles.
10. Giordano Bruno and the Hermetic Tradition by Frances Yates
A hefty tome that provides a guided tour of the attempts to revive Platonism during the Renaissance.
11. The Cult of Pan in Ancient Greece by Philippe Bourgead Pan was a major Deity in Athens and throughout the Greek world. This is one of the few books by a modern scholar devoted to the cult of Pan - a must read!
12. Hellenic Religion and Christianization by Frank R. Trombley
Possibly the single most important modern scholarly work on the suppression of Paganism by the Christians.
13. The Archeology of Religious Hatred by Eberhard Sauer
Another important recent work by a modern scholar on the role of violence in the "rise" of Christianity.
14. The Christians As The Romans Saw Them by Robert Louis Wilken
Written by a Christian, this book does an excellent job of presenting an overview of the classical Pagan critique of Christianity.
15. Hellenism in Late Antiquity by G.W. Bowersock
One of the best single resources available in the English language on Hellenistic Paganism in "the East" during Late Antiquity.
New Religions versus Old Religions
When Christianity first came along Paganism was already at least thousands of years old - as old as the civilizations of Egypt, Sumer and Harappa. But the ancient Pagans believed that their religions were much older than even that. Archeological evidence suggests that some kind of Pagan/Shamanistic religion had indeed existed for tens of thousands of years prior to the first written sacred texts.
One of the first arguments raised against Christianity by Pagans was that it was a completely new religion. This was considered a sufficiently devastating argument that no other argument was really necessary. Why was that?
Well, think about it. Pagans actually believed that their Gods were real, and that their religions had been taught to humanity by these Gods in the far distant past and that they had been carefully preserved and handed down generation after generation.
But Pagans also believed that the "lines of communication" between humans and Gods had remained open. Priests, Prophets and other holy men and women were considered capable of hearing and possibly even seeing the Gods. And Divine inspiration was also thought to be the source of poetry, music and the other arts. And Reason was also believed to be a gift of the Gods enabling humans to investigate and understand both our inner world and the outer Cosmos.
So what possible merit could there be in a new religion - one that claimed that the old religions were had all gotten it completely wrong. Had the Gods changed their minds? Or had the Gods waited for tens of thousands of years and then suddenly, and only quite recently, decided to finally reveal the Truth to humanity?
The idea that the Gods were capricious, or that they would conceal the Truth from humanity - such ideas were considered perverse and blasphemous by classical Pagans. But this is exactly what the Christians taught.
So it is quite ironic that some "Pagan historians" now come along and proclaim that Paganism is a "new" religious phenomenon - with its roots going only back to the 18th century!
Is modern Paganism a new religion or is it the Old Religion?
(And other questions in need of answers).
Group one: Questions for a noted historian.
Four questions inspired by Ronald Hutton's "Triumph of the Moon"
1. Were there any Pagans between the year 529 AD (when Justinian closed the Platonic Academy in Athens - essentially the last major Pagan public institution of Classical Paganism) and the year 1939 AD (the year Gerald Gardner claims to have been initiated)? If historical Paganism "stopped" - and/or if modern Paganism "started" - when and where did these events happen - and how much time elapsed between them?
1a. Allowing for the sake of argument that there is a "new" Paganism and an "old" one - in what way are they related to each other? Is there no relationship at all? Is there a close relationship? Is there at least as much of a relationship as there is between the "Christianity" of today and the actual teachings of Jesus? (see also question #10)
2. Are there examples of the worship of a Great Goddess outside of modern Paganism (for example: Hindu Saktism, the Buddhist Bodhisattva/Goddess Kwan Yin, and the ancient cult of Cybele/Magna Mater)? If so, what if any relationship do such examples have to modern Goddess worship?
3. Is there historical precedent for the worship of Pan as an major Deity? If so, what relationship does this have to modern worship of Pan? Here is some information about the Great God Pan.
4. In chapter two of his book Triumph of the Moon, Ronald Hutton insists that Helena Petrovna Blavatsky was secretly a Christian. How convincing is Hutton's evidence: a single sentence from a single letter to a Christian relative? Why is it important to Hutton that Blavatsky must have been a Christian? Why does Hutton believe so easily in secret Christians but simply chooses to ignore the possibility of clandestine Pagans? If we were to accept the obvious fact that Blavatsky was a Pagan - what does this do to the main thesis of Hutton's book - that modern Paganism only begins in Britain with Gerald Gardner?
Group two: Paganism as a "complete" religion
Many important aspects of Paganism are frequently ignored, such as philosophy, individual piety, or the Mystery Religions. In particular it is often erroneously assumed that Paganism was merely a "social" religion - and that it was limited to state-run "Temple-cults"
5. What role did the following play in classical/historical Paganism? What role have they played in Paganism's survival? What role do they play in modern Paganism?
a. social religious activities - including festivals, holidays, and also the building, maintainence and use of public places of worship
b. individual personal religious experiences: "having a personal relationship with the Divine."
c. secret, initiatory religious cults ("Mystery Religions")
d. individual and family piety - including belief in the Gods, private and family worship in the home, ritual observances and trying to live virtuously on the basis of religious teachings
e. mythology, sacred texts and exegesis
f. philosophy and scholarship - including mathematics, medical science and natural philosophy
g. divination, healing, theurgy, sympathetic magic, and related phenomena
h. art, music, dance, literature and architecture
Group three: Theoretical Issues
These questions deal with fundamental underlying assumptions that most modern day "historians of Paganism" have failed to deal with or even acknowledge.
6. Were there "universalizing" tendencies in historical Paganism? For example: Plutarch's Isis and Osiris, Porphyry's Religion from Oracles, Iamblichus' On the Mysteries, Julian's Against the Galileans. If so, what, if any, relationship does this have to modern Paganism?
7. What is a religion? Is Paganism possibly a "group of religions" rather than a single religion. Is Christianity possibly a "group of religions" as well? Are there different kinds of religions and/or groups of religions? If so, what kind is Paganism? Are historical Paganism and modern Paganism the same kind of religion (or group of religions)? Are there other contemporary religions that are the same "kind" as Paganism? Like, perhaps, Hinduism? Would anyone claim that Paganism and Christianity are the same kind of religion?
8. What is the relationship between Christianity and Paganism? In the time of the original Pagans what was the Christian attitude toward Paganism? What was the attitude of Paganism toward Christianity? Is there a continuous history of conflict between these two religions? If there was a conflict at one time, but no longer - when and where did it stop?
9. Was historical Paganism a distinctly European phenomenon? Is modern Paganism an inherently European phenomenon?
10. What does it mean for contemporary individuals or groups to claim a connection to some historically (or acheologically) attested religion that is thousands of years old? Do contemporary Christians have a legitimate claim to being the followers of Christ? Do contemporary Jews have a legitimate claim to being followers of the religion of Moses? What about Hindus, Buddhists, Zoroastrians, etc? Can one make meaningful conclusions about the legitimacy of modern Paganism's claim to ancientness without addressing how this same claim is made, and generally accepted, with respect to a great many other contemporary religions?
(All material on the Internet is copyrighted, whether or not you see a copyright symbol: ©)