This summer, I have spent more time doing pagan things – attending festivals and events, teaching and attending workshops, crafting and performing rituals – than at any other point in my life. During these experiences, I have come to believe that one of the largest issues facing paganism today is one of definition: Who are the pagans, exactly? Various answers to this question have been put forward over the years, many of which conflict and confuse, and none of which are adequate in my opinion. To my mind, much of the problem is that the definitions available to us now are descriptive but not circumscriptive. In other words, many proposed definitions do indeed describe features of the pagan zeitgeist(s), but do not succeed at instructively differentiating pagans from other groups whose lives might be described in similar ways.

It is for this reason that I find definitions of paganism that hinge upon pagans’ practice of “magic” unsatisfying, since folks the world over have been labeled as magic-doers, both pagan and non-pagan alike. It might be interesting to ask ourselves what it is about modern pagans that drives us to describe ourselves as magic-doers (a break with the generally negative connotation of the word “magic”), but that is a separate issue that, as of yet, I feel we are ill-equipped to answer.

Let me be clear that in my own personal and academic attempts to state what defines paganism I am not trying to define some ahistorical  type of religious lifestyle or worldview. For example, I am not taking up the (in my opinion mildly appropriative) methodology of pagan scholar Michael York in his work Pagan Theology, in which he treats paganism as “a general form of religious behavior” that is present the world over (Pagan Theology, viii). On the contrary, I am trying to define to whatever extent possible that cluster of practices and beliefs that is modern, generally English-speaking, and, from what I can tell, internally cohesive because of a general acceptance of Wiccanate liturgical forms as an appropriate ecumenicism. I am particularly interested in American paganism.

What has struck me recently is the rise of a new trend in defining paganism. That trend is to define as “Pagan” any and all polytheistic religious practices (á la York’s methodology) or to define modern American paganism as decidedly polytheistic.  Pagan religious practice is that which is polytheist, so the logic seems to go, as opposed to non-pagan religions, which are monotheist. To me, “polytheistic” seems to be the newest in a string of buzz-words used uncritically in attempts at definition, a string that includes “non-Abrahamic” and “pre-Christian.”

“Earth-centered,” seems to me to have been the latest of these buzz-word phrases. Surely it is not inaccurate to remark that pagan communities have been deeply effected by environmentalist movements; but does that make all of our theologies “Earth-centered”? What do pagans mean by “Earth-centered”, one might ask, and to this question one would surely receive the answer that it depends on whom you’re asking, since pagans mean a lot of different things when they describe themselves in this way. As with my rejection of definitions that hinge upon pagans as “magical,” I find this definition unsatisfying because it does not distinguish “Earth-centered” pagans from “Earth-centered” non-pagans. Sallie McFague, for example, is an example of a Christian theologian who can by some definitions be called “Earth-centered”: Her works include Models of God: Theology for an Ecological, Nuclear Age; The Body of God: An Ecological Theology; and Life Abundant: Rethinking Theology and Economy for a Planet in Peril.

It is also important to note that not all pagans identify as “Earth-centered” at all, while others engage in practices or adhere to philosophies that are inherently or implicitly otherworldly (i.e., technically “transcendentalist”) in outlook. Pagan Kabbalists fit this description, in my opinion, since the goal of their enterprise is to reach union with an otherwise unknowable, transcendent divine presence. The logic behind many ceremonial magic and alchemical practices, which come from a similar tradition, are often quite otherworldly in orientation – check out this modern image [below] that floats around theurgic circles for an iconographic example of what I mean: The depicted figure is literally crawling toward a world outside the Earthly realm.

Is this Earth-centered?

For similar reasons, I find attempts to define paganism in terms of polytheism to be less than adequate. First of all (pace York), there are non-pagan polytheists, and therefore to leave the definition at that does not prove useful. We must strive a bit further.

[Read more...]