Paganism is a word which is derived from the Latin word called paganus, which means country dweller. Paganism or [pagan is a blanket term that is used to refer some various polytheistic, non abrahamic religious traditions. The pagan is ordinarily used in an ancient or historical context; refer to Greco Roman Polytheism as well as the polytheistic tradition of Europe before Christianization. In a broader way, it is extended to contemporary religions, which includes most of the eastern religions and the indigenous traditions of the central Asia, Africa, America and Australia, where non- abrahamic folk religion in general. Moreover fine definitions will not include any of the world religion and restrict the term to local or rural current not organized as civil religions. The feature or characteristic of pagan tradition is the absence of the proselytism and the presence of a living folklore or myth which explains religious practice.
Pagan term is a Christian edition of the Gentil of Judaism and has a natural abrahamic bias and pejorative connotations among monotheists which is compared to infidel and heathen, it is also known as kafir and in Islam it is known as mushrik. Due to this reason, the ethnologists always used to avoid the term paganism because of its various and flexible meanings which are not certain, it refer to traditional or historic faiths, prefer more and many categories such as; pantheism, animism, shamanism, polytheism and many more.
After twenty century later on, the pagan or paganism has become extensively used as a self designation by its believer of neopaganism. There are various modern scholars who have began to apply the term into separate faiths into three groups are as; indigenous religion (such as Chinese folk religion), neopaganism (such as Germanic neopaganism and Wicca) and last is historical polytheism (such as Celtic polytheism, Hellenic polytheistic reconstructions and Norse paganism).
The term pagan is from the Latin paganus, an adjective originally meaning rural, rustic or of the country. As a noun, paganus was used to mean country dweller, villager. The semantic development of post-classical Latin paganus in the sense non-Christian, heathen is unclear. The dating of this sense is controversial, but the fourth century seems most reasonable. An example has been suggested in Tertullian, De Corona Militis, but here the word paganus may be interpreted in the sense civilian rather than heathen. The post-classical Latin word has given rise to both paganism and to its synonym paynimry. Paynimry may be used of paganism, its practices, and pagans, as well as for the area or realm of pagans.
Both pagan and heathen have historically been used as a pejorative by adherents of monotheistic religions just to indicate a disbeliever in their religion; although in modern times it is not always used as a pejorative. Paganism or pagan frequently refers to the religions of classical antiquity, most remarkably roman religion and Greek mythology which can be used impartially by those who refer to the complexes of belief. Moreover, until the rise of Romans and the general acceptance of freedom of religion in western civilization, Paganism was almost always used judgmentally of heterodox beliefs falling outside the established political framework of the Christian Church.
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PROFESSOR T.D.K WALLA is the author of this article on LOVE SPELLS .
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