The Fall of Paganism

[Ethics]

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Ever since the ascendency of Christianity within the Roman Empire, circa 300 CE, pagans and paganism have been misrepresented. If you write books or make films, it's easy to cast witches into a villains role, because in general you don't get sued for this and other repercussions are minimal. So witches are portrayed as the bad guys...

...we're evil, right?

But just hold on a minute -- what if, instead of having a witch as a villain, you had a Hindu or Moslem -- how would that be? It'd be misleading is what it would be.

 

Power Struggles

Such misrepresentation began in the power struggles with the Roman Empire. Christianity was gaining ground as a popular religion within the Empire. The old established order, which had a greek/roman pantheon, and eastern mystery religions as part of its base, was threatened. For a time Christians were persecuted and killed. Then Constantine converted to become the first Christian Emperor.

By doing so, he was able to initially control the church hierarchy and use its influence to control the empire more effectively. He also re-organised the church, establish common ground for most branches of it, and eliminated dissenting sects (like the Gnostics). In the process the church gained temporal as well as spiritual power, and now it was the Church's turn to persecute.

It had a vested interest in eliminating other competing religions (and most of these were in decline anyway). In general there were two strategies for this:

  1. Absorb pagan customs and rites into church practice and
  2. Misrepresent the other religions so that they appear to be threats.
     
The first was relatively easy to do. Build your churches on old pagan temples, and transfer the status and myth from pagan Gods and Goddesses to Christian figures (like Bride becoming St. Brigid). The second was accomplished by claiming that the followers of other religions, especially it's priest(es)s, were in league with the Christian bogeyman, the Devil.

Pagan cults became particular targets of the State. Emporer Valentinian II (346-395) officially banned the worship of Cybele and forbade citizens to visit Her temples or make sacrifices to Her. Later Christian Emporers such as Theodosius and Justinian would stop at nothing to destroy the Goddess and to be rid of the gallae and her other followers. Under Justinian, Goddess worshippers, transgendered persons and those engaging in same-sex eroticism had their property confiscated, sacred texts burnt, and temples raised. They were tortured, forced to commit suicide or burned alive.

When people talk of the "Burning Times", for me it seems like they're talking about "round two".

This is not to say that practitioners of pagan religions in the past were all nice and wholesome. Every religion has had its fair share of charlatans, corrupt and fanatics. But being in league with the Devil only makes sense if you accept the Christian religion as being the ONLY true one, rather than just one way of experiencing the divine. Certainly there is lots of documented cases where people have confessed to being followers of Satan, but torture has a way of making people say what you want them to, and asking a standard set of questions (which the inquisition did) will produce a standard set of responses under those circumstances.

Picture Note This image by the way, is from the Conjuring Theme, available at http://witchhaven.com/aurian-azhure/themes.htm. I find it interesting (where's she get her nails done, and who does her hair? *silly*), but to others it looks threatening.

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