Past Was Pagan - Introduction To The Pagan Paradigm

(November 27, 2023, Updated February 27, 2025) Ancient Druid Akkadian texts cannot be read or translated without first understanding their Pagan cultural core. Significantly, at present, European Paganism is not taught at any university claiming to do ancient research. The only exception is classical philosophy but even that is studied from today's inherited Zoroastrian/Biblical paradigm perspective. The Pagan people of the past not only had a different culture from today but also thought differently because of it. 

A culture is not a religion. Only when a person has a choice of cultural life paths do those life paths become a religion. Different core cultures and religions are characterized by their answers to these three fundamental questions of existence: 

1. What are your assumptions (paradigm) about reality? - What is the relationship between divine and material realms. What are the properties of deities if any? What is your worldview?

2. What is your primary community knowledge source? - Is it nature, a sacred text, guru, institution, or tradition?

3. Why are you here? - What is your life goal? What is the purpose of your life if any?

(June 9, 2023, Updated February 27, 2025) 

Definition of Paganism 

Pagans today seek to connect to the divine powers guided by ancient European ancestral traditions and concepts. Paganism is a path and not a faith. Paganism is defined by goals instead of by dogmas.

Nature Paganism

A subset of Paganism are the Nature Pagans who mainly seek divine connections via the aide of natural correspondences and seek to live a life coherent with deep natural principles. For whatever reason the universe was created, aligning with its powers brings us into harmony with the divine will. 

Neolithic people had no sacred texts so Nature Paganism is all they knew. That was their culture. 

The core of any perceptheistic/magical spiritual practice are feelings. These feelings are non-material conscious experiences having various levels of emotional energy. Consciousness experiences represent the non-material spiritual realm which is separate from the physical realm. No theory of physics explains consciousness. 

Reconstruction Paganism

Some modern Pagans use surviving ancient texts as their Bible, that is, they use them as their authority on how to be and live as a Pagan. This dogmatic use of the texts is different from using them as inspiration and as a source of ideas. These reconstructionist Pagans tend to be followers of Roman, Greek, Egyptian, Norse, or Celtic texts.

(March 24, 2023, March 4, 2025) The earliest texts show the Druid deities were mainly labels for clusters of divine powers found in nature which were occasionally and optionally be personified. This is  perceptheism. Lordification was the historical process in which the perception of these deities changed from being clusters of powers to being human-like royalty. Deities became “living gods.” Other divine powers were then lumped together as "winds/spirits." 

The cultural pressure towards lordification started with the rise of nation states. Distant kings came to be seen as just as powerful and just as capricious as nature powers. Because rulers tended to be male the important deities also started to become male downgrading the importance of the divine feminine.

Perceptheism makes sense. In the absence of  identifying visual information people are identified by their personality, that is, their unique cluster of powers.  Sumerian and Akkadian even used the noun possessive suffix to represent deity powers. Since a deity cannot be owned they used the noun possessive suffix (the dual-use letter he) to indicate that a deity's powers were meant.  

This perceptheistic principle continued to exist in Greek philosophy. For example, powers such as “wisdom” (“sophia”) could be personified as the goddess “Sophia” or seen as the power of wisdom. Ancient people originally had no division between gods and spirits. 

Lordification advanced at different rates in different parts of the world as centralized, aggressive nation states were formed. It was first seen in Sumeria with its city-states. The Sumerian word for lord and lady was “Nin.” After lordification most deities were called by their royal names. For example Nin.lil meaning "Lord of Breath" was the epithet for the original Mu’ulil (one who sprouts breath, probably equivalent to Druid Su), and Nin.gal meaning "Lady of the Chalice" for the original goddess Erishkigal (Druid Kate or Hekate). The classic example of lordification is found in Egyptian deity art which started out as representing deities as animals, then as people with animal heads, then completely as people.

Lordification changed deities into capricious human beings with all the emotional defects of humans. This caused lordified deities to be feared because they could be jealous, petty, and greedy. In order to please a deity in order to get something, priests and rulers had to plead, cajole, beg, and bribe. The ultimate bribe was child sacrifice. The greatest fear was that some deity somewhere would be offended by actions people did not even know tehy were doing. This fear of the deities is why the idea of a savior and easy forgiveness of sins became popular during the classical era.

(March 3, 2025)  While dualism started innocently enough it has become one of the great curses of humanity amplifying the "us versus them" mentality. Dualism was an idea by a Pagan Persian priest called Zoroaster (by the Greeks). He observed that conscious experiences like smells were inherently good or bad. Therefore the divine realm was also inherently good or bad. (this assumption of inherent valuation of conscious experiences was only proved false in modern times by neuroscience). 

Zoroastrianism claimed these two realms were at war with each other until the end times when they would be united once again. Zoroastrianism was adopted as the religion of the Persian Achaemenid Empire (550-330 BCE) because this ideology ended up supporting empires. Their kings could portray themselves as the good guys fighting the evil other. The resulting empire spread dualism far and wide. This is also why Roman Emperor Constantine (306 to 337 CE) adopted it in its Christian form and why his successors forced it onto the Roman empire.

In the west, idea was inserted into Judaism and from there into Christianity and Islam. In the east it triggered the debates which led to the founding of Buddhism as a dualist religion whose followers seek to escape the imperfect material world. Buddhism in turn led to the counter ideology of Hinduism seen in the Bhagavad Gita which is a statement against the impossibility of defining absolute evil.

Mainstream classical culture also became dualist with its traditional nature based spirituality (Pythagorean, Orcus in classical times) being replaced by Stoicism. The anti-dualist reaction against Stoicism was Epicureanism and Skepticism (305 BCE and after) with its teaching that pleasure is not evil.

(November 27, 2023, Updated March 3, 2025) Facts must be organized so they can be found when needed. This requires a mental framework or model (that is, a paradigm) for working with acquired facts. If new facts cannot be fitted into a person's existing paradigm they will tend to be ignored. Paradigms can be difficult to change because they are heavily influenced by humanity's cultural psychology, that is, the psychology of identity.

Paradigms can be difficult to change because they bias perception and because they are often selected initially because they satisfy some emotional need. This neediness can make such people appear completely irrational even makes them willing to perform atrocities in defense of their paradigm. This was noticed by German Christian theologian Dietrich Bonhoeffer who was jailed and eventually killed by the Nazis. He wrote this:

(March 8, 2025) Ancient Druid culture followed Multiple Place Reality with all change defined in the upper divine levels which is then transferred down to the earthly level. Possible assumptions of reality are: 

1. Unitary Place Reality -  Reality is not divided because it is either:

1. Atheistic - Only the material realm exists withs it energy changes. Divine realm is an illusion. Conscious sensations are an "emergent" phenomena.
2. Transcendentalist - Only the spiritual realm exists. Material realm is an illusion. Our minds create our reality and are only constrained by our own cultural conditioning and divine law.

2. Multiple Place Reality - The divine and material realms are different places. This is the paradigm of Judaism, Christianity, Islam. How the the 2 places interact is never explained.

(March 8, 2025) Pantheism holds that the divine and material realms exist within each other but use different ways to separate causal events (that is, to change state). Therefore, nothing is created or destroyed, all is recycled because nowhere else exists. At death the body and spirit are both recycled. Modern Nature Paganism is pantheism with quality separability. 

1. Spatial Separability: All events are energy changes separated by space-time differences like material realm, therefore the spiritual realm exists in some higher dimensional space. Physical constants are unchanging.
2. Quality Separability: All events are physical constant changes separated by quality differences like conscious experiences. In the material realm, each spatial dimension is a quality analogous to a primary color, just using spatial energy mixing rules instead of color mixing rules.

(March 14, 2025)

• Ancient Druid Paganism - Humans and their material realm have the purpose of keeping both the divine and material realms in balance.  

• Later Druid Paganism - The above plus adding in the balancing practices of love and avoiding envy. Because everything is interconnected and attuned (Greek logos) a disturbance in the balance will propagate outward and eventually circle back to its source. Jesus' teachings are a prime example of this (he learned this Pagan concept as a young adult when he lived at Capernaum on a trade route between Mesopotamia and the Mediterranean. He used this concept to argue against the dualist idea that God would bring in a violent end times apocalypse.

• Lordified Yet Still Non-Dualist Paganism (Roman) - Humans exist to serve, flatter, and praise their lord gods in exchange for favors.

(March 14, 2025)

• Eastern Lordified and Dualist Religions (after 500 BC Zoroastrianism) - Creation of the material realm was a random accident which has separated humans from the perfect and unchanging divine realm. Therefore humans should seek to rejoin the Divine by becoming like the Divine (oneness) by becoming changeless themselves. Do not desire or be motivated by anything. Their meditation practices focus on mental stillness instead of awareness like Pagans. (example, Buddhism).

• Western Dualist Lordified Religions (after 500 BC Zoroastrianism) -  Creation of the material realm was a random accident which has separated humans from the perfect and good divine realm. Therefore humans need to rejoin the Divine by becoming good. This is done by rejecting everything of the evil material realm as much as possible and following divine laws (Judaism, Islam). Alternately, because we can't fully reject the material realm, find a divine lord who will save you from from the material realm instead (Christianity).

(March 15, 2025) Related to assumptions about reality are assumptions about how to learn about that reality.  These are:

1. Dogmatic Theistic Knowledge -  All of reality can be known in common by a community. The physical realm can be known by observation and experiment. The spiritual realm can be known dogmatically via a religion's sacred text or institutional tradition (assumed to be divinely revealed). The religions of Judaism, Christianity, Islam, and lordified Paganism belong to this paradigm as either Monotheism or Polytheism. 

2. Pagan Perceptheistic Knowledge -  Only the physical/material realm can be known in common by a community leaving spiritual knowledge as personal knowledge. Personal knowledge is mystical knowledge based upon perceptions and feelings, hence the name Perceptheistic. Perceptheistic deities can be perceived either as people or as clusters of powers. Deities can be one or many. A person may use different divine models at different times depending on what provides the best connection. Historical Druid culture is perceptheistic.

(March 4, 2025) Ancient Druid culture was perceptheistic. No separation was made between spirits and deities. Perceived spiritual powers observed in nature can be divided up many different ways depending on the goals of the people involved. The Druid pantheon was a classification system which worked best for early agricultural cultures. It was gender balanced with the power clusters (deities) representing observed changes on earth. These were divided into 2 large classes of 3 layers each (source of the sacred number 3)consisting of the life power class and the motion/emotion power class. This scheme is called the Ancient Pagan Paradigm.

The ancient Druid goddess triad (most popular goddesses) represented the powers of death and rebirth (underworld goddess Kate/Hekate), life guidance and wisdom (crescent moon goddess Ayu), and the inner emotional spark of life (celestial light goddess Selu/Selene).. In contrast the Druid god triad represented the powers of creation (god Alu), order and security (god Hu), and fate/time (dark new moon god Su).

Classical Equivalents to Druid Deities.

Marcus Varro (116-27 BCE) has an important deity list in his book entitled Antiquitates rerum humanarum et divinarum (Histories of Human and Divine Things). He was born in or near Reate (now Rieti) in Lazio, Italy into a family thought to be of equestrian rank. He ended up owning a large farm in the Reatine plain which was reported to be near Lago di Ripasottile.  

His important passage about early Roman deities is quoted by Augustine in "de ciu. Dei, VII, 2." This is the earliest complete list that we have on the main Roman deities:  

• "Varro compiled the chosen gods in the last volume: and there are twenty: twelve males, eight females: Janus, Jupiter, Saturn, Genius, Mercury, Apollo, Mars, Vulcan, Neptune, Sun, Orcus, Liber, Terra, Ceres, Juno, Luna , Diana, Minerva, Venus, Vesta."

Druid Masculine Life-Growth Deities With Classical Equivalents

1. Alu (Roman Janus/Yanis)  The life source god representing new beginnings. The Roman month of January (winter solstice) and June (summer solstice) are named for him as they begin the seasons. Janus is represented as 2-faced god to represent such transitions.

2. Hu (Roman Sol, Apollo) (Greek Helios, Apollo)  The life connective god represented by the sun and rainstorms. He connects the divine and material realms. Apollo is likely Akkadian AP.L meaning “Veil eliminator."

3. Yahu (Roman  Luna) (Greek Phanes, Φάνης) The life manifesting god represented by the full moon and eggs. Luna is the Akkadian LaNu meaning the visible "platonic" form. This power of life manifestations is represented by eggs and the full moon which makes visible the dark new moon. Phanes comes from the Greek Orphic hymn traditions and not the Homeric tradition. He is associated with white eggs which could be thought of as the full moon. This life manifesting egg connection might be the source of the Christian Easter Egg.

Druid Feminine Life/Fertility Deities With Classical Equivalents

1. Kate/Hekate (Roman Juno/Yuno) (Greek Eleuthyia) - The life-cycle underworld goddess. Yuno is Akkadian Y.N meaning "The one who is not revealed." She represents the storage of dead souls in the underworld waiting to be reborn. These souls were waiting to be reincarnated. Hence Juno was also associated with childbirth. She may be the goddess at the center of the Eleusian Mysteries.

2. Ayu (Roman Diana) (Greek Artemis) - The crescent moon life guidance goddess. Roman Diana is Akkadian D.IN meaning life-manifestation controller. In myth, the crescent moon became a bow and she became a hunter. 

3. Asher (Roman Ceres/Keres) (Greek Demeter) - The earth mother and goddess of vegetation named after Akkadian words aṣu and ašu meaning "expelled/created things." Demeter's daughter, Persephone/Kore, is a representation of vegetation. Demeter and Persephone are sometimes mixed-up in ancient myths. Roman Kerus , Greek Kore is Akkadian  K.R meaning the "one involved with the eagle-vultures which edit the life network. Ceres/Kerus was a deity of agriculture  and was originally the central deity in Rome's plebeian Aventine Triad.  Romans called Persephone Proserpina.

(July 3, 2022, updated March 17, 2025) Dualism within its conscious feeling context is first detected in the earliest Zoroastrian scriptures (Yasnas) known as the Gathas where Spenta Manyu (community supporter) is at odds with the Angra Manyu meaning “Anger supporter.” Anger is a conscious feeling. Also notice the perceptheism here in which divine powers are personified. 

Yet Zoroaster did not really like the consequences of his dualism because it meant splitting the Divine realm into Good and Evil halves at war with each other. Thus he came up with the end times idea which would reunite the two halves into an eternal whole:​

Because Zoroastrianism was lordified it separated divine powers into spirits and personified gods and goddesses. The spirits of nature, the daevas now became evil because they could not discern between Good and Evil. The religious culture of Zoroaster was fully lordified with the result that Divine powers were now thought of as impersonal spirits instead of as deity which could be optionally personified. This word became “devils” in English. As shown below, all those who follow Evil powers (druj) were to be killed and those doing the killing will be favored by lord Mazda.

Yet Good thoughts can also lead to the kingdom (dominion) of God (Ahura Mazda) on earth. Jesus seems to adopted this idea without the dualism:

References ​

(November 27, 2023)  In the ancient past before the rise of books and institutional authorities, nature and cultural tradition were the only source of community knowledge. While gaining a good model of nature is a challenge, nature itself is the only possible source of community knowledge which is internally consistent. If it wasn't self-consistent, the universe would crash like a computer.

 Community knowledge is the facts a community is expected to believe in order to insure their mutual prosperity and survival. Not believing in germ theory and acting upon that knowledge puts many in the community at risk of early death. Humans do not exist in isolation from others so a community has the right to expect its members to care about the truths of the physical world.

Other sources of community knowledge beside nature have been charismatic gurus, institutional traditions, or leaders and sacred texts claiming divine inspiration or secret ancient or alien knowledge. These differing sources never agree with each other which results in endless conflict and drama because truth cannot be agreed upon. The only potentially peaceful religions are nature based religions.

In contrast to community knowledge, personal spiritual knowledge is knowledge about your own emotional reactions. It is knowledge that only you can really know. You cannot expect others to feel the same or to use the same mental model which works for you emotionally. This is why Nature Religion is perceptheistic encouraging any divine conception which works best for each individual. All personal knowledge is equally valid as long as it does not contradict community knowledge.