What is european heritage?
I prefer the term european heritage instead of paganism or heathenism because the general term "paganism" is damn fuzzy. The word is latin "paganus" and means farmer, villager. In historical context these are the people whom were out of the cultural influence sphere of the great settlements and in teams of the still young and aspiring christian church those people whom still clings to the old customs of pre-crhristian traditions.
Similiar is the anglo-saxon word heathen for people whom not dwelt in the settlements but upon the heath, out ouf reach of the influence of the church. Nowaday the term is widely used for not only pre-christian spiritual traditions but also for new-age non-christian traditions like for example modern druidry, Wicca, modern witchcraft and so on.
The term itself is not only meant as an insult and degradation (from a christian point of view) but also extreme unprecise. We had some discussions about wether or not using this term and the alternatives but I don't think we achieved some consent which could be a common term within certain communities. I think the seperation between the different spiritual traditions in europe could be accomplished with: - european heritage (norse heritage, slavic heritage, celtic heritage, hellenic heritage, etc) - modern traditions (druidism, witchcraft, wicca, etc).
Our european heritage is still an important part of our nowadays culture wether it is the norse heritage, the hellenic heritage, the roman heritage or the slavic heritage just to name a few. With the use of the term heritage instead of the insulting heathen or pagan we can not also get rid of that label but the word heritage itself makes an awarness of our roots, history, culture. Not only that it is still part today, but it is something in the past on which we reflect in the present.
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