100 Fun Facts About Paganism

The word pagan derives from the Latin paganus, which originally meant what?

It also meant civilian in army slang; early Christians saw themselves as soldiers of Christ and everyone else as paganus.

In the Greek-speaking eastern Roman Empire, pagans were most commonly called what?

The word meant Greeks, but for a thousand years it was a religious rather than a cultural label.

Which church father wrote The City of God against the Pagans after the sack of Rome?

Pagans were murmuring that the old gods had protected Rome better than the Christian one.

Which Roman emperor's persecution of paganism preceded the Visigoth sack of Rome by about 15 years?

Julian, by contrast, tried to restore the old religion and earned the nickname the Apostate.

Which was among the last areas of Europe to be Christianised, in 1387?

Its revived native faith, Romuva, won state recognition in 2024.

The Gaelic festival Samhain marks the beginning of which season?

It falls on 1 November, with celebrations starting at sunset on 31 October since the Celtic day began at dusk.

Beltane, the Gaelic May Day festival, is held on which date?

Cattle were driven between bonfires for protection before being sent to summer pasture.

Imbolc, on 1 February, is also the feast day of which Irish saint?

Historians suspect the saint Christianised a goddess of the same name linked to lambing and spring.

Lughnasadh, the harvest festival on 1 August, is named after which god?

Its English equivalent is Lammas and its Welsh one Gŵyl Awst.

Yule was a midwinter festival of which peoples before it merged with Christmas?

Swedish and Finnish still use cognates of Yule for Christmas; modern Heathens keep it as a separate festival.

The modern Wheel of the Year typically has how many festivals?

It combines the four solar quarter days with the four Celtic cross-quarter festivals.

Legend says the father of Wicca harmonised the eightfold Wheel of the Year with which Druid leader?

Nichols founded the Order of Bards, Ovates and Druids in 1964; the two reportedly worked it out at a naturist retreat.

Which 1948 Robert Graves book proposed eight holidays of an 'ancient British festal system'?

Graves also shaped the neopagan Triple Goddess of Maiden, Mother and Crone.

What is the largest and best-known form of modern paganism?

It is also the most extensively studied, and was introduced to the public in 1954.

Which retired civil servant introduced Wicca to the public in 1954?

A plaque on his gravestone calls him the Father of Wicca.

Gardner claimed to have been initiated in 1939 into a coven based where?

He said the religion he found there was a survival of the witch-cult Margaret Murray had theorised.

What was the title of Gardner's 1954 non-fiction book that publicised Wicca?

High Magic's Aid was his 1949 novel and The Meaning of Witchcraft followed in 1959.

Gardner spent much of his career as a civil servant in which British colony?

He ended up Principal Officer of Customs in Johore and studied local folk magic and weapons.

Gardner directed a Museum of Magic and Witchcraft on which island?

He ran it at Castletown with Cecil Williamson until his death in 1964.

Wicca is typically duotheistic, venerating a Horned God and which female deity?

She is Maiden, Mother and Crone, matching the phases of the Moon; the God is tied to the Sun and the seasons.

Which Egyptologist's 1921 book The Witch-Cult in Western Europe shaped early Wiccan theology?

Historians reject her theory; the similar confessions came from standard questions in witch-hunting manuals.

In 1964 the secret names of the Gardnerian deities were revealed to be Aradia and whom?

The tradition promptly changed its secret names.

Which High Priestess wrote much of the early Gardnerian liturgy, including the Charge of the Goddess?

Initiated in 1953, she later worked with Robert Cochrane's Clan of Tubal Cain.

The Wiccan Rede's best-known form is a couplet of how many words?

'An it harm none, do what ye will' was first publicly recorded by Doreen Valiente in 1964.

What is the Wiccan name for the volume of rituals and spells copied by initiates?

Gardner's original was written in the late 1940s; the TV series Charmed made the term famous.

What do Wiccans call seasonal festivals, as opposed to the lunar Esbats?

Esbats follow the Moon and the Goddess; the solar cycle belongs to the Horned God.

A pentagram inside a circle is properly called what?

Wiccans use it widely; the plain star alone is the pentagram.

In which year was the encircled pentagram approved for headstones at Arlington?

It became the 38th approved symbol after ten applications from families of Wiccan soldiers.

Who popularised the terms pagan and neopagan from 1967 in the magazine Green Egg?

He co-founded the Church of All Worlds, named after the religion in Heinlein's Stranger in a Strange Land.

Which two 1979 books opened a new chapter in public awareness of paganism?

Margot Adler wrote the first, the Reclaiming priestess Starhawk the second.

Roughly how many modern pagans are estimated to practise in the United States?

Surveys find them mostly middle-class, educated and living on the East and West coasts.

Historian Ronald Hutton estimated how many modern pagans live in the United Kingdom?

That is roughly the size of Britain's Hindu community; the 2011 census counted 80,153 self-described pagans.

The Icelandic name Ásatrú translates as belief in or loyalty to which group of gods?

Heathens honour their deities in blóts, offering food and libations, usually a bowl of mead.

What is the most commonly used symbol among Heathens?

Mjölnir is worn as a pendant and used as a gesture in ritual; runes decorate objects and skin.

The Heathen drinking ceremony that toasts the gods is called what?

It often follows a blót, the offering rite that is Heathenry's most important ritual.

In which year did Iceland grant official recognition to the Ásatrúarfélagið?

Founded a year earlier over coffee in Reykjavík, it was led by the farmer-poet Sveinbjörn Beinteinsson until 1993.

The Nine Noble Virtues of some Heathen groups are based largely on which Old Norse poem?

It sits in the Poetic Edda alongside the other main sources, with Beowulf and the Nibelungenlied.

The oldest surviving modern Druidic fraternity, still active, was founded in which year?

It was a fraternal society influenced by Freemasonry and based in London; a schism in 1833 split it.

Which 18th-century Welshman fabricated 'ancient' Druidic sources and founded the Gorsedd?

His Gorsedd became part of the National Eisteddfod and his Druid's Prayer is still recited.

What Welsh-derived word do Druids chant three times to invoke inspiration?

It means inspiration in Welsh and Cornish and is also chanted as A-I-O.

Which group accounts for about 57 per cent of the world's modern Druidic practitioners?

OBOD teaches mostly by correspondence course; ADF was founded in 1983 by Isaac Bonewits.

Stonehenge is aligned towards sunrise at which event?

It also faces sunset on the winter solstice; there is no evidence Iron Age druids ever used it.

The image of druids with golden sickles and mistletoe comes from which Roman author?

A single passage of his did it; Caesar gave the fullest account and Pliny derived druid from the Greek for oak.

Caesar claimed the Gauls burned criminals inside what?

Evidence for Celtic animal sacrifice is solid; human sacrifice rests on thinner ground.

Which horned Celtic god is known from depictions but almost nothing of his myths?

He later became the Gardnerian Wiccans' secret name for the Horned God.

Which Slavic god's idol in Kiev had a silver head and a gold moustache?

Vladimir set it up around 980 and then baptised Kievan Rus in 988, tossing Veles's idol into the river.

Kemetism is a modern pagan religion based on the beliefs of which ancient civilisation?

Kemet means black land, after the Nile's fertile mud; followers call the gods the Netjeru.

In which year did Greece legally recognise modern Hellenism as a 'known religion'?

Recognition let it open places of worship and have its clergy officiate at weddings.

Stonehenge and its surroundings joined UNESCO's World Heritage list in which year?

The Crown owns the stones, English Heritage manages them and the National Trust owns the land around.

What does Heathenry call the web of actions and relationships spun by the Norns?

Örlög is the personal version; the worldview oscillates between free will and fate.

Which English weekday takes its name from Woden, a god worshipped by the pagan Anglo-Saxons?

Wednesday began as Old English Wōdnesdæg, 'Woden's day', while German dropped its own version in the 10th century for Mittwoch, which simply means mid-week.

Which pagan temple in Rome survived almost intact because it was converted into a church in 609?

The Pantheon still carries the world's largest unreinforced concrete dome, almost two thousand years after it was built.

Roman priests called augurs judged whether the gods approved of a plan chiefly by watching what?

Birds were so central that when wild ones failed to appear, augurs released chickens kept for the purpose and read the omens from how they fed.

Which Roman goddess's sacred fire was tended by priestesses sworn to celibacy for at least thirty years?

Vesta's priestesses, the Vestals, entered her service as young girls and were whipped if they ever let the flame go out.

The ancient Olympic Games were held every four years as a religious festival honouring which Greek god?

Zeus had his sanctuary at Olympia, and a truce was announced for each festival so that athletes and pilgrims could travel there in safety.

Which Norse god sacrificed one of his eyes at Mímir's well in his search for wisdom?

Odin later kept Mímir's severed head, embalmed with herbs so that it would not rot, and consulted it for secret knowledge.

What name do modern pagans give their wedding ceremony, borrowing an old term for a betrothal pledge?

Handfasting once meant a formal promise to marry, and modern pagans have used the word for their own weddings since at least the late 1960s.

Which missionary, enslaved by Irish raiders at sixteen, is credited with converting pagan Ireland?

Saint Patrick is also said to have banished Ireland's snakes, yet a Roman writer had noted that the island had none long before he was born.

Which Roman emperor, raised a Christian, tried to restore paganism as the state religion?

Julian was the last non-Christian ruler of the Roman Empire, and Christians remembered him ever after as 'the Apostate'.

In Norse belief, which immense ash tree stands at the centre of the cosmos and its nine worlds?

Yggdrasil is home to a squirrel, Ratatoskr, that scurries up and down the trunk carrying malicious messages between an eagle above and a dragon below.

The word druid may come from a Celtic phrase meaning 'one who knows' which sacred tree?

The oak was central to the best-known account of druid ritual, in which a robed priest climbs one to cut its mistletoe with a golden sickle.

Which pagan philosopher and mathematician of Alexandria was murdered by a Christian mob in 415?

Hypatia was tolerant of Christians and taught many of them, including a future bishop, yet her killing turned her into a martyr for philosophy.

Which Norse trickster fathered the wolf Fenrir and, in the shape of a mare, gave birth to the horse Sleipnir?

Loki was later bound by the other gods and left to suffer under dripping serpent venom for engineering a murder among them.

Which Norse goddess rides a chariot pulled by two cats and receives half of those who die in battle?

Freyja takes her share of the fallen to her own heavenly field, Fólkvangr, while the other half go to Valhalla.

Which beloved Norse god could be harmed by nothing but mistletoe, which killed him at his blind brother's hand?

Baldr had seemed invulnerable because every object in the world had vowed not to hurt him, all except the mistletoe.

Which Greek sanctuary, seat of Apollo's famous oracle, was held to be the centre of the world?

Delphi was marked as the navel of the earth by a carved stone, the omphalos, set where two eagles flying from opposite ends of the world were said to have met.

The secret Eleusinian Mysteries of ancient Greece honoured Persephone and which goddess, her mother?

Demeter's rites were guarded so closely that the playwright Aeschylus was allegedly put on trial for revealing them in his plays, though he was acquitted.

Which god, shown slaying a bull, did Roman soldiers worship in underground temples from the 1st century AD?

Mithras was said to have been born from a rock, and about 700 carvings of his bull-killing scene survive from across the empire.

Which two-faced Roman god of doorways had a temple whose gates stood open whenever Rome was at war?

Janus looked both forward and back as the god of beginnings and endings, and his gates were closed only to mark the arrival of peace.

Which Danish king boasted on the great Jelling runestone that he had converted the Danes to Christianity?

Harald Bluetooth united the tribes of Denmark into one kingdom, which is why engineers borrowed his name in 1997 for a technology that links devices.

In Welsh legend, which enchantress boils a potion of poetic inspiration in her cauldron for a year and a day?

Ceridwen's brew gave wisdom only in its first three drops, the rest being deadly poison, and those drops splashed onto the thumb of the boy stirring it.

What term, built on the Latin for 'soul', describes the belief that rivers, rocks and trees each have a spirit?

Animism got its accepted definition in 1871 from an anthropologist who first wanted to call it spiritualism, until he saw it would be confused with the séance movement.

What is the name of the black-handled ceremonial knife that is the chief ritual tool of many Wiccans?

An athame is traditionally not used to cut anything physical, so many Wiccans leave herbs and cords to a second knife called the boline.

Which English occultist founded the religion of Thelema after claiming a spirit dictated The Book of the Law to him?

Aleister Crowley said he wrote its three chapters in exactly one hour each, starting at noon on three successive days of his honeymoon in Cairo.

In British folklore it was unlucky to walk 'widdershins' around a church; which direction does the word describe?

Anticlockwise runs against the sun's apparent course, and in the fairy tale Childe Rowland a girl who runs that way round a church ends up in Elfland.

What term for ritual nudity in Wicca may have been borrowed from the name of an order of Jain monks?

Skyclad is the literal meaning of Digambara, an order whose monks may not wear clothing, and one theory is that Wicca's founder met the idea while living in Asia.

Which name did Lady Raglan coin in 1939 for the leaf-covered faces carved in medieval churches?

The Green Man is widely taken for a pagan nature spirit, as she proposed, but no evidence shows that the carvings ever represented one.

Which Irish goddess of war and fate, whose name is often translated as 'Phantom Queen', appears as a crow?

The Morrígan takes a crow's shape in the epic Táin Bó Cúailnge to warn the great bull of Ulster to flee before an invading army can steal it.

Which symbol of three interlaced arcs, used by Celtic pagans, is named from the Latin for 'three-cornered'?

The triquetra decorated the sisters' spell book in the TV drama Charmed, and some Christians use the same knot as a sign of the Trinity.

The Church of All Worlds, a pagan group formed in 1962, was inspired by which Robert Heinlein novel?

Stranger in a Strange Land features a fictional religion of the same name, and members of the real church are known as Waterkin.

Which goat-legged Greek god of shepherds and wild places was said to cause sudden terror with his shout?

Pan was blamed for the mysterious sounds that sent herds and lonely travellers into groundless fear, the feeling that English names panic after him.

Which Greek goddess of witchcraft and the night is usually shown holding two torches or with three bodies?

Hecate was known to the Romans as Trivia, 'three ways', for guarding the crossroads where her three-bodied statues stood.

Which Scottish anthropologist wrote The Golden Bough, a vast comparative study of magic, myth and religion?

James Frazer argued that the most ancient religions were fertility cults built around the periodic sacrifice of a sacred king, in step with the cycle of the seasons.

Which American folklorist published Aradia, or the Gospel of the Witches, said to record a Tuscan witch cult?

Charles Leland said the text came from an Italian woman he called Maddalena, his 'witch informant', who took eleven years to hand him a copy.

Which Gaulish goddess of horses, patroness of Roman cavalry, was the only Celtic deity worshipped in Rome itself?

Epona was probably a peaceful goddess of fertility until Rome conquered Gaul and hired so many Celts as horsemen that she became the army's patron.

Romans threw lead curse tablets into the sacred hot spring at Bath, addressed mostly to which Celtic goddess?

Sulis was asked on one tablet to make whoever had stolen a man's two gloves lose both mind and eyes in her temple.

Which island off Britain, an important centre of the druids, was stormed by the Roman governor Suetonius Paulinus?

Anglesey's defenders included druids who raised their hands to heaven and screamed curses, a sight that briefly froze the Roman soldiers where they stood.

Which crusading military order conquered the pagan Old Prussians of the Baltic coast in the 13th century?

The Teutonic Knights were invited in after Polish princes had failed to subdue the Prussians, and they ended up ruling Prussia themselves.

Which Frankish king destroyed the Irminsul, a great pillar sacred to the pagan Saxons, during his wars against them?

Charlemagne's target was later described as a great wooden pillar standing beneath the open sky, whose name meant the column that sustains everything.

Which prince of Kiev, a pagan who built shrines to the old gods, converted and Christianised his realm in 988?

Vladimir the Great reportedly weighed Islam, Judaism and the Latin and Byzantine churches, sending envoys abroad to watch their worship, before choosing a faith for his people.

Which national assembly voted around the year 1000 to give up paganism, on the ruling of its own pagan lawspeaker?

The Althing left the choice to its lawspeaker, Thorgeir, who spent a day and a night thinking under a fur blanket before ruling for Christianity.

Which Icelandic historian is credited with compiling the Prose Edda, a 13th-century textbook of Norse mythology?

Snorri Sturluson's prologue gives a Christian account of the Norse gods, explaining them away as human warriors who had fled the fall of Troy.

Which Anglo-Saxon missionary famously cut down a great tree sacred to the pagans of 8th-century Hesse?

Saint Boniface then reportedly had its timber built into a wooden chapel on the site, dedicated to Saint Peter.

Which Byzantine emperor closed the revived Platonic Academy in Athens in 529, a centre of pagan Neoplatonism?

Justinian I's order sent its last philosophers to seek protection at the court of the Persian king, carrying precious scrolls of literature and philosophy with them.

Adam of Bremen described a great pagan temple, said to be made of gold, at which Swedish religious centre?

Uppsala hosted a festival for every province of Sweden once every nine years, and Christians had to pay to be excused from its ceremonies.

Which pope advised missionaries to England to cleanse pagan temples of idols and reuse them as churches?

Gregory I also allowed pagan animal sacrifices to be turned into Christian feasts, so that the English could change faith gradually.

Which English occultist, elected 'King of the Witches' in 1965, founded a Wiccan tradition named after himself?

Alex Sanders claimed that his Welsh grandmother had initiated him as a child, a story undone by the discovery that she died 19 years before he was born.

Which American wrote Wicca: A Guide for the Solitary Practitioner, among the most successful books on the religion?

Scott Cunningham also turned out more than a dozen novels in the early 1980s, from adventure to horror, under pen names such as Dirk Fletcher.

What is the usual name for the Slavic Native Faith, a polytheistic religion rooted in pre-Christian beliefs?

Rodnovery is seen by many followers as a continuation of ancient beliefs that survived as folk religion, a 'double belief', after the Slavs were Christianised.

Which 10th-century Arab traveller left an eyewitness account of a Viking chieftain's ship funeral on the Volga?

Ibn Fadlan's report later inspired Michael Crichton's novel Eaters of the Dead, filmed as The 13th Warrior with Antonio Banderas playing the traveller.