The Return of the Old Religion: The Resurgence of Paganism in the West & Its Consequences

The following is an old college paper written in 2012. Please forgive any irregularities. 

Paganism is rising in the West, and its ascendance threatens the foundations of Western Civilization. This paper seeks to explain and prove the following assertions: (1) the pagan religion and worldview is rapidly becoming a demographic force in the modern West, (2) paganism's rise is a result of the disintegration of the West's foundational pillars (including Christianity), and (3) paganism's rise in the West will accelerate our civilization's decline. 

Introduction 

In the seventh grade, I sat next to a girl who brought tarot cards to lunch and read student's fortunes. Her readings intrigued many of the students, and they were often eager to discover their fates. I knew little about tarot at the time, but I knew enough to associate it with witchcraft. I was attracted to the idea of discovering my future, but I always refused her offers for a reading because I had a vague sense it would violate my Christian faith. However, I always found this kind of mysticism attractive, and the tarot girl eventually became my girlfriend. Perhaps my experience can serve as a representation of man's natural attraction towards paganism.

I had been raised for twelve years to know the Bible. I was taught why I should not be Catholic, Baptist, Mormon, Lutheran, or Jewish, but I was never taught to understand much of anything about the ancient but reinvigorated pagan threat I was then facing. For the last millennia, since the total conversion of Europe, it was believed that paganism had been conquered, and that the only threat to Christian civilization were internal heresies and Islamic invasion. My religious educators never imagined that within their lifetimes the "old religion" would once again rise to threaten Christianity. Their naiveté was understandable, but they failed to appreciate the power pagan ideas exert over the human heart. As we will see, it is paganism, not Christianity, that is the natural religion of fallen man, and as long as the earth continues it will sing its siren song to humanity. Paganism is now the fastest growing religion in the West. It stands on the precipice of prevailing over the Western nations of Europe and North America that have served as the heartland of Christianity for two thousand years. [1] The emergence of this dormant dragon parallels the astounding collapse of Christianity since the 1960s, and it will usher in the end of history's greatest civilization while burying everything it stood for. [2] 

Paganism Rising 

There can be little doubt paganism is rising. It is the fastest growing religion in the West. According to the American Religious Identification Survey, the number of self identified Wiccans grew from 134,000 to 342,000 in 2008. Self identified neopagans grew from 140,000 in 2001 to 340,000 in 2008. North American pagans almost tripled their numbers in three years. These two groups alone, however, hardly encompass the entirety of paganism's rebirth. Another group identified as "New Religious Movements" went from 1.3 million in 1990 to 1.8 million in 2001 to 2.8 million in 2008. [3] They more than doubled their numbers in less than twenty years with an additional million and a half members. [4] These numbers might still sound like a small proportion of the population, but the strength of paganism is not limited to its growing numbers because much of its worldview has begun saturating the ways Westerners think and act. In a 2009 study conducted by the Pew Forum of Religion and Public Life, it was discovered a full 26 percent of Americans believe in reincarnation, [5] another 26 percent said they believed there was spiritual energy in mountains and trees, and 25 percent said they believed the astrological positions of the stars effected people's daily lives. [6] Some might credit these numbers to fringe groups and minorities, but the Forum reported that 24 percent of white mainline protestants and 25 percent of white Catholics also believe in reincarnation. [7] Pew also measured the rise of paganism in the form of how many people reported mystical experiences. In 2009, 48 percent reported they had. [8] This number demonstrates a rapid rise. In 1962, only 22 percent had given a positive answer to this question. In the 15 years between 1994 and 2009, the number of those reporting mystical experiences rose from 33 percent to 48 percent. [9]

Paganism's influence has not remained a private matter, and it has begun influencing our institutions while creating new ones. In 2007, the United States military added the five pointed pagan pentagram to its list of official military cemetery headstones. [10] The United Kingdom recently created an official association of pagan policemen in addition to their Muslim and Sikh associations. The Pagan Police Association listed its aims in article one of their constitution: "To raise awareness and understanding of paganism in all forms." [11] Members of the association have been given eight days off work throughout the year to celebrate their religious holidays including the summer solstice and Samhain (traditional pagan new year). [12] They have also won the right to be sworn into their positions with a pagan oath that reads: "By all that I hold sacred." The UK also gave schools permission in 2010 to teach paganism alongside the other six religions typically taught in the curriculum. [13] [14] The University of Florida has begun offering studies in "Religion and Nature," [15] which is an academically inclusive way of referring to a broad range of beliefs that fall within the category of paganism.

We may admit that paganism is on the rise across the West, but how can we make a judgment about the importance of this phenomenon without first understanding paganism? The Cauldron, a prominent online pagan forum, has defined paganism in this way:

"One important thing to remember is that paganism isn't a religion any more than monotheism is a religion. Both paganism and monotheism are collective terms used to group very different religions that happen to share a few important classifying traits in common. For example, monotheism includes all the various forms of Judaism, Christianity and Islam (and many minor faiths). The beliefs of the individual religions grouped under the term 'pagan' probably vary even more than (say) Reform Judaism differs from Shiite Islam… You may have heard a number of definitions of paganism mentioned in books, on TV, and in newspapers and magazines. Most of these definitions are far too narrow… The common dictionary definition of paganism is a religion that isn't Jewish, Christian, or Islamic. With a slight modification, that's actually the best definition of a pagan religion the author has seen: A pagan religion is a religion that is not Jewish, Christian, or Islamic and self-identifies as pagan." [16]

Considerable information can be gleaned from this definition regarding neopaganism's history and beliefs. It should be noted from the above excerpt that neopaganism is primarily defined by what it is not. It does not derive from the three great monotheistic religions. By identifying itself in the negative, however, paganism ends up being a huge thing barely capable of cohesive positive identity. This brings up an important point, paganism is capable of containing within itself every other religious tradition that is not part of the Abrahamic religious triumvirate. [17] This can be confusing after considering that the monotheistic faiths all originated within just a small region of the world, but we must remember that humanity has only ever had two major ideas about religion. There are some basic elements of neopaganism that are general to all the different variations, and there is one major element in particular that we need to understand in order to gain a proper understanding of the great difference separating them them from monotheism. Specifically, we need to understand their competing conceptions of time and history. 

When one encounters modern pagan religions in census or encyclopedic material, one normally finds references to groups who have revived a form of ancient pantheism or set of ritual practices meant to resemble archaic pre-Christian belief systems. This simple definition of neopaganism helps us easily define Wicca and Heathenry as parts of the revival. However, the term "paganism" can also be used to refer to modern "New Age" belief systems because New Age spirituality, although not a direct revival of archaic customs, is usually a synthesis or reinterpretation of ideas and spiritual concepts that have been revived as a result of the more stereotypical forms of neopaganism. The New Age movement is only "new" in that it has no obvious ancient architecture, but it is still ancient as regards its basic worldview and how it answers big life questions. There are several elements that bind paganism and New Age spirituality together. 

Time & History 

The fundamental element binding all pagan ideologies together is their concept of time and history. Westerners are most familiar with the Christian conception of time as having a definite beginning and end, while history moves in a linear progression towards a final completion. The Christian view of time has had a deep effect on the populations who ascribe to it. It has caused those of us who are Western to see time as valuable and purposeful, and the concept of "history as progress" has come to be seen as inevitable and powerful. Although Westerners believe these elemental concepts, and take them for granted, this view is actually quite rare from a global perspective. The counter-concept of cyclical time and history is accepted by all non-Abrahamic worldviews. The cyclical concept assumes that time and history have no purpose beyond endlessly rotating in everlasting cycles represented by the annual seasons of death and regeneration. A particularly influential version of this view is the elaborate historical cycles of the Hindu calendar which contain cycles of days, years, and millennia. [18] The Mayan calendar is another representation of of time and history as repeating cycles. The cyclical concept inspires within believers the idea of a constant and immutable pattern of repeating forms, events, and people. The societies that result from this belief do not work towards an ultimate end because they do not think anything permanent can be accomplished. They assume everything will inevitably be destroyed with the advent of another cycle. [19]

Pagans usually embrace reincarnation as their understanding of the afterlife. [20] This is extrapolated from what they observe of death and regeneration cycles in the visible world. Just as the world ebbs and flows out of different cycles of time, a person's life force is thought to reenter the visible world in the next cycle to compensate for its loss in the last cycle. Characters are literally recycled over and over again in a never ending pattern of regenerated time. The Hindu conception of reincarnation is that a being may return in a different form based on what kind of life was lived in the last form. This spiritual innovation allowed for a religious justification for social hierarchy because the ruling class supposedly merited its position based on the virtue it exhibited in a previous life. The importance of individuality is therefore downplayed by the concept of reincarnation because it assumes every character has appeared in history before. However, paganism's timeless interpretation of history, and its assertion that nothing can actually change, has been largely destroyed since the rise of Christianity. 

Christianity's Conquests 

Christianity emerged in the early first century AD and grew rapidly despite widespread discrimination and persecution. Roman emperors spent several centuries trying to stamp out Christianity, but nothing could stop the new religion from spreading out of Jerusalem like a wild fire. The Roman Empire had lost its war with Christianity by AD 313 and issued the Edit of Milan. [21]  Christianity had nearly conquered the entire Mediterranean basin by the fourth century, and the ancient world found itself united under a single religion for the first time. [22] By AD 600, the Christian religion had grown out into regions the Roman Empire had never attempted to conquer. [23] Christ's followers had accomplished what centuries of Roman gold, swords, and legions could not, it tamed barbarians, religiously united the ancient world, and produced a new kingdom that would withstand and transcend all historical factors. All of Europe and Russia were converted in the following six centuries. [24] After successfully beating back several Islamic attacks, Christianity deepened its roots in Europe until 1492. [25] The discovery of the New World and rise of European colonial empires led to the spread of colonists, technology, and modern learning around the world, and Christianity was part of this diaspora. In 1900, Christianity looked as though it would soon dominate the planet and displace all its rivals. It had successfully infiltrated every continent and nearly every nation. The European heart of Christianity was experiencing its golden era, and its forward progress showed no signs of slowing. The stage had been set for a Christian epoch in which everyone would bow the knee to Christ. However, history did not play out as expected. 

Paganism's Return 

Although it could be argued that Christianity is still on its way to total domination, there is little doubt it is dying in its Western homeland. The reawakening of paganism in the West has resulted from the ruination of Western Civilization's traditional elements and their failed replacement in the aftermath of that ruin. 

The ruination resulted from the twentieth century's World Wars and Cold War that rocked its foundations. After the so called "Enlightenment" period, when materialism and biblical criticism developed, forces were put into motion leading to the development of various ideologies like Marxism and Fascism that began competing with Christianity for Western souls. Accelerating technological innovation made World War I the most devastating and cataclysmic war in history. Rocked by the savagery that civilized Western nations had been willing to inflict upon one another, people rapidly began losing faith in traditional Christianity's ability to unite them under a code of honor and civility, and they turned to rival ideologies. These ideologies exploded into World War II, destroyed Europe, and caused the collapse of the great European colonial empires through which the religiously, economically, and intellectually elite nations had influenced the less developed pagan nations. With their faith in religion and ideology shattered, Western people began losing faith in everything. The pillars of Western Civilization were seen to have failed (chiefly Christianity, science, and technology). The natural planetary aristocracy was lost as the empires fell into bankruptcy and neglect, and the coalition of nations who once passed judgment on the world's direction through rational Christian values devolved into a squabbling groups of amoral materialists ruled either by jaded individuals infected by ennui or those still possessed by nineteenth century ideological substitutes for the original Christian linear worldview. The European races have now exhausted their faith and lost confidence in themselves, their accomplishments, and their ideas. They turned first to debauched consumerist materialism, and are now slipping back into their deep pagan past after having judged their millennia long Christian history as a cause of disaster.

The replacement for Western Civilization's traditional elements can be traced back to the "Enlightenment" movement. Its writers were the first to challenge the biblical narrative and attempt to reorder the way humanity evaluated its world. Many of these writers introduced egalitarianism, undermined traditional government authority, and sought to tear down everything they perceived as standing in the way of liberation (including Christianity). The destructive seeds planted during the Enlightenment took many years to germinate and produce enough fruit to radically alter Western Civilization's beliefs and direction. The United States is an example of this progression. The US was nominally founded on Enlightenment principals, but its identity and culture were shaped more extensively by the King James Bible than any liberal writings for the first couple centuries of its existence. The seeds planted by Enlightenment radicals, however, eventually brought forth fruit. The true fruition of the Enlightenment came in the 1960s. That era's radicalism represented a rebellion against everything resembling traditional culture. The sixties were less about closet Marxist revolutionaries than the deconstruction of all authority structures and the rise of a new form of life, and ideal of life, which can be described as pagan. The hippie movement is an example of humanity losing faith in reality and attempting to drop out of history into a sub-real state of existence. The hippies imagined it might be possible to live in a state of timelessness through "sex, drugs, rock and roll," and they demonstrated this philosophy in slogans like "we will never grow old" and "trust no one over the age of 30." [26] This mentality represents a rebellion against time and history, and its resulting consequences and lessons, and it is a position adjacent total defeat. It is an attempt to abolish time and history so that one may live in constant blissful youth. Pleasure and youth have become sacred to the typical modern pagan American. In this sense, paganism has already conquered the West. 

Primitive Ontology 

Pagan metaphysics and ontology dominated before the emergence of Christianity, and it permeates all the pagan world religions that have influenced contemporary neopaganism. In his book 'The Myth of the Eternal Return,' Mircea Eliade explained paganism's view while using the term "primitive ontology" to describe it. He summarized it in three points after documenting and clarifying the views of the ancient pre-Christian peoples. 

Archetypes 

Firstly, primitive man believes himself to be real only in so much as he is imitating an archetype. A pagan believes nothing is real that does not correspond to a certain pre-established perfect ideal image. Eliade explains:

"Each of the examples cited in this present chapter reveals the same 'primitive' ontological conception: an object or an act becomes real only insofar as it imitates or repeats an archetype. Thus, reality is acquired solely through repetition or participation; everything which lacks an exemplary model is 'meaningless,' i.e. lacks reality. Men would thus have a tendency to become archetypal and paradigmatic. This tendency may well appear paradoxical, in the sense that the man of a traditional culture sees himself as real only to the extent that he ceases to be himself. In other words, he sees himself as real, i.e., as 'truly himself,' only, and precisely, in so far as he ceases to be so." [27]

Primitive ontological theory took its purest form in the Platonic dialogues through which the philosopher discussed a hypothetical realm in which the perfect and ideal form of all things resided. Everything that exists on earth, Plato contended, was modeled after an original pure form that exists in heaven; humans have interacted with the purest forms of everything during former lives, and therefore we remember and recognize pieces of our reality by recalling the original heavenly object we once encountered. [28] These original perfect Platonic forms are equivalents to the archetypes that saturated ancient minds. Plato believed a thing, living or nonliving, could only be defined as real in as much as it paralleled and reflected the attributes of the perfect heavenly version of itself. Similarly, primitive man believed he existed only in so much as he imitated a perfect man. This perfect imitated man was interacted with and expressed during the ritualistic mythological activities of pagan peoples. Plato was the ultimate archetype apologist. He did not create his own worldview so much as explain the unorganized set of beliefs that are organic within pagan humanity. 

Abolishing Time 

The second part of pagan ontology is primitive man's desire to abolish time. Although it may seem counterintuitive to suggest that mankind would seek to abolish time, the spiritual history of man is littered with evidence that humanity has lived in terror of time and history. Rituals and archetypal imitations allow for participants to exit profane time into the transcendent realm of sacred time. "Sacred time" can be a confusing term. It is a state of timelessness in which man finds himself entirely connected with a pure form, and he then begins to live entirely within the archetype held by his people to be eternal and unmoving. This connection with the pure form archetypes can be achieved only by aligning oneself entirely with the form (in most situations a person cannot fully align oneself to the form because they are more complex than a simple archetype). This alignment is accomplished during constructed rituals designed for the purpose. Eliade wrote: "Though the paradox of rite, profane time and duration are suspended. And the same holds true for all repetitions, i.e., all imitations of archetypes; through such imitation, man is projected into the mythical epoch in which the archetypes were first revealed." [29] Through the many recreation myths that can be identified throughout paganism, pagans believe they can re-begin time and even participate directly in the original creation process. By defeating time in such a manner, negating it by recreating the world, pagan people believe they can transcend time during certain moments. 

Cyclical History  

Primitive man cannot tolerate history because doing so would lead to the intolerable acceptance of its apparent meaninglessness: "life is a tale told by an idiot." Therefore, pagan man desires to abolish history through rebirth and repetition. This allows for purpose to be assigned to familiar event milestones in time's endless cyclical rotation. Because everything in history must comply with a designated meaning established by the pagan mythology of cyclical history, pagan societies actively mold events into the recognizable archetypal mythological patterns that they believe reoccurred from the past so that a prearranged meaning can be fused over the new event. This process reconciles the contradiction of history through the distortion of new events in order to allow pagans to feel the comfort of not having to deal with something unprecedented or unexpected.  

Contemporary Application 

Understanding these elements of primitive man's ontology makes it possible to decipher the modernity and culture it has constructed. Since the Enlightenment, the ideology of the West has shifted from a Christian perspective to an agnostic secular and materialistic one that has sought to displace man's spirituality. The German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche recognized what was nearly completed during his own time through the dismissal of God and dismantling of spirituality:

"God is dead. God remains dead. And we have killed him. How shall we comfort ourselves, the murderers of all murderers? What was holiest and mightiest of all that the world has yet owned has bled to death under our knives: who will wipe this blood off us? What water is there for us to clean ourselves? What festivals of atonement, what sacred games shall we have to invent? Is not the greatness of this deed too great for us? Must we ourselves not become gods simply to appear worthy of it?" [30]

Nietzsche was a prophet. He recognized that humanity had killed God, and that we would establish ourselves as new gods to compensate for the loss. Man had to establish himself as the new source of the sacred because the archetype of perfection, from which all sacred time and meaning flowed, had been torn from our civilization. Man would have to turn his attention away from heaven and reconstruct the fulfillment for his deepest desires out of the material plane from which he had stripped away the sacred. Christianity long ago wiped out the pagan Western religions. The non-linear polytheistic primitive ontology of Europe had been extinguished with the conversion of Sweden in 1164 and subsequent depaganization of the Scandinavian people. [31] Having destroyed the pagan gods with all their rituals and spirituality, the Enlightenment and nineteenth century work of "murdering" the Christian God left modern man hopelessly alone in the cosmos to find sacredness for himself. Although the murder of God may have taken place in the late 1800s, it took considerably more time for the average Westerner to learn of the crime. Thus, the spiritual vandalism of the Enlightenment did not fully undermine society on a civilizational level until nearly a century later after two catastrophic wars destroyed material man's hope that technology and "progress" could usher humanity into an earthly utopia. Christianity allows men to face profane time because it promises a purpose to our earthly sojourn. [32] Under Christianity, profane time ceased to be a kaleidoscope of senseless acts repeating endlessly. Time was converted into a story of tragedies and victories culminating in a final triumph: "We know all things work together for good to them that love God, to them who are the called according to his purpose." [33] Post-God and post-wars, time again became intolerable for humanity without hope in progress or some epoch of perfection, an idea borrowed from Christianity but quickly exhausted without it, such as that promised by socialism or technology. Like the primitives of the pre-Christian era, modern people were looking for an escape into sacred time in order to numb the intolerable advances of meaningless profane time. New archetypes had to be created so that man could once more escape time by replicating and connecting to the perfect and transcendent forms of the universe. A new mythology had to emerge to portray and ritualize the new archetypes humanity could imitate. 

Youth As Archetype 

Modern Western culture is often described as being obsessed with youth. A 2010 Telegraph article claimed that "youth obsessed culture is making the older generation invisible." [34] As of 2012, Google logs 20 million hits for the term "youth obsessed," while philosopher "Frederich Nietzsche" only gets about 12 and a half million results. Most modern people are probably unaware of their own youth obsession despite consistently acting on it (it has become almost subconscious). I believe this obsession with youth has developed into a modern reinterpretation of sacred time.

Youth has become the new sacred time because of its perceived immunity to the effects of profane time. It is now rare for young people to die. War has not been a major Western killer for several generations, and medical care has advanced significantly. The historic killers of young people have been shackled. The mortality rate for Americans aged 15 to 24 has fallen by more than 50 percent since 1935. [35] This drastic reduction in death has been supplemented by the fact that most young adults do not work very hard to support themselves. Combined, these factors have produced an image of youth as an almost surreal epoch of life. Young people are admonished to "live it up" during the "best time of their life." They are told they will eventually become burdened by responsibilities and then their lives will become too serious to enjoy. Instead of seeing youth as a time of preparation for the future, our society has reinterpreted it into the central episode of life. This appears to be a natural development from our having "murdered" God and lost our hope in progress. Life has become about life, and thus the more life a person still has left to live the more existence and purpose they possess. Thus youth, an era defined by beauty and health and freedom, is glorified as an escape from the apparent meaninglessness of profane time. The pagan escapism now associated with youth in Western culture is not difficult to see. Alphaville's 1984 song 'Forever Young' is a particularly poignant and popular expression of this sentiment:

"Let's dance in style, let's dance for a while, Heaven can wait we're only watching the skies. Hoping for the best, but expecting the worst, Are you gonna drop the bomb or not? Let us die young or let us live forever. We don't have the power, but we never say never. Sitting in the sandpit, life is a short trip The music's for the sad man. Can you imagine when this race is won? Turn our golden the faces into the sun, Praising our leaders, we're getting in tune, The music's played by the madman. Forever young, I want to be forever young. Do you really want to live forever? Forever, and ever. Some are like water, some are like the heat, Some are a melody, and some are the beat, Sooner or later they all will be gone, Why don't they stay young? It's so hard to get old without a cause, I don't want to perish like a fading horse, Youth's like diamonds in the sun, And diamonds are forever. So many adventures given up today, So many songs we forgot to play, So many dreams swinging out of the blue, Oh let it come true." [36]

Although 'Forever Young' was written within and about the Cold War and its political and nuclear possibilities, it also presents a deeper perspective about our modern worldview. Several of the song's lines represent our contemporary society's glorification of youth as an escape from history and time. 

The line "Let’s dance in style, let’s dance for a while" seems to suggest "dance" as an escape from the worry of having to "watch the skies." This mentality parallels the pagan's inability to reconcile the cruel events of time with meaning, and thus hedonistic entertainment is used as an escape. "Let us die young or let us live forever:" dancing, pleasures, and the whimsical nature of youth are the only things worth living for. Youth is a state of timelessness, and thus it is offered as the only satisfactory alternative to "living forever." "Living forever" is an escape from profane time in which the concerns of the world drag on (the meaningless struggle between superpowers). "It’s so hard to get old without a cause, I don't want to perish like a fading horse:" the terror of profane time is apparent in this verse in which aging, facing life, is seen as hard and pointless. It has no meaning, and there is no reason to face life by getting older. "Turn our golden faces into the sun, Youth is like diamonds in the sun, and diamonds are forever:" their faces are golden as they are deified in youth. They have value as young people independent of their achievement or effect (archetypal value). However, that value is contingent on their youth remaining. Youth is "forever" because the young live in a state of timelessness, youth outside time (sacred time). "So many adventures given up today, So many songs we forgot to play, So many dreams are swinging out of the blue, Oh, let them come true:" In the state of youth people have adventures and dreams that bring beauty to life. Dreams are timeless because they represent hopes that young people have their whole lives to make reality, and thus they bring beauty to life without ever materializing. They are perfect forms without actually existing. However, when sacred time is exited, or realized as being anything but true sacred time, some of the music and dreams of youth are left unmaterialized as a result of profane time's crude chance and natural limitations. However, with infinite time, or a timeless state, nothing is left undone or unreal (which would leave it as less than a perfect archetype form). 

The great archaic religions of the West were developed and articulated around the mythology of Greek and Roman pantheons. Various lessons and insights about life were communicated in these conglomerations of stories and legends. The heroes of the 'Iliad' were archetypal warriors who communicated the paradigm of ancient pagan fighting men. They became godlike by fighting and occasionally defeating the gods. Gods dwell within time but overcome it through their immortality. Societies and individuals take on legitimacy through the imitation of archetypal forms represented by the gods. Zeus and Hera's marriage granted legitimacy to human marriage, it was the "true marriage" patterned by lowly human couples. The prowess, rage, and fanaticism of Mars in battle demonstrated what warrior men strove to become. Christians often judge pagan gods for their seemingly childish emotions and immoral behavior, but these pagan deities were not meant to be imitated as ethical examples but as archetypal representations of life as it existed or could exist. The gods of ancient Greece and Rome offered no cosmic eternal salvation, and ancient men did not look for them to provide it. To ancient pagans, things were "as they should be" because they were "as they must be." The eternal return of cyclical time guaranteed that neither death nor life nor decline nor progress could attain permanent victory. 

Although contemporary man mocks the archaic gods of the Greek and Roman worlds, we too have developed a pantheon unique to our materialist and youth obsessed cultures. In the disguise of celebrity we have created for ourselves new gods towards whom to bow. Movie stars and other famous people appear to be outside time because they seem never to age or demonstrate weakness, and they appear constantly beautiful. Like events carried out ille tempore among the myths of primitive religions, the Hollywood cinema life grants legitimacy to socio-cultural trends. What appears in film becomes an archetypal pattern of what is beautiful and "real." If some aspect of human behavior or identity remains outside film's legitimization then it remains unreal and is relegated to profane time. The consequences of certain behaviors can be nullified or ignored in film. The actors and characters who help communicate our new mythology become immune to profane time. They live the wildest fantasies of the human heart in liberty and freedom. They become immortal through screen. They become gods who no longer play by the same rules as commoners. However, our contemporary society adheres to the doctrines of social mobility and human equality, and thus stories of average people becoming superstars has diluted the gulf between gods and humans while producing a feeling among common people that they too can become immortal and dwell in a state of sacred time. Unlike the pagans of old, who believed they could only participate in sacred time, modern man has devised a way in which he believes it possible to abdicate profane time and totally enter the sacred. While the great mass of youth settle into the habit of imitating our celebrity gods, at certain points of their lives (partying, prom night, weddings, sex, drugs, vacations, etc) some of them become so obsessed with escaping reality that they openly pursue the nullification of themselves in favor of total imitation. This phenomenon is responsible for the epidemic of anorexia in which teenagers and twenty somethings destroy themselves in an effort to enter sacred time by looking like those they believe have successfully exited it. Technology has accelerated this tendency. Through photo editing, cosmetics, camera manipulation, isolated lifestyles, diet drugs, plastic surgery, and other means society has constructed a race of models, actors, and celebrities who appear immune from the effects of reality and time. Shopping mall clothing stores like Victoria's Secret flood shoppers with images of perfect archetypal forms of people who allegedly exist but whose appearances are often digitally enhanced to almost unattainable levels. These people become like the gods and heroes of ancient mythology who have escaped the unfortunate reality of life and become worthy of imitation and worship. Like the gods of the Greek and Roman pantheon, our modern gods are free to act in absurd and decadent manners because of the wealth, beauty, and famous names they possess. Modern celebrities become capable of the super human through a combination of factors that allow them to live in a manner that most humans cannot. When we compare celebrities to the ancient gods we see how our society has revived a version of the pagan pantheon in the modern world. There have always been individuals who were regarded as role models to be imitated, but during the Christian era these figures were only seen in that capacity in as much as they conformed to the image of Jesus. The difference between the old Christian way and that of the ancient and modern pagan perspectives is that our contemporary gods conform to nothing but their own whims, and they create and define the sacred simply by participating in those whims.

The desire to dwell in youth becomes stronger if we accept that youth represents archetypal sacred "real" life. If youth is the highest form of life then we should expect our civilization to pursue it at all costs because it is the only salvation from the meaningless existence of profane time. In fact, we do find our society's people pursuing youth in a host of ways. The primary means of trying to achieve this is by imitating the elements typically associated with childhood. Some of these have already been discussed: beauty, health, an active lifestyle, freedom from responsibility, and the pursuit of adventure and excitement. 

Although it would be impossible to exhaustively document the growing trend of youth obsession in our culture, there is one easily measured variation of it that sufficiently demonstrates its existence: the growth and acceptance of plastic surgery. During the five years between 1997 and 2001, the American Society of Plastic Surgeons reported that the number of procedures undertaken had increased by 304%. [37] Such a dramatic rise represents how society has been moving closer to a greater investment in youthfulness, even when this youthfulness is just a fake version of the authentic.

The revival of paganism in the West has been seen by many contemporary observers as a harmless development, and some have even seen it as a sign that humanity is finally abandoning the "wicked" and "unnatural" practices Christianity foisted upon mankind. These commentators see the rise of paganism as just another outgrowth of an accepting diverse culture. Because these same people consider diversity a virtue, they actively encourage the collapse of Christianity and its replacement and subjugation under the neopagan and New Age movements that have recently sprung up. This kind of dramatic shift in our cultural makeup, however, would have a dramatic impact on the future direction of our society and world. 

Considering the subject of youth as sacred time, it would seem that anything contradicting the sacred transcendent status of youth would be attacked or shunned. Indeed, we now see that trend emerging in our society's reaction to elderly people. The initial infusion of ageist sentiment appeared in the late 1960s with the emergence of the counter culture. This ideology manifested itself in phrases like "trust no one other 30" and the Boomer generation's assertion that it would never grow old. The elderly have traditionally been recognized, by almost all societies, as the stabilizing element enforcing rules and customs upon the young in hopes of grounding them in reality and stopping them from collapsing social stability by indulging in their passions and utopian dreams. Increasingly, however, the elderly have been relegated to "geriatric ghettos" and isolated from the rest of society in nursing homes and run down government housing units while being ignored by the mass of youth obsessed people who view the old as little more than an unproductive nuisance. [38] This ageist behavior is unsurprising because the external appearance of the elderly is enough to remind us that youth is temporary and cannot provide us with the eternal salvation we seek. This phenomenon can also be seen in popular culture. The 2004 movie 'The Notebook' represents youth as sacred time. The film's elderly couple finds their relationship suspended in a fluctuating limbo while the corresponding younger couple is developing and consummating. Only in the end of the film does the elderly couple gain life and remembrance by recalling the events of their youth. As soon as the memory of youthful events are lost, and the reliving of them through dance ceases, the old couple's sacred reality is lost and replaced by profane age. The couple's youth was the true reality which was destroyed by the age and frailty represented by the wife's memory loss.

Paganism is ahistorical by nature. Because of the belief in cyclical time and repeating nature of events, if becomes impossible and undesirable for pagan peoples to remember and utilize history. For pagans, every event has happened before and will be repeated infinitely in the future. Life's events and actors are fitted within particular packaged archetypes. New historical events, therefore, are forgotten as unique after being compressed into a prefabricated story that often bears little resemblance to the actual events that took place. Mircea Eliade discussed how easily and quickly the process of ignoring and mythologizing history can occur:

"Sometimes, though very rarely, an investigator chances to come upon the actual transformation of an event into myth. Just before the last war, the Romanian folklorist Constanti Brailoiu had occasion to record an admirable ballad in a village of Maramures. Its subject was a tragedy of love: a young suitor had been bewitched by a mountain fairy, and a few days before he was to get married, the fairy, driven by jealousy, had flung him from a cliff. The next day, shepherds found his body and, caught in a tree, his hat. They carried the body back to the village and his fiancée came to meet them; upon seeing her lover dead, she poured out a funeral lament, full of mythological allusions, a liturgical text of rustic beauty. Such was the content of the ballad. In the course of recording the variants that he was able to collect, the folklorist tried to learn the period when the tragedy had occurred; he was told that it was a very old story, which had happened 'long ago.' Pursuing his inquires; however, he learned that the event had taken place not quiet forty years earlier. He finally even discovered that the heroine was still alive. He went to see her and heard the story from her own lips. It was a quiet commonplace tragedy: one evening her lover had slipped and fallen over a cliff… at the funeral, his fiancée, with the other women of the village, had repeated the customary ritual lamentations without the slightest reference to the mountain fairy… Thus, despite the presence of the principal witness, a few years had sufficed to strip the event of all historical authenticity, to transform it into a legendary tale… When the folklorist drew the villager's attention to the authentic version, they replied that the old women had forgotten… It was the myth that told the truth: the real story was already a falsification." [39]

Eliade later recounted how the tragic story had been transformed from an authentically new event into a myth that had already existed in the village. The actual historical event had been converted and blended into the region's mythology. Time had been nullified. History had been eliminated. Because Christianity is the only idea capable of fully saving men from time (by redeeming it through a historical savior), its removal from our society has caused men to rebel against time and history to an accelerated degree. This sinks us deeper and deeper into the darkness of a kind of half reality until true history is entirely lost in a myth. 

Paganism's attempt to eliminate history has a counterpart in its archetypes attempting to eliminate human individuality. The ancient heroes appear very much alike. The ancient kings sought to portray themselves as gods because they believed they were reincarnations of past god kings. They became nearly unreal in their own records because the language used to represent them was so typographical that it became indistinguishable from the descriptions of mythical characters. This archetypal representation contrasts with biblical and Christian characters who are often portrayed as marred by faults and individual neuroses. King David, "a man after God's own heart," was characterized by many failings throughout his reign. Such a weak image of a monumental national character would have been unlikely to emerge among the ancient pagan kings. This pagan concept of non-individuality has now already begun conquering our contemporary society's mentality. Teenage suicide, anorexia, and depression rates have begun soaring due to a self-esteem collapse. This collapse is due to teenagers building their sense of self-worth on the archetypal ideal forms presented by our new culture of youth obsession and unrealistic beauty. New technology and media innovations have allowed producers and salesman to convert normal looking people into unrealistic gods and goddesses of fitness and beauty. The constant barrage of images of flawless people has produced archetypal "perfect people" meant to be simultaneously out of reach and capable of being imitated (usually in order to inspire a purchase). The mythical archetype has become "reality" via marketing, and young and old alike are measuring themselves against this artificial image.  

Negative Impact 

Since Christianity conquered Rome and Western Civilization, morality has been established as man's guiding principle. The Christian concept of a demanding ethical God was established as the social center. The Christian God was the only deity who demanded ethical living as an act of loyal service. Pagan deities were little more than super human immortals, and their whims and passions were unstable and constantly changing. Their fickle nature never helped humanity raise an ethical standard based upon a supernatural ideal. The "right" was justified by law and force. Love was not the foundation of marriage, and sex was not limited to marriage in theory nor practice. [40] Murder and robbery had no eternal consequences, and there was no "all seeing eye" prepared to punish the wicked. Morality was subjective within ancient paganism and held no high place in society. Even modern morality, divorced as it is from religion, is the direct result of the Christian culture upon which our civilization emerged. If paganism reconquers the West we should expect to see a collapse in morality that would undermine and eventually destroy our civilization. A repaganized West would lose a firm morality whose foundations were beyond criticism or doubt. The history of the twentieth century has served as an example of what the post-God West can and will look like. Formally Christian nations were usurped by totalitarian powers during World War I. German fascism rose to power and caused millions of deaths. Communism overthrew the Czars and launched the largest persecution of Christianity in history while systematically murdering millions. Both these movements attempted to replace Christianity with a new pseudo-religion mirroring the pagan worldview. [41]  The fall of Christian morality in Germany and Russia brought accelerating atrocities that reached their zenith in the post-war Soviet Union. Only after these horrors did secular Western society realize that morality was necessary, and that it could use Nazism and Communism as scapegoats to unite its people around the demonization of those two "gods" while never actually slowing its own march toward paganism. [42]

A resurgence of paganism could also be expected to mark the end of benevolent government. Pagan governments "lord power" over their subjects out of lust for more. [43] Few, if any, archaic pagan governments aspired to universal principals of benevolence. Those empires were ruthless Machiavellian real politik systems. Christian emperors were among the first with a systematic sense of higher destiny. The wide sweeping aspirations of modern communists, socialists, commonwealthists, fascists, and liberal democrats owe their sense of meaning, purpose, and evangelistic spirit to the impulses that arose from Christianity. The modern obsession with democracy is an example of a politically benevolent secular religion that is passionately pursued around the world. Through the pursuit of democracy, and so-called "march of democracy," justifications can be found for pursuing the aims of governments and sub-government interest groups. However, the cult of democracy also enforces a certain ethical code upon groups who seek to use it for their own aims. If paganism is allowed to undermine the Christian roots upon which all of these modern ideologies have been built, democracy included, then benevolent governments will decay into cynical power structures. The concept of a transcendent ethical system will lose its legitimacy as the Christian foundations of that idea rot away. 

Conclusion  

In conclusion, the revival and rise of neopaganism in the West is a real phenomenon threatening the moral, intellectual, and spiritual core of our civilization. For over a thousand years the West has led the world in nearly every aspect of human existence. It has innovated towards greater modes across the metaphysical and carnal dimensions. Our civilization's incredible achievements can be credited to the superior worldview Christianity brought to it after the first century. Only by destroying the archaic pagan worldview was the foundation laid for the civilization that has created and maintained our modern world. The recent advancements paganism has made in numerous forms poses a threat to the West's core. Paganism, though dormant for millennia, is still real. If it is allowed to seize control of the future it will spell the end of everything humanity has been building for the last two thousand years. 

 

NOTES 

[1] Michael Whitby. 'Christian Persecution, Martyrdom, and Orthodoxy.' 2006. Oxford University Press. www.questia.com/read. Accessed April 7, 2012

[2] The phrase "sleeping dragon" is a fitting representation of paganism. The dragon was an important symbol in much of pagan mythology, and today it is common in pagan sub-cultures. Paganism can rightly be referred to as "sleeping" because, while it was seemingly wiped out in the conversion of Europe, the attraction it retained on the human heart has started reasserting itself. It has revived in modern times and shown that it was only dormant beneath the Christian edifice constructed over its ruins. 

[3] Religion Link. 'Pagans go mainstream: Wiccans and Druids and goddesses - oh, my!' http://www.religionlink.com/tip_091020.php. October 20, 2009. Accessed February 28, 2012.

[4] Ibid

[5] Reincarnation can be described as a belief that post-death the human soul returns to earth in either another human body or that of another living being. It is a recycling of souls. 

[6] Pew Forum. 'Many Americans Mix Multiple Faiths: Eastern, New Age Beliefs Widespread.' December 9, 2009. http://www.pewforum.org/Other-Beliefs-and-Practices/Many-Americans-Mix-Multiple-Faiths.aspx#3 

[7] Ibid 

[8] Ibid 

[9] Ibid 

[10] Fox News. 'Wiccan Pentacle Added to Emblems Allowed on Headstones.' http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,267887,00.html. Published April 23, 2007. Accessed February 28, 2012.

[11] 'Constitution: National Pagan Police Association' (2009). Article 1 3.2. 'Aims.' http://policepaganassociation.org/app/download/5777345924/PPA+Constitution+2011+NEW%21.pdf. Accessed March 3, 2012.

[12] Nick Allen. 'Pagan Police allowed to take Halloween and Summer Solstice off work.' July 16, 2009. http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/newstopics/howaboutthat/5842330/Pagan-police-allowed-to-take-Halloween-and-summer-solstice-off-work.html. Accessed March 3, 2012. 

[13] 'Schools get go-ahead to teach Paganism alongside major religions.' http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1328080/Schools-ahead-teach-Paganism-alongside-major-religions.html. Accessed March 3, 2012.

[14] Ibid 

[15] University of Florida: College of Liberal Arts and Sciences. http://web.religion.ufl.edu/graduate.html. Accessed March 3, 2012.

[16] The Cauldron: a Pagan Forum. 'A Pagan Primer: What is Paganism?' http://www.ecauldron.net/newpagan.php. 2010. Accessed March 9, 2012. 

[17] It is fitting to use the term "triumvirate" to refer to Christianity, Judaism, and Islam because they are the world history movers. No form of paganism has ever held as much influence as these three religions, and paganism has rarely every defeated them in any arena (until now, perhaps). The events caused by direct or indirect impact of the "triumvirate" are the events that have shaped the world, and thus the Abrahamic religions are similar to the conflict of three rulers. 

[18] 'The Hindu Theory of World Cycles: In the Light of Modern Science.' Baharna.com/karma/yuga.htm. Accessed April 7, 2012

[19] Keith Hunter. 'The Long Count Mayan calendar System.' Ancient World Mysteries. 2008. www.anciant-world-mysteries.com/long-count.html. Accessed April 7, 2012. 

[20] 'What is Paganism? Covenant of Unitarian Universalist Pagans.' www.cuups.org./education/whatispaganism.pdf. Accessed April 7, 2012.

[21] Catholic Encyclopedia: 'Constantine the Great.' http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/04295c.htm. 2009. Accessed March 9, 2012. 

[22] 'Maps - Christianity: The Spread of Christianity During 200 - 400 AD.' http://www.worldreligions.psu.edu/maps-christianity.htm. Accessed March 9, 2012. 

[23] Ibid. 'The Spread of Christianity during 400 – 600 AD.'

[24] 'The Origin of Russian Christianity. New Advent Catholic Encyclopedia.' 2009. www.newadvent.org/cathen/13253a.htm. Accessed April 7, 2012.

[25] John Christensen. 'The Peopling of the World: Europe, the Expansion of Islam into Europe.' http://sjohn30.tripod.com/id4.html. Accessed April 7, 2012. 

[26] Jack Weinberg. San Francisco Chronicler. 1965. Bartlebe.com. Accessed April 27, 2012.

[27] Mircea Eliade. 'The Myth of the Eternal Return.' Princeton Press. 2005. New York. Page 34.

[28] Ian Bruce. Platonic Dialogues - find backup: 'Plato’s Theory of Forms.' 1998. 

[29] Mircea Eliade. 'The Myth of the Eternal Return.' Princeton Press. 2005. New York. Page 35. 

[30] Frederic Nietzsche. 'The Gay Science.' Section 125. Cambridge University Press. 2001. Schon. 2004.

[31] Romans 8:28 (King James Version) 

[32] The Telegraph. 'Youth Obsessed Culture is Making the Older Generation Invisible, says Tonya Byron.' http://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/news/7544562/Youth-obsessed-culture-is-making-the-older-generation-invisible-says-Tanya-Byron.html. April 2, 2010. Accessed March 13, 2012.

[33] 'Adolescents and Young Adults Aged 15-24 Years by Race, United States, 1935-2007.' http://www.hrsa.gov/healthit/images/mchb_youthmortality_pub.pdf. 

[34] Lyrics Freak. 'Alphaville - Forever Young.' Song Writers: Bob Dylan, Jim Cregan, Rod Stewart, Kevin Savegar. http://www.lyricsfreak.com/a/alphaville/forever+young_20006842.html. Accessed: March 13, 2012.

[35] '2001 ASAPS Statistics: Nearly 8.5 Million Cosmetic Procedures.' New York, NY. February 20, 2002. http://www.surgery.org/media/news-releases/2001-asaps-statistics--nearly-85-million-cosmetic-procedures. Accessed April 7, 2012.

[36] Jack Anderson. 'Youth Oriented Society Shuns the Elderly.' Gadsden Times. http://news.google.com/newspapers?nid=1891&dat=19740822&id=6lkgAAAAIBAJ&sjid=jtYEAAAAIBAJ&pg=4571,4511240. August 23, 1974. 

[37] Mircea Eliade. 'The Myth of the Eternal Return.' Princeton Press. 1954. Pages 44 - 45.

[38] Daniel R. Heimbach. 'An Assessment of Pagan Sexual Morality.' The Council on Biblical Manhood and Womenhood. http://www.cbmw.org/Resources/Articles/An-Assessment-of-Pagan-Sexual-Morality. Accessed April 27, 2012.

[39] Harun Yahya. 'The Pagan Roots of the Fascist Culture.' http://www.islamdenouncesantisemitism.com/thepagan.htm. Accessed April 6, 2012.

[40] 'Insights with Rene Girard.' http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BNkSBy5wWDk&feature=relmfu. Hoover Institution. December 9, 2009. Accessed April 6, 2012.

[41] Matthew 20:25 (King James Version)

[42] A reference to the theory put forward concerning American style democracy in James Truslow Adams' 'The March of Democracy.'