What is a Pagan? (You're Probably Wrong)

Pagan is a vague and nebulous grouping term for a number of religions, from neopagan faiths to some ancient indigenous religions. Why does the community fight so much over what it means and who gets to use it? Let's take a look.

Special thanks as always to GaelicNox for their amazing channel art!

Sources:

[I_scribbles]

"Christains are weird, okay" 🤣 love IT!

[ジャッスVT]

I definitely agree that pagan is an identity, and it's just pointless to argue about who's "really" pagan and who's not, cause if you identify as a pagan, boom, you're pagan, and if you don't, you're not. Pagan is too vague a word to argue about who counts or not.
I don't consider myself a pagan, but I do consider myself as having some pagan practices. I dunno if that's weird or not? I practice Shinto and worship the greek gods; my Shinto practises aren't pagan, but I do consider my worship of the Greek gods pagan I guess? I mostly just call myself a polytheist cause labels are hard.
I knew that the word pagan originally had something to do with living in the country or something like that but I didn't know anything else about it's history, I'm glad I could learn something new!
Thank you for the wonderful vid~

[dahliawolf]

As a polytheist, I rejected the "pagan" label long ago.

[TheGoatfootGothi]

This video has articulated points I've told to other neopagans for years, to a very mixed response. Often it would devolve into a small argument of who is policing what terms to call one another, when that wasn't the point being made at all. So major props for this video. Here is to hoping it finds the reception it needs.

[MyaKHamilton]

I've seen this argument so many times in groups on FB. I do call myself a pagan but mostly I refer to myself as a Loki worshipper because non pagans / polytheists don't know the lore, so I find it easier to just explain about one or two Gods then to have to go into a whole conversation about what Pagan means. Now, when it comes to my fellow pagans I'm not a real Pagan because I'm a Loki worshipper in some of their eyes.

[BrightElk]

I think debating the meaning of a word that can have multiple meanings is kind of silly. There is this thing called context which matters. I do agree with your views on not applying it on others who reject it. You get to choose who you are. Not the other way around.

[mikeyrambo]

I don't agree whith labels I have always considered myself as just someone who fallows the old ways and keeps them going on so that we may educate the next generation just like my ancestors did.

[emmapelfrey]

Have you ever considered enabling community captioning / writing out captioning for your videos? Much love <3

[historymythology]

Anybody Who Does Not Considers These Three aka Allah, Yaweh & Jesus as god.

[IkedaHakubi]

They you can judge someone by their enemies. You must be doing good work, or they would not hate you so.

[ArielRyanBautista]

What do you think of augustus sol invictus?

[leafhawkstudiosofficial]

To be honest, I prefer to refer to myself as "Norse Polytheist, " and that's it, honestly; I don't really feel like using the term pagan, though it almost feels "wrong" to toss it away when norse polytheism has been under thay label for so long.

[AM-gmjg]

I will label myself as a polytheist since pagan used to be a slur (just learned that from you tbh) plus, I worship almost all the norse pantheon of gods but I do feel a bit more close to Heimdall and Odin (and very recently Thor) but I do believe all the other gods exist as well as other gods of other faiths (except the Abrahamic god, I'll treat him as if he doesn't exist, talk about being ignored, plus, his followers attack me on regular basis so yeah, he's bad)

[madmonkee]

A pagan is anyone who believes in any form of plural deity.
It's quite a simple word.

[marocat]

Its like words like gayreally, toobmuch prople are affected some clsiming slurs bach and some dont.
So its like that, personally more open christian believes are a minority and adopt that, and hinfuism is a damn worldreligion, islam too if it may quslify with having animalistic beliefs. Preference really.

[michaelfulton]

For the first time since I have dove into the conspiracy realm. I asked myself, is pagan bad? Can someone provide some real references and where I can see the other side?

[hikiwa]

Does anybody know a community for Zoroastrians who weren't born as Parsis or Iranians/Persians? I'd appreciate it. :)

[Mr_EE]

Hello my friend, I've watched this video too deepen my understanding of Paganism. One thing i could not ignore is calling Christians weird, I'd appreciate if you do not repeat this again. God bless

[afreakaboucher]

Christians are weird ok ❤😂😂😂😂😂 you can say that again