I. Rejecting the label of "Pagan"

A few years ago, one of us had what struck him as being a strange conversation online with one of the leaders of a local Egyptian Traditionalist group. The person who was representing that group objected to the use of the word "Pagan" to describe the House. This struck us as odd, because the word was coined specifically to cover the non-Judeo-Christian faiths of the Roman Empire, of which Egypt had been a part.

But, you know, the word was really not coined with love. It was applied briefly by the Christian Church to the older religions, before that church suppressed their observance. It is almost as if Judaism had been persecuted out of existence, and 2000 years later, people started calling themselves by that unfortunate "K word", on the basis that it was applied to Jews toward the end.

That though alone, while amusing, would not be reason enough to discard the label "Pagan". I held onto it for a while, out of the hope that the familiarity of the word, would help people find their way here, when they did a keyword search. The idea was, that people interested in paying their respects to the Olympians in something resembling a traditional fashion, would be looking for "Hellenic Pagan" groups, for lack of a better phrase to search under.

In a logical world, that would be a good thought. But, as the leader of that Egyptian group so rightly pointed out to me, this is not a logical world. A subculture has arisen, in the last 70 years, and attached itself to the word "Pagan", at least here in the United States. One might hope that people would be able to tell the difference between the original Paganism, and the modern pretender to that name, but one would hope in vain, more often than not.

Elsewhere, we give the reader a taste of some of the past antics of the "Pagan community", that we'd like to not see happen here. This sort of thing, is why we refuse the name of "Pagan", now. Hold onto the label, and you hold onto that strange and unhappy "Pagan" world of psychic fantasies, and irrational rages, and the unstable people who live in it. That was never what I was looking for, as I worked to establish the Shrine, but it certainly is what I ended up getting.

One could fight for the acceptance of the original meaning of the word "Pagan", minus the possible derogatory connotations, but why? On this subject, that Egyptian group is right, and experience has convinced me of it. This is an uphill battle, with no end in sight, and even if I should succeed, what will I end up winning that will have been worth the trouble?

Better, more descriptive terms? How about Hellenic and Roman Traditionalists? Or, just simply Hellenists? Christo-Hellenic Synchretists? All terms that will be understood, without the false implication that witchcraft may follow.

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