98 Fun Facts About Paganism

The Latin pagus, a country district, is the root of pagan and of which other English word?

Peasant came through the French paysan from the same Latin pagus; a paganus was first a villager and, in Roman army slang, a civilian, the sense Christians probably borrowed for outsiders.

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

Hellenes meant Greeks, yet for centuries the word marked a pagan, so Christian Greek-speakers called themselves Romans instead.

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

Augustine of Hippo wrote it to answer pagans who blamed the sack of 410 on Rome's abandonment of its old gods.

Which Roman emperor, raised a Christian, tried to restore the old gods in the 360s?

Julian revived animal sacrifice and earned the nickname the Apostate, but a spear wound on campaign in Persia killed him after 20 months as emperor, and his revival died with him.

Which country, the last pagan state in Europe, officially converted to Christianity only in 1387?

Lithuania's grand duke Jogaila accepted baptism to marry Poland's young queen and take its crown, then had his own people baptised in 1387.

The Gaelic festival Samhain marks the beginning of which season?

Winter: Samhain opened the dark half of the year, when the boundary with the world of the dead was thought to thin, and its night became Halloween.

At which Gaelic festival were cattle driven between bonfires before going out to summer pasture?

Beltane, on 1 May, opened the summer: the fires were meant to guard the herds from disease, a custom still seen in Ireland in the 19th century.

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

Brigid: historians suspect the saint and her feast Christianised an older festival of a goddess of the same name, tied to lambing and the first signs of spring.

Lughnasadh, the Gaelic festival of the god Lugh, opens which farming season?

Harvest: Lughnasadh fell on 1 August, the day of the harvest fair, and one Irish tale has Lugh founding it as funeral games for his foster-mother.

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

Germanic peoples kept Yule, and the word outlived the old religion: the Scandinavian languages still call Christmas jul.

What do modern pagans call their eight-festival cycle?

The Wheel of the Year is younger than it sounds: British pagans assembled it in the mid-20th century by joining the solstices and equinoxes to four old Celtic festivals.

Which Roman midwinter festival gave slaves temporary freedom and turned the social order upside down?

Saturnalia suspended all work each December, masters waited on their slaves at table, and a mock king was chosen to preside over the revels.

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

The White Goddess argued that all true poetry honours one ancient goddess, and modern pagans' picture of an age-old cycle of festivals owes much to it.

The monk Bede wrote that which Christian festival took its English name from a pagan goddess of spring?

Easter: Bede said the Anglo-Saxons had feasted a goddess called Eostre in the month that became April, and scholars have long argued over whether he invented her.

Which day of the week is named after Woden, the chief god of the pagan Anglo-Saxons?

Wednesday is 'Woden's day', a translation of the Roman 'day of Mercury': early English speakers matched their god Woden to the Roman Mercury.

Gerald Gardner, the founder of Wicca, claimed he was initiated in 1939 into a coven based where?

New Forest: historians disagree on whether the coven ever existed, and those who accept it think it formed in the 1930s, not in the distant past Gardner claimed.

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

Witchcraft Today could appear only after Britain repealed its last witchcraft law in 1951; before that Gardner had hidden his ideas in a novel, High Magic's Aid.

Which priestesses tended the sacred fire that was never allowed to go out in ancient Rome?

The Vestals served for 30 years from girlhood; one who let the flame die was beaten, and one who broke her vow of chastity was buried alive.

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

Isle of Man: Cecil Williamson opened the museum at Castletown in 1951 and installed Gardner as its 'resident witch', and Gardner later became its director.

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

The Triple Goddess, Maiden, Mother and Crone, shares the altar with the Horned God in most covens, but some Wiccans worship her alone and others honour many gods.

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

Margaret Murray argued that the witches of the trials belonged to a secret pre-Christian religion; historians have since discredited the idea, but early Wiccans built on it.

At which Greek sanctuary did Apollo's priestess deliver the ancient world's most famous oracles?

Delphi was the centre of the world to the Greeks: in myth Zeus loosed two eagles from opposite ends of the earth and they met there, at a stone called the navel.

Doreen Valiente rewrote Gerald Gardner's Wiccan rituals to cut passages he had borrowed from which notorious occultist?

Aleister Crowley's words ran through Gardner's early rituals; Valiente, his high priestess, spotted them, cut most of them and wrote fresh verses such as the Charge of the Goddess.

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

Book of Shadows: once a secret text handed only to initiates, the name reached millions when the TV series Charmed gave its three witches a book of the same title.

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

Sabbats take their name from the 'witches' sabbath', the midnight revel that witch-hunters accused their victims of attending, which Wiccans turned into a word for their own feasts.

In Wicca, a pentagram inside a circle is usually called what?

A pentacle: the star inside it is far older than Wicca, having served the followers of Pythagoras as a sign of recognition and of health.

Until 2007, which US department refused the Wiccan star on soldiers' headstones?

Veterans Affairs gave way after the widow of a Wiccan sergeant killed in Afghanistan took her fight for his memorial to court.

The Church of All Worlds, a neopagan group formed in 1962, took its name from which science-fiction novel?

Stranger in a Strange Land: in Heinlein's novel a human raised on Mars founds a church of that name, and its real-life imitators still call themselves Waterkin after his water-sharing rite.

Which god, worshipped by Roman soldiers in underground temples, was shown slaying a bull?

Mithras drew many followers from the legions and stood for loyalty to the emperor, but his cult faded fast once Constantine turned to Christianity.

In Norse belief, what kind of thing is Yggdrasil, which stands at the centre of the cosmos?

A giant ash tree: Yggdrasil holds the nine worlds, from the gods' Asgard to the underworld, and is said to survive the end of the world to shelter new life.

The name Ásatrú, used by many modern Heathens, means faith in which group of Norse gods?

The Æsir are the main family of Norse gods; some Heathens find the label misleading, since they also honour the rival Vanir, elves and other beings.

What is the symbol most commonly worn by modern Heathens?

Thor's hammer hung at the necks of Viking-age Scandinavians too, and modern Heathens also make its sign as a gesture in their rites.

At a sumbel, Heathens toast their gods with a horn of which drink?

Mead: as the horn goes round, drinkers toast gods, heroes and ancestors, and any oath or boast made over it is treated as binding.

Which Nordic country gave official recognition to a Norse pagan fellowship as early as 1973?

Iceland recognised the Ásatrú fellowship a year after a sheep farmer and poet founded it with his friends, which let its priests conduct legally binding ceremonies.

Hávamál, the Old Norse poem behind some Heathens' Nine Noble Virtues, presents itself as the sayings of which god?

Odin is the 'High One' of the title, yet most of what the poem gives him to say is homely advice and counsel, with a few magic charms at the end.

Which island was the druids' stronghold when a Roman army attacked it around AD 60?

Anglesey: a Roman historian describes black-robed women with torches and druids screaming curses on the shore, a sight that froze the legionaries before they charged.

Iolo Morganwg's Gorsedd of Bards now leads the ceremonies of which Welsh festival?

The National Eisteddfod still stages its main ceremonies around his robed Gorsedd, although it emerged after his death that he had forged the 'ancient' manuscripts behind it.

The goat-legged Greek god Pan gave English which word?

Panic: the Greeks blamed Pan for the sudden, groundless terror that seizes herds and lone travellers in wild places, so 'panic fear' was the fear he sent.

Many modern pagans hold that rocks, rivers and trees each have a spirit, a belief known as what?

Animism, from the Latin anima for 'soul', was studied by Victorian scholars as the earliest and most primitive form of religion; today's pagans adopt it by choice.

Stonehenge is aligned towards sunrise at which event?

Summer solstice: modern Druids gather to greet that sunrise, yet the stones went up some 2,000 years before the ancient druids, who were long wrongly credited with building them.

The Roman writer Pliny described a white-robed druid climbing an oak with a golden sickle to cut which plant?

Mistletoe rarely grows on oak, so the druids took one that did as a sign the tree was chosen by a god; Pliny says they caught it in a white cloak and used it against poison.

Caesar claimed the Gauls burned criminals inside what?

A wicker man: Caesar described giant figures woven from twigs and filled with living men, but he may have borrowed the tale from a Greek philosopher rather than seen it himself.

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

Cernunnos is named only once, on a pillar found beneath Notre-Dame in Paris, and his antlered image may have helped shape Christian pictures of the Devil.

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

Perun's idol stood for only eight years: after converting in 988, Vladimir had it dragged through the streets, beaten with sticks and thrown into the Dnieper.

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

Egypt was Kemet, the 'black land', to its own people, a name taken from the dark, fertile soil the Nile's floods left along its banks.

Which ancient pagan temple was turned into a church and later, under Ottoman rule, into a mosque?

The Parthenon survived almost whole through all three faiths until 1687, when a Venetian shell hit the gunpowder the Ottomans kept inside and blew out its centre.

Stonehenge shares its World Heritage listing with which other stone circle?

Avebury's villagers toppled and buried many of its stones in the Middle Ages, apparently as works of the Devil; the marmalade heir Alexander Keiller raised them again in the 1930s.

Wyrd, Heathens' Old English word for fate, named the 'weird sisters' of which Shakespeare play?

Macbeth: its three witches are 'weird' in the old sense of dealing in fate, and the word's modern meaning of strange grew out of how eerie they seemed on stage.

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.