WEBVTT - Pagans, Neo-Pagans, Wiccans – Let’s Sort It Out! 0:00:01.440 --> 0:00:07.120 Welcome to Stuff you should know, a production of iHeartRadio. 0:00:11.119 --> 0:00:13.640 Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh and there's 0:00:13.800 --> 0:00:16.800 Chuck and we both have antlers on our head and 0:00:16.840 --> 0:00:17.599 this is stuff you. 0:00:17.600 --> 0:00:21.200 Should Just a couple of wooded pagans. 0:00:21.680 --> 0:00:23.840 Yeah, I'm excited about this one man. 0:00:24.560 --> 0:00:29.040 Yeah, you know, we'll reference some previous episodes. We covered 0:00:29.920 --> 0:00:32.880 WICCA and our witchcraft up and there's some Alistair Crowley 0:00:32.920 --> 0:00:35.320 in here, of course. Yeah, for sure, you knew he 0:00:35.360 --> 0:00:37.920 was going to make an appearance, and it seems like 0:00:37.960 --> 0:00:40.280 there was something else too. But well, if you want 0:00:40.280 --> 0:00:41.960 the full picture, you know, go back and listen to 0:00:42.000 --> 0:00:44.960 all those together. Just for a spooky Why don't I 0:00:44.960 --> 0:00:47.479 say spooky? This is not even spooky. That's the whole problem. 0:00:48.080 --> 0:00:49.040 Yeah, for sure. 0:00:49.120 --> 0:00:49.519 Conception. 0:00:49.880 --> 0:00:52.400 Yeah, but it's so ingrained that even have to know 0:00:52.520 --> 0:00:55.120 about it. You know, it's hard not to just shake that. 0:00:55.400 --> 0:00:57.720 I was a church kid, I was raised Baptist Pagans. 0:00:58.000 --> 0:01:00.920 We're spooky, they killed the sacrifice things. 0:01:01.200 --> 0:01:05.320 Yeah. I ran across a couple of websites, Christian websites 0:01:05.360 --> 0:01:08.160 that essentially still think all of the same things that 0:01:09.640 --> 0:01:13.480 the church originally said about pagan's back. You know, fifteen 0:01:13.560 --> 0:01:14.360 hundred years ago. 0:01:14.800 --> 0:01:17.000 Yeah, so it's still alive and well it's cool to 0:01:17.000 --> 0:01:21.160 know the story now, having you know, left the Baptist 0:01:21.240 --> 0:01:24.200 Church many many years ago to finally understand like, oh, 0:01:24.560 --> 0:01:26.240 at a certain point in history, they were just like 0:01:27.319 --> 0:01:30.000 this is the religion and everything else is the devil. 0:01:30.760 --> 0:01:34.800 Right, Yeah, And in retrospect looking at this now, it's like, gosh, 0:01:34.880 --> 0:01:36.880 talk about getting your wires crossed. 0:01:37.160 --> 0:01:38.920 Yeah, that's funny. 0:01:39.440 --> 0:01:44.920 Yeah. So we're talking about paganism everybody, And hats off 0:01:44.959 --> 0:01:47.240 to Dave two first of all for helping us with this. 0:01:47.240 --> 0:01:52.320 This is a huge, big lump of a topic that 0:01:52.760 --> 0:01:54.880 almost every one of the things we're going to talk 0:01:54.880 --> 0:01:58.360 about could be broken out into its own episode. Yeah, 0:01:58.400 --> 0:02:01.000 so we're gonna have to summarize in a lot of ways. 0:02:01.080 --> 0:02:02.960 We're going to get a lot of stuff wrong. So 0:02:03.640 --> 0:02:07.160 apologies already to all of our pagan listeners out there, 0:02:07.320 --> 0:02:09.880 and let us know, correct us about what we do 0:02:09.919 --> 0:02:11.800 get wrong. But we're going to try our best not 0:02:11.880 --> 0:02:15.880 to get stuff wrong because it's a really interesting set 0:02:16.000 --> 0:02:18.919 of religions. We should say, that's what paganism is. It's 0:02:18.919 --> 0:02:23.000 not a religion, it's a set of typically nature based 0:02:23.560 --> 0:02:30.320 religions that before the original ancient paganism predated any of 0:02:30.360 --> 0:02:36.320 what we call the Abrahamic religions, the monotheistic religions of Judaism, Christianity, 0:02:36.680 --> 0:02:40.120 and Islam. And that's my definition of paganism. 0:02:40.840 --> 0:02:41.640 Can we stop there. 0:02:41.919 --> 0:02:44.520 Yeah, we haven't gotten anything wrong so far. 0:02:44.639 --> 0:02:47.600 So yeah, yeah, Well you mentioned those religions, and it's 0:02:47.600 --> 0:02:51.840 pretty key to mention the Abrahamic religions because basically anything 0:02:51.880 --> 0:02:55.760 else outside of that was considered pagan. Historically, the word 0:02:55.800 --> 0:03:00.639 pagan actually was pretty much an insultant firs first, when 0:03:00.680 --> 0:03:03.560 Christianity was on the rise, and we'll talk a lot 0:03:03.560 --> 0:03:06.200 about that here in a second. In the Roman Empire, 0:03:06.240 --> 0:03:09.000 if you did not convert to Christianity Christianity, you were 0:03:09.040 --> 0:03:12.600 called paganas, which is Latin for country dweller, which is 0:03:12.639 --> 0:03:15.680 basically like, hey, if you're not a Christian, you're a 0:03:15.680 --> 0:03:19.600 bumpkin aka pagan which is interesting. 0:03:20.480 --> 0:03:23.840 Oh yeah, it's definitely interesting. It's funny because that means 0:03:23.840 --> 0:03:25.799 that at some point in time, and we'll talk about 0:03:25.840 --> 0:03:30.120 when that happened, Christianity suddenly leapt forward as like a 0:03:30.160 --> 0:03:35.800 sophisticated thing, which is so the tables basically turned because 0:03:36.000 --> 0:03:41.880 originally some of the Greek or actually Roman pagans were 0:03:42.000 --> 0:03:45.400 very suspicious of Christianity and said all sorts of libelist 0:03:45.440 --> 0:03:48.280 things against them, and then as Christianity rose to prominence, 0:03:48.600 --> 0:03:52.360 it used that same playbook against pagans. But yeah, it 0:03:52.400 --> 0:03:55.200 makes sense that it's like you were considered a hick 0:03:55.640 --> 0:03:59.080 or not up to date if you were still a 0:03:59.120 --> 0:04:02.440 pagan once Christianity became a thing in the Roman Empire. 0:04:02.840 --> 0:04:04.360 I think Bumpkin summed it up nicely. 0:04:04.720 --> 0:04:07.040 I thought so too. I like Bumpkin, cause it's like 0:04:07.360 --> 0:04:11.080 it's an insult, but it's just so round and happy 0:04:11.760 --> 0:04:14.680 that it's hard to be angered by it if somebody 0:04:14.680 --> 0:04:15.560 calls you a bumpkin. 0:04:15.880 --> 0:04:18.279 Yeah, for some reason, Bumpkin does have just sort of 0:04:18.279 --> 0:04:20.640 a like, I feel like bumpkins are. 0:04:20.520 --> 0:04:23.360 Happy, right, they don't care what you think of them. 0:04:24.839 --> 0:04:28.440 All right, So should we talk a little bit about 0:04:29.360 --> 0:04:30.880 you know, there's kind of two parts of this. There's 0:04:30.920 --> 0:04:35.400 ancient paganism, which is one thing that we're going to 0:04:35.480 --> 0:04:37.320 speak about now, and then later we're going to talk 0:04:37.360 --> 0:04:39.840 a little bit about modern paganism. But the kind of 0:04:39.920 --> 0:04:44.120 key distinction here is modern paganism isn't like, hey, we 0:04:44.279 --> 0:04:47.080 just brought back everything they were doing back then because 0:04:47.120 --> 0:04:48.800 it went away for a long time, and now we're 0:04:48.800 --> 0:04:51.000 going to do that same stuff. It was, you know, 0:04:51.080 --> 0:04:53.440 inspired by some of this stuff. But as you'll see, 0:04:53.520 --> 0:04:56.880 not a lot of text survived. So modern paganism is 0:04:57.000 --> 0:04:58.680 basically its own new thing. 0:04:59.240 --> 0:05:02.040 Yeah, and we'll talk about where it came from. But 0:05:02.440 --> 0:05:06.680 there's a lot of well just incorrect facts on the 0:05:06.680 --> 0:05:11.440 Internet that basically says this tradition has continued uninterrupted. Yeah, 0:05:11.480 --> 0:05:14.200 in secret. It had to be driven into secret by 0:05:14.400 --> 0:05:16.800 the rise of Christianity. That just does not seem to 0:05:16.839 --> 0:05:17.279 be true. 0:05:17.560 --> 0:05:20.520 Yeah, but if we're going to go back to ancient paganism, 0:05:21.040 --> 0:05:23.520 we can talk about some of the different elements of because, 0:05:23.600 --> 0:05:25.880 like you said, this is a lot of different things 0:05:25.960 --> 0:05:29.440 that they're wrapped up under the term paganism. But animism 0:05:29.520 --> 0:05:31.479 is the first one, and that is the belief that 0:05:32.400 --> 0:05:36.880 every object on the planet basically has a spirit. People do, 0:05:37.520 --> 0:05:41.359 my dog does, your dog does, which I totally believe, 0:05:42.279 --> 0:05:46.600 the rivers, trees, everything in nature does, animate or inanimate, 0:05:46.640 --> 0:05:49.440 which is why it's called animism. And they thought that 0:05:50.040 --> 0:05:51.960 nature can be like a great thing, it can help 0:05:51.960 --> 0:05:53.599 protect us or it can be a dangerous thing. It 0:05:53.640 --> 0:05:56.039 can cause us harm, and it's up to us to 0:05:56.200 --> 0:06:00.200 influence that through sacrifice and these rituals that we perform. 0:06:00.520 --> 0:06:02.640 Yeah, A good example of this, just real quick, is 0:06:03.520 --> 0:06:07.080 there's no absolute good and evil. That's one of those 0:06:07.120 --> 0:06:12.279 Abrahamic religious ideas, and paganism does not believe in that. So, 0:06:12.400 --> 0:06:16.040 for example, if you are crossing a raging river, that 0:06:16.160 --> 0:06:18.280 river might kill you and drown you, but it's not 0:06:18.320 --> 0:06:20.720 like the river is evil and wants to do that. 0:06:21.080 --> 0:06:24.159 It just can happen. So there's a risk, but it 0:06:24.200 --> 0:06:27.480 can also be a neutral thing. You can increase your 0:06:27.560 --> 0:06:30.480 chances of successfully crossing that river by maybe praying to 0:06:30.520 --> 0:06:33.600 it the spirit or the god of that river, or 0:06:33.680 --> 0:06:37.320 maybe offering a sacrifice. But it's not there's no evil 0:06:37.440 --> 0:06:40.680 rivers in any of the pagan religions except for the 0:06:40.800 --> 0:06:45.000 river sticks. Yeah. I guess maybe, but I think even 0:06:45.080 --> 0:06:48.000 then it's not necessarily absolutely evil. 0:06:48.400 --> 0:06:52.120 Yeah, We've got shamanism, which is sort of like animism 0:06:52.200 --> 0:06:56.680 plus animism with a mascot, and that the shaman is 0:06:56.880 --> 0:06:59.800 the person who steps forward and says, all right, we've 0:06:59.800 --> 0:07:02.240 got all these objects that have spirits and I'm the 0:07:02.320 --> 0:07:06.599 person that can communicate with them. I will enter a trance, 0:07:06.720 --> 0:07:09.600 may take some drugs, maybe a little singing and dancing 0:07:09.600 --> 0:07:11.320 to get there, don't you worry about that. But I'll 0:07:11.360 --> 0:07:13.320 get there in that trance state, and I'll be able 0:07:13.360 --> 0:07:17.080 to communicate with these spirits like go through me. 0:07:17.800 --> 0:07:20.200 Yeah, I think the singing and dancing is subsequent to 0:07:20.280 --> 0:07:21.200 taking the drugs. 0:07:21.840 --> 0:07:24.160 Hey, I went to a raver two in my day. 0:07:24.360 --> 0:07:27.320 Exactly every single person there was a shaman at that moment. 0:07:27.600 --> 0:07:29.080 At this is what it felt like at the time, 0:07:29.080 --> 0:07:30.040 probably right. 0:07:30.520 --> 0:07:32.600 So there's a couple of things just from the ancient 0:07:32.600 --> 0:07:37.280 pagan religions that are still carried on today. Ancestor worship 0:07:37.360 --> 0:07:40.480 is another big one, Yeah, especially as we'll see in 0:07:40.560 --> 0:07:45.240 the neo pagan Norse traditions. But it's essentially you can 0:07:45.280 --> 0:07:47.520 see evidence of this and the fact that we buried 0:07:47.600 --> 0:07:51.400 people in the way that we started burying people as 0:07:51.440 --> 0:07:54.360 if they're venerated, as if we understand that they need 0:07:54.400 --> 0:07:57.360 grave goods because there's an afterlife, and so it's not 0:07:57.480 --> 0:08:00.960 like a hard leap to the idea that those ancestors 0:08:01.160 --> 0:08:03.320 can help us out now that they're in the spirit world. 0:08:03.360 --> 0:08:06.000 And so you can worship them. That's a big part 0:08:06.040 --> 0:08:06.480 of it too. 0:08:06.840 --> 0:08:09.680 Yeah, for sure, then we're going to get into this 0:08:09.720 --> 0:08:13.120 whole idea that and something I found that looking through 0:08:13.160 --> 0:08:17.040 a lot of these pagan rights and religions is that 0:08:19.200 --> 0:08:22.520 they looked at women very differently than early Christian and 0:08:22.600 --> 0:08:27.160 some might even argue late Christian religions do, and that 0:08:28.000 --> 0:08:31.560 women were worshiped and venerated. The earth Mother was a 0:08:31.560 --> 0:08:35.640 big part of the early deities and worshiped. And they 0:08:35.679 --> 0:08:39.720 found venus figurines, these clay and stone figures from like 0:08:39.800 --> 0:08:44.679 thirty five thousand years ago that are clearly like probably 0:08:44.760 --> 0:08:47.800 used in fertility rights because they have you know, exaggerated 0:08:48.320 --> 0:08:52.400 breasts on these figures and wide hips, and so the 0:08:52.400 --> 0:08:54.560 whole idea of the earth Mother has been around for 0:08:54.600 --> 0:08:55.360 a long long time. 0:08:55.880 --> 0:08:58.880 Yeah, and then you can pretty clearly demonstrate that the 0:08:58.960 --> 0:09:04.280 earth Mother eventually evolved into Gaia from the Greek pantheon. 0:09:04.880 --> 0:09:07.960 Guya is the mom of all the other gods, which 0:09:08.000 --> 0:09:12.040 brings up to another point polytheism. It's not monotheistic. There 0:09:12.080 --> 0:09:14.360 is not one single god. Even if there's a head 0:09:14.400 --> 0:09:16.920 of the gods like say Zeus or Odin or something 0:09:17.000 --> 0:09:20.400 like that. There's still plenty of other gods who are gods. 0:09:20.440 --> 0:09:24.000 They're not saints, they're not angels, they're not assistants, they 0:09:24.040 --> 0:09:28.080 are gods in and of themselves. And so Polytheism is 0:09:28.120 --> 0:09:31.240 a huge, huge part of any pagan religion, ancient or 0:09:31.360 --> 0:09:32.040 modern too. 0:09:32.800 --> 0:09:35.240 And I've never looked into this, but I mean, the 0:09:35.320 --> 0:09:37.720 idea of Mother Nature that probably kind is kind of 0:09:37.720 --> 0:09:41.520 a trickle down from goddess Mother Earth Mother, right. 0:09:41.559 --> 0:09:43.320 I would think so too, Yeah, for sure. 0:09:43.600 --> 0:09:45.520 Yeah, I'm just taking a stab at that though. 0:09:45.600 --> 0:09:48.320 So you gotta be right, you know. I mean, it's 0:09:48.320 --> 0:09:50.760 not like that was just coincidental. Somebody came up with 0:09:50.800 --> 0:09:52.120 that in the sixties or something. 0:09:52.360 --> 0:09:53.120 Yeah, that's true. 0:09:53.960 --> 0:09:56.720 What about sacrifice, the stuff that Pagans don't like to 0:09:56.760 --> 0:09:57.280 talk about. 0:09:57.880 --> 0:09:59.679 Yeah, I mean, this is a can of worms that 0:10:01.120 --> 0:10:03.640 you know, we can't fully open because there's a lot 0:10:03.679 --> 0:10:06.760 of debate about how much sacrifice there has been in 0:10:08.120 --> 0:10:12.600 all religions throughout ancient world history. A lot of times 0:10:12.640 --> 0:10:14.960 these the people that say, like, oh, they were just 0:10:15.080 --> 0:10:17.840 killing babies left and right, are written by the enemies 0:10:17.880 --> 0:10:22.319 of these people, in this case, Christian and Roman accounts 0:10:22.360 --> 0:10:24.599 about how widespread it would be because they're trying to 0:10:24.600 --> 0:10:26.880 paint them in a certain way. But there definitely has 0:10:26.920 --> 0:10:31.199 been sacrifice, whether it was human or your finest crop 0:10:31.360 --> 0:10:32.199 or your best sheep. 0:10:32.720 --> 0:10:35.199 Yeah, I mean, we know for a fact that Germanic 0:10:35.240 --> 0:10:38.480 and Celtic tribes sacrificed humans. Just from the presence of 0:10:38.559 --> 0:10:41.200 bog bodies in the state that they were, the way 0:10:41.240 --> 0:10:45.760 that they died, they're pretty much proof positive that there 0:10:45.840 --> 0:10:48.440 was sacrifice. And even outside of Europe. I mean, you 0:10:48.480 --> 0:10:52.640 know the Inca Maiden, the lu Laya, you know, lou 0:10:52.679 --> 0:10:54.079 Lailo lu Layelo. 0:10:54.520 --> 0:10:57.440 I think you mean Leilani the maiden. 0:10:57.480 --> 0:10:59.600 You remember the Inca maiden that has like your knees 0:10:59.600 --> 0:11:02.280 pulled up her chest and she looks sleeping. But she 0:11:02.440 --> 0:11:05.439 was sacrificed five hundred years ago. I mean, like it 0:11:05.520 --> 0:11:08.680 did happen, but the idea that it was widespread, or 0:11:08.720 --> 0:11:11.439 that they like drank baby's blood or that kind of stuff, 0:11:11.679 --> 0:11:15.200 that was the exaggeration that really kind of were smears. 0:11:15.600 --> 0:11:18.320 Yeah. Yeah, you know, I finally watched it the other day. 0:11:19.280 --> 0:11:21.920 It was about a month ago, I guess, the mel Gibson. 0:11:23.720 --> 0:11:24.440 Apocalypto. 0:11:24.960 --> 0:11:27.120 Yeah, I'd never seen that. For some reason, I finally 0:11:27.160 --> 0:11:27.560 watched it. 0:11:28.240 --> 0:11:28.680 How was it? 0:11:28.720 --> 0:11:29.280 Did you see it? 0:11:29.920 --> 0:11:31.680 No, but I've seen the scene that made you think 0:11:31.679 --> 0:11:31.920 of that. 0:11:34.280 --> 0:11:37.040 You know, it was pretty good. You know. I'm not 0:11:37.120 --> 0:11:40.560 like championing Mel Gibson, of course, but I just hadn't 0:11:40.600 --> 0:11:43.760 seen that movie. And I had a I guess Emily 0:11:43.880 --> 0:11:46.280 was clearly not with me, and I was like, oh, 0:11:46.280 --> 0:11:47.679 I've got a window and it popped up and I 0:11:47.720 --> 0:11:48.880 was like, you know what, I never saw that. Let 0:11:48.920 --> 0:11:53.359 me check it out. Very gross in gory in its depictions, 0:11:53.360 --> 0:11:56.160 but you know it was okay. 0:11:56.679 --> 0:12:01.520 Yeah, mel Gibson is basically into snuff porn, like, he 0:12:01.720 --> 0:12:03.840 loves that stuff. Have you ever seen We Were Soldiers? 0:12:04.840 --> 0:12:06.480 I did not see that, But that's supposed to be 0:12:06.520 --> 0:12:07.480 pretty gory too, right. 0:12:07.520 --> 0:12:10.640 It's one of the most violent, yeah, glorious war movies 0:12:10.679 --> 0:12:11.880 I've ever seen in my life. 0:12:12.400 --> 0:12:12.600 Yeah. 0:12:12.679 --> 0:12:14.760 Now I've seen The Guns of Navarone. 0:12:15.000 --> 0:12:19.640 Yeah. Oh was that Telly Sabalis? 0:12:19.720 --> 0:12:24.319 Now he was in the Dirty Dozen, that's what you think. 0:12:24.520 --> 0:12:26.640 Yeah, that was a good or forced in from Navarone 0:12:26.679 --> 0:12:27.280 was seeing that one too. 0:12:27.520 --> 0:12:29.880 I don't know if he was one, he was definitely 0:12:29.880 --> 0:12:31.679 in the Dirty Dozen. That was a great one. 0:12:31.920 --> 0:12:34.760 Yeah, all right, We're getting away from off topic here though, 0:12:34.800 --> 0:12:37.319 because we need to talk about idol worship and tree worship. 0:12:37.360 --> 0:12:40.000 That's another pretty common element and a lot of different 0:12:40.000 --> 0:12:43.280 pagan religions. You know, it's right there in the Ten Commandments, 0:12:43.280 --> 0:12:46.600 do not worship false idols. Idolatry was a big no 0:12:46.600 --> 0:12:49.840 no to Christians, and that's basically any physical representation of 0:12:49.840 --> 0:12:53.160 a God or a spirit. We usually, you know, growing 0:12:53.200 --> 0:12:55.199 up Baptist thought him of his like statues and stuff 0:12:55.200 --> 0:12:58.560 from biblical stories, but it can be a rock or something. 0:12:59.360 --> 0:13:03.240 And then trees. Trees are big in many, many, most 0:13:03.640 --> 0:13:05.520 pagan religions. They love their trees. 0:13:06.160 --> 0:13:10.320 Yeah, they love them for sure. So yeah, those are 0:13:10.360 --> 0:13:13.280 some high points or basics, I guess is a better 0:13:13.320 --> 0:13:17.199 way to put it, of ancient pagan religions. And because 0:13:17.360 --> 0:13:20.520 as we said before, there's not really a lot that 0:13:20.600 --> 0:13:24.160 survived from the ancients to today, a lot of that 0:13:24.200 --> 0:13:30.120 stuff has been gleaned by archaeologists anthropologists, and it's from 0:13:30.160 --> 0:13:33.720 that base of knowledge that modern Pagans draw from to 0:13:33.800 --> 0:13:37.079 create the newer versions of the pagan religions. 0:13:37.440 --> 0:13:40.800 Yeah, it feels like a break time, right, yeah, I guess. 0:13:40.800 --> 0:13:42.560 So all right, we'll take a break, and we'll come 0:13:42.600 --> 0:13:46.040 back and talk about when Christianity decided that's it. We're 0:13:46.040 --> 0:14:14.080 going to change the narrative right after this, all right, 0:14:14.120 --> 0:14:17.640 So we promised talk of Christianity stamping out Paganism, or 0:14:17.640 --> 0:14:21.040 trying to at least, and that started with Constantine, who 0:14:21.120 --> 0:14:25.200 was the first Roman emperor to convert to Christianity officially. 0:14:25.920 --> 0:14:29.080 I think you sort of hinted earlier that Christianity was 0:14:29.120 --> 0:14:34.880 a pretty smallish persecuted sect of people at first, until 0:14:34.880 --> 0:14:39.240 Constantine came along and said, actually, I'm Christian now, and 0:14:40.240 --> 0:14:43.440 all the other Roman elites were like, well, off, Constantine 0:14:43.440 --> 0:14:45.760 the Emperor's Christian, then maybe we should look into this 0:14:45.760 --> 0:14:46.520 a little more. 0:14:46.520 --> 0:14:50.400 Right, And so the tide turned on Pagans basically right 0:14:50.400 --> 0:14:53.240 out of the gate. But Constantine himself didn't do anything 0:14:53.280 --> 0:14:56.880 to persecute He didn't use his official position as emperor 0:14:56.920 --> 0:14:58.960 to persecute pagans. 0:14:59.160 --> 0:15:01.480 Yeah, he did his to in the pool publicly. 0:15:01.280 --> 0:15:05.040 Yeah, yeah, exactly. So actually I think he was fully 0:15:05.040 --> 0:15:09.720 immersed in the baptismal font instead. Well yeah, his son, though, 0:15:09.800 --> 0:15:16.160 went full boar after Pagan's and outlawed Paganism. He passed 0:15:16.160 --> 0:15:24.320 the first Laws Constantineous Constantius, not Constantinople Constantius. Yes. Yeah, 0:15:25.280 --> 0:15:29.200 he passed the first laws that made paganism and practices 0:15:29.240 --> 0:15:34.120 of paganism illegal. It was basically amounted to any public 0:15:34.200 --> 0:15:37.880 displays of paganism were outlawed. But not too long after 0:15:37.880 --> 0:15:43.520 a couple of decades his successor, Theodosius, he said, Christianity's 0:15:43.560 --> 0:15:46.320 the state religion of the Roman Empire, and if you 0:15:46.360 --> 0:15:51.800 do anything pagan, including in your own home, like your 0:15:51.960 --> 0:15:55.360 your toast, don't let us see you go anywhere near chicken, 0:15:55.840 --> 0:15:56.920 or you're in big trouble. 0:15:57.320 --> 0:16:00.720 And they said, what is toast? When your bread gets 0:16:00.760 --> 0:16:03.480 too close to the fire and it tastes better, that's doped. 0:16:03.760 --> 0:16:04.560 I hadn't tried that. 0:16:06.280 --> 0:16:11.040 So Christianity is on the rise. And they started to 0:16:11.120 --> 0:16:13.760 stamp out pagan religions all over the Roman Empire through 0:16:13.760 --> 0:16:17.920 the laws that you mentioned and through a pretty brilliant plan, 0:16:18.000 --> 0:16:22.200 which was literally demonizing them. I never really have thought 0:16:22.240 --> 0:16:26.120 about that word much until this is like, you know 0:16:26.160 --> 0:16:29.440 that demon is the root there, but that's literally what 0:16:29.480 --> 0:16:32.600 they did. They were like, you know what everyone that 0:16:32.640 --> 0:16:37.320 you're have been worshiping, they are the devil in disguise, right, 0:16:37.560 --> 0:16:38.840 like the literal devil Satan. 0:16:39.280 --> 0:16:44.160 Yes, And they actually took some of the existing gods 0:16:44.160 --> 0:16:47.880 and just basically copy pasted them into the conception of 0:16:48.480 --> 0:16:52.160 the devil of Satan. And again keep in mind here, 0:16:52.320 --> 0:16:57.760 these these pagan religions, they don't have anything even approximating Satan. 0:16:58.600 --> 0:17:03.040 Like gods can be good or protective or dangerous, but 0:17:03.120 --> 0:17:09.119 there's no like one evil polar foil to God, because 0:17:09.119 --> 0:17:12.240 there is no one God. It's not dual, it's plural. 0:17:12.640 --> 0:17:15.920 That's that's part of pagan religion, right, So it's ironic 0:17:16.000 --> 0:17:18.879 that they're like, your god is Satan, and they're like 0:17:18.920 --> 0:17:20.520 which one. They're like, the one with the horns, the 0:17:20.520 --> 0:17:23.680 one with the antlers, right, And so that's that's basically 0:17:23.760 --> 0:17:27.119 how the modern conception of Satan came along. And so 0:17:27.280 --> 0:17:30.840 basically any god would just be equated with evil, with 0:17:30.880 --> 0:17:34.200 a demon, with Satan himself. And if you were caught 0:17:34.280 --> 0:17:37.400 practicing this, now you started to risk being killed by 0:17:37.760 --> 0:17:39.040 the people in charge. 0:17:39.480 --> 0:17:47.639 Yeah, they found this one pretty prominent Celtic gods. Yeah yeah, okay, 0:17:47.720 --> 0:17:50.560 ce r In you in in. 0:17:51.160 --> 0:17:54.159 It's like it's a yeah, it's like a mashup of 0:17:54.200 --> 0:17:58.800 Michael Sarah, John Cena, and John Sanunu. 0:18:01.040 --> 0:18:03.919 Yes, Man, I almost said it wrong again. Sir Nunas was, 0:18:04.160 --> 0:18:07.480 like I said, a prominent Celtic god and had it 0:18:07.520 --> 0:18:11.480 was the antler god had antlers. And they basically look 0:18:11.560 --> 0:18:14.920 back now and say between Sir Nunos and the Greek 0:18:14.960 --> 0:18:18.399 god Pan, like, it's not a far leap to go 0:18:18.440 --> 0:18:22.000 from antlers to horns. And that was basically the probably 0:18:22.040 --> 0:18:25.280 the model for the Christian devil that you know, once 0:18:25.720 --> 0:18:28.159 they decided, hey, we're just going to be binary from. 0:18:28.040 --> 0:18:31.119 Now on, right, But the Sir Nunos is wearing antlers 0:18:31.400 --> 0:18:35.840 because they were They indicated protectiveness, not necessarily of humans, 0:18:35.920 --> 0:18:40.080 but of the forest and the countryside. And you could 0:18:40.080 --> 0:18:43.720 be in Sir Nunosi's good graces by taking care of 0:18:43.760 --> 0:18:46.360 those things, or you could run a foul of Sir Nunos. 0:18:46.359 --> 0:18:49.159 And if you say, just stepped on a bunch of 0:18:49.240 --> 0:18:53.760 docks for no good reason. Yeah, but that he became 0:18:53.920 --> 0:18:56.280 Satan eventually, or he was one of the ones. I 0:18:56.280 --> 0:19:00.080 think they went basically local religion by local religion and 0:19:00.040 --> 0:19:04.040 then identified who could be Satan and then demonized them 0:19:04.040 --> 0:19:05.040 and all the others. 0:19:05.400 --> 0:19:08.159 Yes, that makes sense. Like who do they identify with, Like, 0:19:08.280 --> 0:19:09.240 who's going to scare them? 0:19:09.480 --> 0:19:13.840 Exactly? So, now, because your god, your ancient pagan god, 0:19:13.920 --> 0:19:17.800 is Satan. If you are caught worshiping that god, or 0:19:17.800 --> 0:19:21.840 any god or any kind of polytheistic pagan religion, you're 0:19:21.880 --> 0:19:24.800 now in league with the devil. And again you can 0:19:24.800 --> 0:19:26.520 be put to death for that kind of thing. And 0:19:26.600 --> 0:19:29.960 that developed into which trials, the Inquisition, all sorts of 0:19:30.080 --> 0:19:34.520 terrible stuff that was essentially the Christian Church persecuting in 0:19:34.560 --> 0:19:40.080 an effort to stamp out it's like any local rival religions. 0:19:40.359 --> 0:19:42.760 Yeah, well, stamp out is one thing they did, and 0:19:42.800 --> 0:19:45.639 you know, with the Christian armies and colonialism and missionaries, 0:19:45.680 --> 0:19:47.840 that was what they were doing all over the West. 0:19:48.400 --> 0:19:51.160 And then what they couldn't stamp out or I don't 0:19:51.200 --> 0:19:52.560 know if it was what they couldn't stamp out, but 0:19:52.560 --> 0:19:55.520 they were stamping out everything they wanted to. And then 0:19:55.560 --> 0:20:00.320 they also said, but actually this Halloween and Christmas Easter 0:20:00.440 --> 0:20:04.600 are pretty fun, and those are pagan you know based, 0:20:04.680 --> 0:20:07.920 So we're just gonna tweak those and make them our own. 0:20:08.000 --> 0:20:11.320 Because who doesn't like Halloween? 0:20:12.080 --> 0:20:16.120 Yeah, everybody likes Halloween. Which started out as Sowin as 0:20:16.160 --> 0:20:20.200 we'll see. I think we've talked about that probably fifteen times. Yeah. 0:20:20.280 --> 0:20:22.960 You know what I think actually triggered this me thinking 0:20:22.960 --> 0:20:23.639 of this topic. 0:20:24.040 --> 0:20:24.760 What movie? 0:20:25.160 --> 0:20:28.840 No, it was Easter I was thinking about. I happened 0:20:28.880 --> 0:20:32.119 to be up and out around sunrise on Easter and 0:20:32.160 --> 0:20:35.280 it reminded me, as a kid, being raised Catholic, of 0:20:35.359 --> 0:20:39.119 going to Sunrise mass in Eastern Yeah, and I was like, dude, 0:20:40.160 --> 0:20:44.320 you're standing there celebrating a religious service, watching the sun 0:20:44.440 --> 0:20:48.159 rise on a specific day in the spring. Like it 0:20:48.280 --> 0:20:52.240 is so pagan based, and it's like in every single way, 0:20:52.760 --> 0:20:55.560 I think even Easter is like a shift or an 0:20:55.600 --> 0:20:58.840 adaptation of like oh Stare, which I believe was one 0:20:58.880 --> 0:21:01.040 of the Polytheiets pagan gods. 0:21:01.320 --> 0:21:02.840 Yeah, like it was. 0:21:02.960 --> 0:21:05.760 It's just there out in the open basically, and that 0:21:06.119 --> 0:21:07.760 made me wonder about the whole thing. 0:21:08.280 --> 0:21:11.720 Yeah. You know, growing up in Stone Mountain, Georgia, the 0:21:12.080 --> 0:21:15.280 most dedicated would hike up Stone Mountain in the in 0:21:15.320 --> 0:21:18.600 the dead of night to go to the sunrise service 0:21:18.640 --> 0:21:19.679 on top of Stone Mountain. 0:21:19.800 --> 0:21:20.760 Yeah. Pretty cool. 0:21:21.280 --> 0:21:21.760 Yeah. 0:21:21.840 --> 0:21:24.720 So they were basically stamping with one foot, giving back 0:21:24.760 --> 0:21:27.600 rubs with the other other with their hands stamp stamp 0:21:27.880 --> 0:21:31.120 rub rob That's what the Christians did to basically win 0:21:31.200 --> 0:21:35.760 the pr war of the religions and take over. Essentially. 0:21:36.119 --> 0:21:40.000 Yeah, if you're looking at the pagan comeback, which we're 0:21:40.000 --> 0:21:42.439 going to get into now, you can go back to 0:21:42.480 --> 0:21:46.240 the Renaissance when they said, Hey, the Greek and Roman 0:21:46.920 --> 0:21:49.480 philosophers and all those books they were writing, it's like 0:21:49.520 --> 0:21:51.919 super interesting, we're into that stuff again. And we have 0:21:51.960 --> 0:21:54.600 the printing press now, so we can really print this 0:21:54.600 --> 0:21:58.160 stuff up and disseminate it. And there were Renaissance painters 0:21:58.200 --> 0:22:03.320 painting all these amazing romantic paintings of like mythological creatures 0:22:03.320 --> 0:22:07.280 and gods. And then the Enlightenment came along and said Renaissance, 0:22:07.600 --> 0:22:08.680 hold my meed. 0:22:09.080 --> 0:22:12.399