Heathenism/Paganism
Evola As He Is
For a few months, some members have been asking us off list about the difference between 'paganism' and 'heathenism'. In case other members ask themselves the same question, we have decided to post onto this list a summary of the answers we have been giving to the former in the past months.

There is no denotative difference between the word 'heathenism' and the word 'paganism' : "pagan" and "heathen" both mean originally "a person who does not acknowledge the god of the Christians", just as "Jew" and "Yid" both refer to the same reality. Just as "Yid" is an injurious term for "Jew", "pagan" is a pejorative word for "heathen", or rather for "a person who does not acknowledge the god of the Christians". Few Jews like to be called "Yids" by non- Jews. Few Jews call themselves "Yids".

Well, basically, it's as simple as that. As explained by Julius Evola in 'Sintesi di dottrina della razza', ""paganus" is an essentially derogatory term, used for controversial purposes by the first Christian apologetics". It was adopted in the IVth century, some say in the IIIth century, of the Christian era.

However, let's go further into this. First, early Christians don't seem to have been experts in etymology. Otherwise, they would have known that "paganus was a noun derived from the word pagus which originally meant 'something stuck in the ground as a landmark'. The root pag means "fixed" and is also the source of the words "page", "pale (stake)", (...) as well as "pact" and peace", and, therefore, even though they are generally not afraid of making fools of themselves, they may have chosen another word to label the Roman state cult and the Greek state cult, since the root pag turns out to mean also - Guénon would have loved this - "POLE". Arrogance always backfires, even through etymology, and, ultimately, not only through etymology.

We have just said "the Roman state cult", for lack of a better word than "cult" in English to refer to what it was all about in Rome in this respect. As stressed by Dumézil, Latin did not have any word to designate what Christians, Muslims and Jews mean by "religion". "The term "Religio" does not have the same meaning as the term "religion"". It is not by chance that most Patricians considered the Christians, at the very best, as atheists, that is, as persons who did not acknowledge the Roman gods. Beyond this, Latin did not have any word to designate those who followed the mos maiorum, nor had Germanic languages any word to designate those who followed the "Customs of Elders". For those people, it went without saying that, before belonging to a cult, they belonged to a people, to a race, to a blood, of which their respective cult, with its practices and its rites, was an integral part, an indissociable part, as indissociable as recto and verso. For those people, to "convert" would thus have seemed something absurd and aberrant ; whether the modern man likes it or not, those peoples did not define themselves according to what the modern man calls "religion", but according to something far more profound than "religion" and which the modern man, including the Western modern man, cannot understand, cannot understand because he's lost touch with what is called in Buddhism samskâra, the deep roots of the structure and of the inclinations of his being, and which have an innate character. It is not by chance that "heathen", which appeared in Old English as hâþen in the year 826, is in all likelihood derived from the Greek ethnos, meaning : people.

"Paganism" was originally applied to the Graeco-Roman cults which the Christians fought. Later, it was applied indiscriminately by the Christians to any belief in other gods than theirs, in so- called "false gods", from those of the Roman cult to those of the Syrio-Phoenician cults. This had the effect of lumping together, retrospectively, the ancient Roman cults of the Patricians, and the cults of the various telluric goddesses of nature, from Demeter to the Venus Verticordia and Cybele, the Magna Mater, to which, as far as the latter are concerned, Christianity and the other Abrahamic faiths owe much. From an Aryan standpoint, both Christianity and those "pagan" cults in which it originates are to be fought. To a large extent, what is now called "neo-paganism", to begin with Wicca, is a mere resurgence of those cults. Therefore, by condemning them, and, not to be unmasked once and for all, it cannot but condemn them, Christianity condemns itself. It's, so to speak, the revolt of the Daughter against the Mother. All the great goddesses of nature, which crystallised in Christianity as Mary, the "Jewish virgin" as she was called in Herod's time, had the serpent as attribute ; but, instead of listening to the serpent, as did her archetypes, Mary, smashed its head.