Is Dodekatheism a neopagan or earth-based religion?
The word pagan originally referred to country-dwellers, living on the outskirts of the Roman Empire. It grew to have connotations of ignorance, as those country bumpkins were out of touch with the latest cosmopolitan trends. And finally, it came to mean those ignorant of the true religion of Christ. The term has since been embraced by a number of new religions, those based on the ancient pre-Christian ones. Dictionaries define pagan as anyone who is not Christian, Muslim or Jewish and by this definition, we are pagan. But the original meaning is quite irrelevant to us, and this is why some have chosen not to embrace it. We are not an earth-based religion. Our festivals sometimes honour the seasons, and sometimes, they do not. Hellenic religion celebrates our lives and our diverse unity with the world around us, not simply the cycles of the year.
