Question

[BrianK]

How old is neo-pagan?

[nutzo]

well, to answer this you have to break the word down.
the prefix neo means new or modern, and the word pagan is derived from the latin word Paganos wich roughly rustic.
this is where the pagans of old got labeled as suck, dwelling in more of a country setting with an uncommon knowlege about how to live off the land because of this.

[onetwothree]

How old is neo-pagan?

Paganism is not a religion that can be defined in the same terms as other mainstream religions, such as Christianity and Judaism. The term "Pagainsim" today, generally refers to many different spiritual paths that are all based around nature.

Unfortunatley, this term has been tarnished by mass media representations and misconceptions of the common Pagan and confused by many different definitions of the word throughoug history. www.religioustolerance.com has 7 definitions for the word "Pagan."

In order to seperate themselves from the misconceptions surrounding "Paganism", the term "Neo-Pagan" was coined for any person who follows "a modern faith which has been recently reconstructed from beliefs, deities, symbols, practices and other elements of an ancient religion." (ref. http://www.religioustolerance.org/neopaga1.htm)

Some examples of this are Druidism which is based on Celtic beliefs and Wicca which is also based on Celtic beliefs.

The term "Neo-Pagan" was supposedly created by Tim Zell, editor of the Green Egg sometime in the mid-70s so there is no documented time in which "Neo-Paganism" was started.

If you still have questions go to: http://www.religioustolerance.org/neo_paga.htm It's a great site with unbiased, clearly factual views of religion.

[MichelleA]

Paganism itself is a new religion. Basically, its people trying to resurrect and follow old paths. The people who lived and breathed and walked those paths originally did not call themselves pagan. They didn't even necessarily call it religion because it was simply a part of every day life.

[tmancour]

Paganism itself is a new religion. Basically, its people trying to resurrect and follow old paths. The people who lived and breathed and walked those paths originally did not call themselves pagan. They didn't even necessarily call it religion because it was simply a part of every day life.

I'd like to clarify that: there are examples of pre-Christian paleo-pagan cultures that survived the systematic cultural imperialism of Christianity, namely the Norse pagan culture in Iceland, the native paganism of the Lapps, and isolated pockets of cultural paganism survived in other marginal areas. The modern revival of such faiths in response to the failures of the Radical Monotheistic faiths has only been happening since the 19th century, and only serious in the late 20th, early 21st.

[Pilgrim]

The simple answer is that most paganism, as practiced in western culture, is a recent development.