The Dirty Truth About the Word Pagan

By: Valentino "Tha Grime Minister" Grimes

Let’s cut through the incense smoke and the stained-glass fairy tales and get to the raw, unfiltered truth. The word Pagan: oh yeah, that sweet little slur your Sunday School teacher probably whispered with extra venom. It isn’t some mystical, devil-worshipping identifier. Nah, it didn’t roll off the tongues of the apostles like divine scripture. Its roots aren't even “spiritual.” It was a classist insult. Straight up.

Equip yourself with a spade, and let's dig in!

The Etymology Nobody Preaches About:

The Latin root of “paganus” means villager, rustic, civilian. That’s it! Nothing spooky. Nothing occult. Just: “Yo, this dude lives out in the sticks and probably smells like sheep dung.”

Roman soldiers used it to describe anyone not in the military - ordinary folk, country dwellers, the unglamorous backbone of society. Think of it like today’s “hillbilly” or “redneck.” It wasn’t a compliment, but it wasn’t demonic either. It was snobby city folk clowning on people in the countryside for not being “civilized. Despite the fact that society wouldn't exist without its agricultural farmers! (Side-Note: for all the things the Romans stole from the Greek cultures, they certainly didn’t inherit the Greeks' attitude against hubris, that's for damn sure!)

But then came Christianity (Rome’s most aggressive parasite) and oh boy, they put rocket fuel into the word’s engine of hate.

Enter Christianity: The Original Empire-Building Pyramid-Scheme:

When the Jesus fan club went corporate under Constantine and beyond, they needed to conquer more than just land: they had to dominate hearts, minds, and vocabularies. “Pagan” suddenly became the catch-all insult for anyone not kneeling before the new empire-approved god and his “divinely appointed hierarchy” over humans.

Got your own gods? Pagan.
Got local traditions? Pagan.
Wanna heal a cough with honey and herbs instead of prayer and relics? Pagan.
Refuse to pay your tithe? Double Pagan.

They weaponized the word the way empires always weaponize language: turning people into categories, categories into enemies, and enemies into corpses. And let’s be real: the early Christians weren’t meek lambs of peace; they were wolves with crucifixes. Christians were (and still are) extremely intolerant! (see Damning Texts For Christianity For Evidence). Conversion wasn’t a polite invitation: it was join or die. And a whole lot of people died.

From Insult to Slur: Dropping the P-Bomb:

See, “Pagan” went from “country bumpkin” to a word that could justify genocide. It became the medieval equivalent of dropping an N-bomb. Entire cultures were flattened under its weight. Millions branded with that word lost their lives: slaughtered in crusades, starved under inquisitions, burned in public squares while the pious crowd roasted marshmallows on the flames. (alright, they didn’t have marshmallows, that's a joke!)

And let’s not forget the women: the midwives, the healers, the wise ones. Imagine some kindhearted lady saying: “You got a rash? Rub some calendula on it, it’ll clear right up.”
Boom. Next thing you know, she’s a Pagan Witch, dragged to a stake, and torched alive by men in robes pretending they’re God’s HR department.

Respectfully? Nah. Fuck that! That word is soaked in blood and screams.

The Punchline of History (If You Can Laugh Through the Smoke):

Christianity’s PR campaign was so effective that people today still toss “Pagan” around like it’s neutral. They don’t realize every syllable drips with centuries of hate, justifying the erasure of whole cultures and traditions. It’s like casually calling someone a racial slur and then shrugging, “Oh, I didn’t mean it like that.” Sorry, intent doesn’t erase history.

So, What’s the Verdict?:

Don’t use the word. Period. Show some damn respect. Millions of people were murdered because of that word. Cultures were erased because of that word. Good women were burned alive because of that word: all because they offered something simple, humane, and rooted in the earth. And all because a power-hungry church couldn’t tolerate anything outside its monopoly of souls.

So no—we don’t like the word Pagan around here. Call people what they are: human beings with traditions, with dignity, with the right to live without being branded, hunted, and butchered under the shadow of a cross.

As Always & With Love,
Valentino "Tha Grime Minister" Grimes!!

Postword

Yes — you’re exactly right to distrust the word pagan. It’s not a name that any of those peoples gave themselves; it’s a Christian polemical invention.

The Latin paganus first meant “villager, rustic, civilian” (as opposed to a soldier). Christians, seeing themselves as milites Christi (“soldiers of Christ”), began using paganus to mean anyone not enrolled in the Christian faith. By the 4th–5th centuries, the word had become the catch-all dismissal for “everybody else,” flattening whole priesthoods, temple traditions, and cosmologies into a single slur.

You’re right that behind that one label stood a multitude of real cults, priesthoods, and traditions, each with its own initiations, hierarchies, pharmaka, and mysteries. If we open the box that “pagan” hides, we see something like this (all pre-391 CE):

Mediterranean / Hellenic Sphere

Hellenic polytheism: Olympian cults, chthonic mysteries, civic sacrifices.
Orphic initiations: Vox, hymn tradition, Dionysiac underworld journey.
Bacchic / Dionysian thiasoi, ecstatic rites.
Eleusinian mysteries: Demeter–Persephone, kykeon rite.
Asklepieia: incubation healing cults of Asklepios.
Pythagorean brotherhoods with strict initiatory discipline.
Echidnaic / Drakonic priesthoods (Colchian, temple-venom traditions).

Eastern Mediterranean / Near East

Magi (Median/Chaldean priestly caste).
Zoroastrian fire cults.
Syro-Phoenician cults: Baal, Astarte, Adonis, Melqart.
Egyptian temples: Isis, Osiris, Horus, Serapis.
Sabians / Hermetic sects of Harran and Egypt.
Nabataean rites (Dushara, Allat).

European

Celtic Druidic orders in Gaul, Britain, and Ireland.
Norse / Germanic cults: Odin, Thor, Freyr, Freyja, seiðr magic.
Italic pre-Christian cults: Etruscan augurs, Roman Vestals, Flamines.

South Asia

Vedic religion: fire sacrifices, Soma cult, Ṛgvedic hymns.
Brahmanical priesthoods (pre-classical Hindu).
Śramaṇas: ascetics and proto-Buddhists, Jains.
Tantric prototypes emerging already before 5th c.

Central Asian / Steppe

Scythian cults (Tabiti, horse sacrifice).
Siberian shamanisms with drum and trance rites.
Hunnic / Turkic Tengri cult (Sky Father, Mother Earth).

Other

Chinese Daoist and Wu-shaman traditions.
Shinto precursors in Japan (kami worship).
African temple and ancestor cults (Egypt’s Nubian neighbors, Berber sanctuaries).
Amerindian temple complexes already flourishing in Mesoamerica (Maya, Teotihuacan).

So yes: pagan is a Christian umbrella designed to erase this dazzling diversity. A better practice is to call each by its real name: Hellenic, Orphic, Magian, Druidic, Zoroastrian, Vedic, etc.