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  • Every year, hundreds gather at Witchfest International in London. Marketed as the largest witchcraft

  • festival in history, people from all across Europe come to discuss and practicepagan

  • activities. In fact, the United Kingdom has recently seen a huge upsurge of interest in

  • paganism, causing a Christian activist group to declare itone of the biggest threats

  • to western civilization”. So, what is paganism?

  • Well, the contemporary idea of paganism comes from ancient Europe’s pre-Christian religions.

  • Greek mythology is itself a form of paganism, although the actual word pagan only really

  • came into popular usage after the development of Christianity. christians would use the

  • label in order to differentiate it from Abrahamic religions.

  • But, what exactly IS paganism if not Christianity, Islam, or Judaism? Well, historically, it

  • referred to country dwellers, and was actually a pejorative term to describe a number of

  • alternate faiths”. But, in modern times the neo-pagan movement has become associated

  • with Wicca, orPagan Witchcraft”, which was invented by an Englishman in the mid-twentieth

  • century. It was based on the idea that witches are not followers of Satan, as had been believed,

  • but rather followers of a pre-Christian religion.

  • Likewise, Druidismanother form of paganismis on the rise. In pre-Christian Britain, Druids

  • were the priests of mostly Western European Celtic societies. But today they are a loosely

  • connected group which identifies less as a religious movement and more of a spiritual

  • one. Like Wiccans, Druids revere nature, but they do not follow any sacred text or adhere

  • to a strict set of beliefs.

  • Other, relatively modern mythologies, such as New Wave, heathenry, and shamanism [shah-man-ism]

  • are all considered neo-pagan religions. In recent years, almost 57,000 people identified

  • aspaganin the UK alone, and some estimate roughly 1.2 million in the United States.

  • Other sources put the global number at about 3 million. By comparison, a relatively small

  • religion like Sikhism has about 25 million adherents. In fact, since the wordpagan

  • generally refers to most of the world’s non-Abrahamic religions, it may be almost

  • impossible to track down the total number of adherents. Still, despite being a predominantly

  • Western movement, and reportedly the fastest growing religion in Britain- around the world,

  • it is almost unheard of.

  • A total of up to 13% of people worldwide have reported themselves to beconvinced atheists.”

  • Learn more about atheism’s growing popularity in this video. Thanks for watching TestTube!

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Every year, hundreds gather at Witchfest International in London. Marketed as the largest witchcraft

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