Save one Pagan Religion to the modern-day

Save one Pagan Religion to the modern-day

  • Celtic polytheism

    Votes: 21 14.3%
  • Germanic paganism

    Votes: 8 5.4%
  • Ancient Greek religion*

    Votes: 16 10.9%
  • Norse Religion

    Votes: 27 18.4%
  • Ancient Egyptian Religion

    Votes: 16 10.9%
  • Ancient Roman Religion*

    Votes: 15 10.2%
  • Lithuanian paganism

    Votes: 23 15.6%
  • Slavic paganism

    Votes: 10 6.8%
  • Other

    Votes: 11 7.5%

  • Total voters
    147
So, in the Ancient Past, before the rise of Monotheistic religions such as Christianity and Islam, many states such as Persia, Egypt, Rome, all worshiped various gods and goddesses, that by the modern standard, are considered Pagan. When Christianity and then Islam rose, these ancient religions became mythologies and legends.

In the modern-day, there are small revivalist Neo-Pagan movements for Ancient Religions, such as Hellenism and Kemetism, while other mythologies are worshiped as folk-religions.

If you were to save one, and only one, Pagan religion, to still be worshipped to this day, which one?

The list includes some of the popular choices:
Rules:
1. The Pagan religion doesn't have to be the official religion of a country. Just surviving to the modern day, like Zoroastrianism. Speaking of which...
2. Zoroastrianism doesn't count, as it is already an Ancient Religion that survived to this day. A surviving Zoroastrian Iran is an entirely different subject, saved for another thread.
3. Neo-Pagan movements, such as Roman Polytheistic Reconstructionism, Hellenism, Slavic Native Faith, Celtic Reconstructionist Paganism, or heathenry, as well as modern eclectic traditions such as Wicca and its many offshoots, Neo-Druidism, and Discordianism, does not count. We're talking about the Original Paganism being saved, and surviving to this day, not so the various revivalist movements taking over.
4. * Yes, I know that usually that Roman and Greek mythologies are lumped together as "Greco-Roman Mythology", but for fun, I'm keeping them separate.
 
Norse would be the one more pausable, if they adopted writing and Christianity/Nazareans is far weaker(Islam is stronger but far away nordic sphere of influence?)
 
Voted for Roman religion (but I mean it as a vote for both Greek and Roman paganism). The reason being that I fell in love with Julian (both the historical emperor and the novel) many years ago and consequently with his cause (however eccentric it was). And I just love anything Roman.
 
Vote for Egyptian religion. There is some really intresting things on the religion. Just avoid Romans ever conquering the countyr. Perhaps even better if there is not Ptolemaic Dynasty. And so no too rise of Christianity and Islam.
 
Celtic polytheism, because it's survival would have very interesting knock-on effects for Western Christianity.

EDIT: I mean, they all would, but for Celtic polytheism you could have it survive in Ireland and it would butterfly the direction of Western Christianity without butterflying its existence.
 
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There are many so called Pagan religions that still survive, with millions of adherents in the modern world. In Guatemala the majority of the Native population still follow Mayan worship, and never became Roman Catholic. Fortunately, they no longer practice human sacrifice. Across the world many millions of people are Animists. It seems your defining paganism as ancient polytheistic faiths. If you define it that way Hinduism would be a pagan religion, and it has almost a billion adherents in the modern world.
 

The Mari El are still partially pagans and live within Europe according to most definitions. An interesting footnote.

I always found Greek mythology interesting, but, in a wider search for info on Indo-European myths I read Celtic mythology as particularly interesting and fun to read. That being said I'm a slavicist at heart and wish we could have more information on Slavic mythology. Maybe Volodymyr the Great has a theogony produced before his conversion, explaining East Slavic mythology? Or he never converts for the purposes of this discussion. Although, from a historical perspective I prefer the beauty of Christian art and literature to what came before.
 
I tossed up between Norse and "Germanic" (which included the Norse).

Really I want to pick Anglo-Saxon, which was pretty close to the Norse religion (linguistically at least).
 
The Mari El are still partially pagans and live within Europe according to most definitions. An interesting footnote.
According to that article, they were Christianised by the Russian Empire, but retained some pagan practices in a syncretic form of religion , and the full pagans represent a mostly neopagan group rather than a direct continuation of their old beliefs.
 
Bruh where in the world is the Ancient Mesopotamian Religion?

Absolutely abhorrent.

Do we even know much about Mesopotamian religion&mythology beside Gilgamesh?

And you have too other option there. I don't think that it would get much of votes anyway.

Either the Aztec religion or the Punic religion. :evilsmile:

Aztec preist: Excuse me sir, but I have sacrifice you so gods not destroy the world. I hope that you don't get mad about that. I am really sorry.
 
Do we even know much about Mesopotamian religion&mythology beside Gilgamesh?
Off the top of my head, it has the original (and, in my opinion, better) version of the "Flood and Ark" story, there was a goddess of beer and there's a story about the gods making sheep and grain and giving them to humanity more or less as hand-me-downs, with the personifications of the two things later getting drunk and having an argument about which is better.

Also there was an annual religious ceremony in the temple of Marduk that involved the king getting slapped really hard in the face.
 
Voted for Roman religion (but I mean it as a vote for both Greek and Roman paganism). The reason being that I fell in love with Julian (both the historical emperor and the novel) many years ago and consequently with his cause (however eccentric it was). And I just love anything Roman.
Wholeheartedly quoting you here. Once I came up with the weird idea of Julian becoming a Christian reformer, blending it heavily with the traditional Roman religion, but I would love to see a TL where he actually succeeds.
 

Timelordtoe

Monthly Donor
Do we even know much about Mesopotamian religion&mythology beside Gilgamesh?
We do know a fair bit, though it's important to note that we're talking about a pantheon that was worshipped for about four millennia, so we've got plenty of conflicting accounts and there's a lot of regional and temporal variation. The broad strokes remain the same, though. At certain times various gods are more venerated, and who is top dog can change around (not dissimilar to Zeus taking Poseidon's place at the top of the Greek pantheon after the Bronze Age collapse).

But the ancient Mesopotamian religion was highly influential on just about every religion that followed it in the area, with a few particilarly interesting examples. Inanna/Ishtar has a few myths that are similar to Greek myths about Aphrodite. Inanna's descent into the underworld shares a great many similarities to the story of Adonis (and there's a good chance that Aphrodite is the Greek version of the Phoenician version of Inanna).

A fair bit has survived, thanks to cuneiform, though what remains is definitely an incomplete version of events. But it stuck around for a good while, it's not until the Achaemenid Empire that it really started to decline in popularity, with Christianity being the killing blow.

Ancient Mesopotamia, especially Sumer, is an interest of mine, so I'd absolutely keep it around to the modern day if I could. Most likely it'd just be a regional religion rather than anything major (though that depends on if/how Christianity and Islam develop), but I think it would have been interesting how another two thousand years would have changed things up for it.
 
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