The Secret Stead is the pen name of a UK-based writer and
The word for today is "pagan".Pagan -noun
[Pey-guhn]
1. A member of any religious, spiritual or cultural group or community observing a polytheistic religion that draws on ancient traditions, as the ancient Romans and Greeks, involving the worship of nature or the Earth (esp in the US, a neopagan).
2. Any person of a polytheistic religion or any religion that does not worship the God of Christianity, Judaism, or Islam (often disparaging or offensive).
3. A person without any religion; also heathen (often disparaging or offensive).
-adjective
4. Of or relating to pagans or their faith or worship.
5. Heathen; irreligious, hedonistic, uncivilised or unenlightened person (often disparaging or offensive).
The word "pagan" has humble origins that originally lacked a religious significance. From a Proto-Indo-European base "pag-" (to fix) related to the word "pact", it comes from the Late Latin word "paganus", which originally meant "villager" or "rustic", (from "pāgus" describing a small unit of land in a rural district). A demeaning Latin term (like the word "country bumpkin" or "hick"), it is said to be so derived from its use in Roman military jargon for "civilian" or "incompetent soldier".
The word has now come to refer to adherents of pre-Christian religions (sometimes of multiple deities), belonging to a number of ancient cultures - those from Greece, Rome, Egypt, Scandinavia, Ireland, and more ancient beliefs stretching back to the now extinct first faiths. Due to this attachment, in some circles it has come to also represent those modern adherents who have revived old practices and created new ones, to form their own ideologies under the umbrella of "modern paganism".
Paganism should not be confused with witchcraft, the occult or New Age movements; these are practices not necessarily based on religious belief, but have been adopted by adherents of most faiths, or no faith at all. (Folk horror films have helped create this confusion.) The truth about paganism is that it is a disparaging term used to encompass a wide range of different religious faiths not based on black magic or sorcery. These different faiths are linked by a shared history, rather than by shared beliefs or practices. Pagan beliefs, although grouped under one blanket term vary greatly, from Norse mythology, where the first man (Adam) and the first woman (Eve) were created (and received their names) from two pieces of driftwood, Ash and Elm ("Ask" and "Embla") to the Mesopotamian mythology of Gilgamesh and his apotheosis from king to god.
The word used to describe the "pagans" as they are called today, was intially thought to stem first and foremost from the location of the religious supporters, as it was more common for the various religions to refer to themselves by their ethnic origins rather than by the gods they worshipped; they simply referred to themselves (in their own language) as Romans or Greeks, for example. This form of labeling was largely due to the fact that the political and religious aspects of life were a unified entity. Thus, it was also argued that this tradition of ethnic titling was continued by the early Christians as a matter of convenience, rather than out of accuracy and respect and, as historical evidence shows, to isolate them into one solitary category as a clever strategy to remove the "pagan" faiths altogether.
This etymological thought of locality developed in the 19th century, where researchers initially believed the religious meanings of "paganus" developed from the enduring nature of non-Christian religions in rural areas far from the Roman towns and cities, where Christianity was more quickly adopted, but now it is also suggested that come circa 1400, perhaps in the middle of that century, the word found usage in Church history because of the military imagery of early Christians. They referred to themselves as “soldiers of Christ”, making non-believers “civilians". Whatever the reasons for its usage, whether locality or symbolism, most agree it evolved into a term for those who practised the old ways by the 4th century, as Christianity spread throughout the end of the Roman Empire.
From Soldier to Idolater
When we come to the usage of the word in English, by 1841 it took on the sense of "one not a Christian, Jew, or Muslim", and as a "person of heathenish character or habits". Interestingly, the origins of "heathen" and "pagan" are semantically similar. "Heathen" comes from Old English, and likely from a term for a country inhabitant - in particular, a “heath dweller”. We can find a definition in the 1897 print of the Century Dictionary which stipulates that "pagan" and "heathen" are primarily the same in meaning; but "pagan" was sometimes distinctively applied to those nations that, "although worshiping false gods, are more cultivated, as the Greeks and Romans, and heathen to uncivilised idolaters, as the tribes of Africa". This offensive use of the term is now, thankfully, outdated.
However, the distinction between pagan religions being viewed with this culture bias predates English usage. When Christianity came on board the Roman Empire, Theodosius I's vigorous supression of the practice of the old religions and its stubborn rural adherence to the old gods, meant that new forms of paganism crept in via the barbarians, according to the Oxford Dictionary of the Middle Ages. The term "barbarian" in an ancient context can been seen in Book I of Herodotus' History, where he divides the world into Hellenes (Greeks or Greek-speakers) and Barbarians (non-Greeks or non-Greek speakers). Arguably, the language of the British Empire took on this distinction in its own fashion for its African regions.
By 1908, the word was applied to modern pantheists and nature-worshippers. Today, a pagan is a person who practices a contemporary form of paganism (e.g., a neopagan), such as Wicca, as well as historically someone who follows a polytheistic religion, particularly in ancient Rome or Greece. Although used to signify pantheists and neopagans nowadays, by virtue of using it to describe those that shun the practices laid down by the monotheistic god of Christianity, Judaism, and Islam (i.e., "religions of the Book"), it can also, because of this religious bias and to distinguish from their own puritanical beliefs, refer to someone with little or no religion who enjoys sensual pleasures and material goods - much like the word "heathen" in times past but less disparagingly.
Thus in this etymological journey - from Roman military slang to a Church slur for those not "soldiers of Christ" after the Christianisation of Roman towns and cities - we can see that the Latin word has generally been used to label the "other" in a derogative manner. Whether that be common countryfolk "of the earth", seen as either barbaric and uncultivated, or ancient urbanites thought to be cultivated and irreligious, with strange hedonistic ways, and believing in mutliple gods, this disparaging outlook made its way into English usage, to pair it with its own, "heathen".
Although it is historically an inaccurate phrase in the context of those faiths, it is now the accepted term for them. Too many centuries have passed; the word has been cemented to label these supporters, despite its original meaning. But it does highlight the importance of examining where the word truly comes from and what it initially meant, to allow for a better, all-inclusive understanding of the world's religious past.
So, it is not just appearances that can be deceiving. Words can deceive, too.
Published 6 April, 2026
