112. Athenian Stranger: Neo-Paganism

Athenian Stranger and I get together to discuss the modern origins and interest in pagan revival in Europe during the modern period.

We go through a lot of material here and try to approach this from a philosophical and history of scholarship to address the question of where this interest comes from and why it started happening in the modern period. The answers are in some ways more mundane than you might think but also much bigger in scope than many realize. We do not get into the specifics of the content of today’s internet neo-paganism, which is probably the least interesting part of this whole discussion. I have enjoyed reading the Eddas and other primary source materials myself and will do so again in the future. But that is not what this discussion is about.

If you have questions, please do ask them in the comments and Athenian and I may do a follow up episode.

Also: Athenian mentions the one passage in the New Testament which mentions the word philosophy — φῐλοσοφῐ́ᾱ — and I said it was from 1 Corinthians 1-2. I was mixing up the words “wisdom” and “philosophy.” The actual text is Colossians 2:8 …

Βλέπετε μή τις ὑμᾶς ἔσται ὁ συλαγωγῶν διὰ τῆς φιλοσοφίας καὶ κενῆς ἀπάτης, κατὰ τὴν παράδοσιν τῶν ἀνθρώπων, κατὰ τὰ στοιχεῖα τοῦ κόσμου καὶ οὐ κατὰ Χριστόν

See to it that no one takes you captive through hollow and deceptive philosophy, which depends on human tradition and the elemental spiritual forces of this world rather than on Christ.

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