Starting around the early 2000s, many scholars declared that contemporary Paganism was the “fastest-growing religion” either worldwide, or in specific locales. This claim was most often based on data from the 2001 American Religious Identification Survey, which found a dramatic rise in Pagans compared to a similar study conducted ten years earlier. Although Paganism most certainly witnessed explosive growth around this time, there are many reasons to question Paganism’s status as the fastest-growing religion, including social factors that shape data collection and the interpretations that scholars applied to the data. This article analyzes the data that Pagan studies scholars used to proclaim Paganism’s growth, and suggests that the claim represents a legitimation tactic. By suggesting that a group is growing quickly, a fairly meagre population is given increased importance. This enhances the perceived significance of both the community in question and any scholars who specialize in studying that community. Although Paganism is not the only religion to assert this claim, and this statement is no longer as prominent as it once was, publications from Pagan studies that make this proclamation offer case studies which demonstrate how scholars manipulate data to legitimize the topics about which they write.

This article focuses on the activities of one of the Native Faith organizations of Ukraine, the Rus’ke Pravoslavne Kolo (Community of Rus’ people who praise gods, hereafter CRLG). This organization was founded in October 2007. The center of the community’s activities is located in the city of Zaporizhzhia, located on the banks of the Dnipro River. The riverbed is divided by the island of Khortytsia, the largest island on the Dnipro, the pride of Ukraine and a national reserve. The island also contains important historical and archaeological sites. They are part of the CRLG’s religious and ritual activities. It should be noted that the island of Khortytsia and its objects (the complex of cromlechs of the Eneolithic period, the sanctuary of the Bronze Age, and the “Scythian Camp” tourist-memorial complex are important components of the religious self-identification of many contemporary Ukrainian Pagans. They give a feeling of belonging to antiquity, to spiritual sources. But it is the representatives of the CRLG, due to the geographical proximity to the museum space of the island of Khortytsia, who most actively use it in their religious and spiritual practices. Contemporary Pagans themselves also create museum spaces that have become part of the culture, such as the Rodovid wandering museum. In 2014, Bereginya Yana (Yasna) Yakovenko became its ideological inspirer and organizer. The museum exhibits are based on Yana Yakovenko’s collection of embroidered shirts (vyshyvankas). The Rodovid Museum began its active work precisely due to people’s interest inthe traditions of embroidery. Yana Yakovenko lectures at schools in Zaporizhzhia and conducts appropriate master classes. Today, the exhibits of this museum are in her home. The museum is “wandering” because it does not have a special room for its exhibits, but in 2020 Yana Yakovenko has officially issued documents for museum activities.

Tim Whitmarsh, Battling the Gods: Atheism in the Ancient World (New York : Alfred A. Knopf, 2015), x + 292 pp., US $16.95 (paper).

This paper explains the perennialist doctrines of Helena Blavatsky (1831–1891), the main theorist of Theosophy, a form of occultism whose heirs include New Age and contemporary Pagan spirituality. The analysis is restricted to her first major work, Isis Unveiled (1877). In that treatise, Blavatsky argued that a single Pagan tradition lay at the basis of all historical religions and that this ancient wisdom had been corrupted by the Catholic and Protestant churches to gain power over the blind masses. Providing a fine-grained understanding of such influential heterodox perspectives of the nineteenth century, the article contributes to a historicization of religious universalism and other ideas that have become popular in modern and post-modern times, such as the claim that a perennial “mysticism” lies at the heart of all “true spirituality,” the idea that “spirituality” is something different from “religion,” and the theory that monotheism is an inherently intolerant form of religion whereas mystical, Pagan, or polytheistic spiritualities are inherently peaceful.

A suggested extension of his thesis taking account of the fact that in the classical world the dialectic concerning “idolatry” occurs very much in an Egyptian context rather than the Hindu sources on which Michael York focuses.

The main character of this story is Dr. Franz Sättler, born 1884 in Northern Bohemia under the Austro-Hungarian Empire. A brilliant but poor student of ancient philology and orientalism at the University of Prague and editor of the first German-Persian dictionary he wanted to become a university professor but was unable to find a paid job at the University. So he started to write adventure novels. Probably in order to finance his travels he then became a spy and ended up in prison. Due to his vast knowledge of oriental languages and culture he always found ways to travel widely in the Near East supposedly to study with esoteric masters. In several volumes Sättler explained then their alleged teachings. 1925 he founded a magical order in Vienna which he pretended to be the German outpost of an oriental secret society. This order worshipped the mythological figures of Adonis and Dido as orgiastic counterparts to the “prudish” Christian creed. A whole intricate mythological cosmos with a fierce antichristian bias and a language of its own was invented by Sättler for this purpose.
 
 Very soon however the order’s branches in Germany were closed down by the police because of immoral incidents. Dr. Franz Sättler was also accused for selling quack remedies at high prices. He fled first to Czechoslovakia and then probably to Greece. He also founded a bogus limited company which was to dig up a hidden gold treasure in Greece which Sättler pretended to have found in his early years selling the shares of this company at high prices. Other business scams were invented by him, too. At the same time however he was a typical social reformer, advocating women’s rights and sexual liberty and he even wanted to reform the existent laws of Germany and also German orthography. It is not known when, where and how he died. There are still today followers of his Cult of Adonism.

In this article I argue that the emergence of new religious movements may be a result of an adaptation of world-views to the changing needs of individuals in post-industrial societies. I explore the relation of the emergence of new religious movements and changes in social values. I compare value priorities of people who identify themselves as Pagans and those of a sample of the Open University students, who represent the United Kingdom's mainstream population. The Pagans were found to emphasise post-materialist values significantly more than the OU students. Individuals’ values were also found to be related to their view of interpersonal relations. People who have egalitarian view of others endorse post-materialist values with emphasis on universalism, while people with a competitive view of interpersonal relations endorse post-materialist values with emphasis on achievement. Furthermore, while the majority of Pagans have similar value priorities, minority sub-groups were found with significantly different priorities.

The comparison drawn by the Neoplatonist Olympiodorus between the Stoic doctrine of the reciprocal implication of the virtues and the Neoplatonic doctrine of the presence of all the gods in each helps to elucidate the latter. In particular, the idea of primary and secondary “perspectives” in each virtue, when applied to Neoplatonic theology, can clarify certain theoretical statements made by Proclus in his Cratylus commentary concerning specific patterns of inherence of deities in one another. More broadly, the “polycentric” nature of Neoplatonic theology provides a theoretical articulation for henotheistic practices within polytheism without invoking evolutionist notions of “monotheistic tendencies.” The Neoplatonic distinction between the modes of unity exhibited by divine individuals (“henads”) and ontic units (“monads”), which is integral to the polycentric theology, also provides a theoretical basis for the non reductive crosscultural comparison between deities. The polycentric theology thus offers a promising foundation for a polytheistic philosophy of religion.

No abstract required due to essay format