[Elspode]

I'll give you the basic rundown. This is a common and entirely fair question.

The word "pagan" is rooted in Latin, and strictly speaking, means "country dwellar". When the early Church and its adherants began to take over Northern Europe and the British Isles, the indigenous peoples practiced various forms of ritual and sympathetic magic which were tied to the cycles of the Earth and the beasts, plants and materials which make up the planet. As these peoples were assimilated, the word "pagan" took on a connotation which meant, basically, unsophisticed or unenlightened. To be a Pagan person at the time of the Church's expansion was to be out of the norm, or at least out of what the norm was to eventually become.

Nowadays, "Pagan" generally is used to describe anyone who walks a path outside of the Judeo-Christian/Muslim/Hindu/Buddhist realms, although many Christians would undoubtedly lump Hindus and Buddhists under the Pagan umbrella as well, being either essentially humanistic or polytheistic as those two paths are.

When it comes to the question of what it means to be a Pagan, well...that's as personal as personal gets. I don't mean that it is a secret. I mean that the reasons that a person might choose to walk a Pagan path are as varied and diverse as people themselves...as are the choice of possible paths that could be termed "pagan".

I can therefore only characterize what it means to *me* to be a Pagan. For me, it means that I believe that the essence of the human soul and the spiritual practices undertaken to nurture it are derived from the Universe itself. I draw energies from the Earth and the All, and channel them to effect change in my life and my reality. I believe that all things are different facets of one great Whole, as it were. Because of this, I am intimately intertwined with Deity, and not separate or beneath Divinity. In short...Thou Art God. I am God. We are all God. When I participate in ritual, I visualize known archetypes, aspects of Divinity that have been described over the centuries as corporeal manifestations of essential human concepts...Aphrodite for Love, Hermes for Communication, The Green Man or Cerrunos for the essential male energies, and so on, but still, I am a part of what They are. They are me and I am They.

Overarching all of it is my recognition that Deity is dualistic. Deity is both female and male, God and Goddess. I believe that the Universe itself is inherently dualistic, filled with positive and negative charge, dark and light, good and bad...and that all of these forces are inextricably intertwined, two halves of the same Whole, two sides of the same coin.

That covers the essential meaning of being a Pagan for me. Others will undoubtedly give you a very different view, and as a Pagan...I know that this is okay, because I do not, cannot, and would not presume to have the Answers. I belive what I believe, and you should believe what you believe.

What no one should do is force what they believe on others.