What’s in This Guide
What Paganism Actually Is
What is paganism?
Paganism is an umbrella term for the world's pre-Christian, nature-based, and polytheistic spiritual traditions, encompassing a vast range of distinct practices and belief systems including Norse and Celtic spirituality, Hellenic and Roman polytheism, Wicca, Druidry, Heathenry, and many reconstructionist and eclectic paths, all sharing a general orientation toward the sacred nature of the natural world, reverence for multiple divine forces, and the importance of the seasonal cycles of the earth.
The word pagan itself comes from the Latin paganus, meaning "of the countryside" or "rural person," and was used by early urban Christians to describe those who had not converted: the people of the country who continued their old seasonal and nature-based practices. It was initially a social designation, not a spiritual one. Over time it became the collective term for all non-Abrahamic traditions.
Paganism is not a single religion with a single set of beliefs. It is a category, like "Asian cuisine" or "classical music": a term that points toward a family of related traditions without defining any one of them precisely. A Norse Heathen and a Wiccan practitioner are both pagan in the broadest sense, but their specific beliefs, deities, ethics, and practices may differ substantially. What they share is an orientation toward nature as sacred, a polytheistic or animistic worldview, and a practice that is rooted in the cycles of the earth.
Read: What Is Paganism? The Complete GuideCore Characteristics of Pagan Traditions
Nature-based: The natural world, its seasons, cycles, plants, animals, and landscapes, is understood as sacred rather than merely physical.
Polytheistic or animistic: Most pagan traditions acknowledge multiple divine forces, deities, or spirits rather than a single all-powerful God.
Cyclical rather than linear: Time is understood as moving in cycles: the seasons, the moon's phases, the agricultural year, rather than as a linear progression toward a single endpoint.
Non-evangelical: Paganism does not proselytise, recruit, or claim exclusive access to truth. The path is followed by those who are called to it, not pushed onto those who are not.
Experiential: Personal direct experience of the sacred is valued above adherence to fixed doctrine or the authority of a single text.
Witchcraft Is Not Satanism: The Factual Correction
"Witchcraft and paganism are forms of devil worship or Satanism."
This is perhaps the most persistent and most damaging misconception about pagan witchcraft. It treats two completely separate belief systems as though they were the same thing, and it fundamentally misunderstands the origins of both.
The Facts
Satan is a figure from Christian theology. Satan exists within the Christian theological framework as a fallen angel, an adversary to the Christian God. He does not exist in pagan cosmologies. You cannot worship a figure who does not exist in your belief system. Norse paganism has no Satan. Celtic paganism has no Satan. Wicca has no Satan. Hellenic paganism has no Satan. Paganism predates Christianity by thousands of years: the Christian concept of Satan simply was not part of the spiritual landscape that paganism developed from.
Satanism is its own distinct tradition, quite separate from paganism and witchcraft. LaVeyan Satanism, founded by Anton LaVey in 1966, is largely a philosophical and atheistic tradition that uses Satan as a symbol of individual will and rejection of religious authority, not as a deity it literally worships. The Satanic Temple, a modern organisation, uses Satanic imagery as a vehicle for political advocacy around religious freedom and church-state separation. Neither has meaningful connection to pagan witchcraft practice.
The confusion was deliberately manufactured. Medieval Christian authorities, in seeking to suppress pre-Christian practices and consolidate religious authority, systematically reinterpreted pagan deities as demonic figures. Horned gods such as Cernunnos of Celtic tradition and Pan of Greek tradition were reframed as images of the Devil. Practices associated with the natural world, herbal medicine, and the invocation of pre-Christian spirits were recast as devil worship. This was a political and theological project, not an accurate description of what pagans actually believed or did.
Where the Myths Came From: A Brief History
Understanding why these myths exist and how they spread is as important as correcting them. The misconceptions about paganism and witchcraft did not arise from observation of pagan practice. They arose from a specific historical process of religious power consolidation that took place primarily between the 4th and 17th centuries CE.
4th Century CE: Christianity Becomes the Official Roman Religion
When Emperor Theodosius I made Christianity the official state religion of Rome in 380 CE, the diverse polytheistic and nature-based traditions of the Roman world began to be systematically suppressed. Temples were closed, festivals were banned or absorbed, and local deities were reclassified as demons. The template for reinterpreting pagan practice as diabolical was established.
1000 to 1300 CE: Heresy Laws and the Inquisition
As the Church consolidated power across medieval Europe, the legal category of heresy expanded. Practices that deviated from approved Christian observance, including folk medicine, divination, and the continued veneration of pre-Christian spirits and holy sites, became grounds for prosecution. The framework of the "witch" as a heretic in league with the Devil began to develop.
1486 CE: The Malleus Maleficarum
Two Dominican friars, Heinrich Krämer and Jacob Sprenger, published the Malleus Maleficarum (Hammer of Witches), a witch-hunting manual that codified the idea of witchcraft as a pact with the Devil and provided procedures for identifying and prosecuting witches. The text was deeply misogynistic, explicitly arguing that women were more susceptible to diabolical influence than men. It became widely used by both Catholic and Protestant courts and significantly shaped the witch trials that followed.
1450 to 1750 CE: The European Witch Trials
The peak period of organised witch prosecution across Europe and the American colonies. See the section below for documented numbers.
20th and 21st Century CE: Persistence of Misinformation
Despite the historical record being well-documented and widely available, the association between witchcraft and devil worship has persisted in popular culture, reinforced by horror films, sensationalist media, and some religious communities that maintain the medieval framework without engaging with its historical origins or accuracy.
The Witch Trials: Documented Historical Record
The persecution of people accused of witchcraft in Europe and the American colonies is among the best-documented miscarriages of justice in recorded history. The facts are not in dispute among historians.
What the Scholarly Record Shows
Scale of trials: Historians Robin Briggs and Brian P. Levack, working independently from surviving court records, estimate approximately 100,000 to 110,000 witch trials took place across Europe and the American colonies between 1450 and 1750. William Monter's regional survey estimated roughly 80,000 trials.
Number of executions: Current scholarly consensus, based on surviving court records, places the number of executions at between 40,000 and 60,000. Germany alone saw approximately 25,000 to 30,000 executions. The figure of nine million, sometimes cited in popular accounts, is a 19th-century fabrication that has no basis in historical evidence and overstates the documented figure by a factor of up to 200.
Who the victims were: Approximately 75 to 80 per cent of those executed were women. Many were midwives, herbalists, healers, elderly women living alone, and those who lived outside social norms. Men were also executed, particularly in regions including Iceland and Estonia where male accusations were more common.
Geographic concentration: The most intense persecution occurred in the Holy Roman Empire (modern Germany, Austria, and Switzerland), which accounts for roughly half of all European executions. Germany alone saw over 25,000 deaths. By contrast, Spain and Italy, where the Inquisition actually held authority, executed fewer than 1,500 combined, because the Inquisition was more sceptical of witchcraft accusations than secular courts were.
Salem, Massachusetts (1692): America's most famous witch trials resulted in 19 hangings and one death by pressing. Historically significant but numerically small compared to European persecutions.
Were those executed actually practising witchcraft?
The vast majority of those executed during the witch trials were not practising anything that contemporary pagans or witches would recognise as witchcraft. They were ordinary people, falsely accused, often under torture, of crimes they had not committed. The accusations were driven by social tension, misogyny, property disputes, fear, and religious authority rather than by actual evidence of magical practice.
Acknowledging the witch trials is not about claiming historical paganism as a martyrdom narrative. It is about understanding the documented historical reality of what happened when religious authority was used to persecute those who fell outside social norms, and ensuring that the historical record is not distorted by either side.
Pagan Origins of Common Holidays
The overlap between Christian holidays and pre-existing pagan seasonal celebrations is academically documented and is not a matter of serious historical dispute. When Christian missionaries entered northern and western Europe, they frequently adapted existing seasonal festivals rather than attempting to replace them outright, a policy explicitly endorsed by Pope Gregory I in his instructions to Augustine of Canterbury in 601 CE.
Sources: The Venerable Bede, De Temporum Ratione (725 CE); Pope Julius I (4th century CE); academic religious history consensus
Pagan Festival
Yule · Winter SolsticeNorse and Germanic celebration of the winter solstice, honouring the return of the sun after the longest night. Featured the Yule log, feasting, decorated evergreen branches, and twelve days of celebration. Documented in Norse sources centuries before Christmas.
Christian Adoption
Christmas · 25 DecemberDecember 25 was declared the official birth of Christ by Pope Julius I in the 4th century CE. The date had previously been marked by Saturnalia (Roman) and the Dies Natalis Solis Invicti (birthday of the unconquered sun). Many Yule traditions, including the decorated tree, the Yule log, and gift-giving, were absorbed directly into Christmas practice.
Pagan Festival
Eostre · Spring EquinoxGermanic goddess of dawn and spring, documented by the Venerable Bede in 725 CE as the deity after whom the month of April was named. Celebrations of spring fertility and renewal occurred at the equinox across many pre-Christian European cultures. Eggs and hares were fertility symbols in spring celebrations across multiple traditions.
Christian Adoption
EasterThe English name Easter derives from Eostre (documented by Bede). The timing of Easter, the first Sunday after the first full moon after the spring equinox, places it firmly in the seasonal frame of the spring equinox. Eggs and the Easter rabbit are pre-Christian fertility symbols absorbed into the celebration.
Pagan Festival
Samhain · 31 OctoberCeltic festival marking the end of the harvest season and the beginning of winter, when the boundary between the living and the dead was understood as thin and the ancestors could be honoured. Celebrated with fires, offerings to the dead, and the acknowledgement of mortality. One of the eight Celtic seasonal festivals.
Christian Adoption
All Saints’ Day · 1 NovemberPope Gregory III (731 to 741 CE) moved the Christian feast of All Saints to November 1, coinciding with Samhain. All Hallows Eve (the evening before All Saints Day) became Halloween. The traditions of dressing in costumes to confuse spirits and leaving offerings derive from Samhain practice.
Pagan Festival
Imbolc · 1 FebruaryCeltic festival of early spring, sacred to the goddess Brigid, marking the first signs of the year turning toward warmth: the first lambs, the lengthening days, the stirring of the earth. Associated with fire, light, and the coming of spring.
Christian Adoption
Candlemas · 2 FebruaryThe Feast of the Presentation of Jesus at the Temple, marked with the blessing of candles and the lighting of lights in the church, occurring at the same time of year as Imbolc. St Brigid's Day is celebrated on 1 February, one day before Candlemas, directly overlapping with the pagan Brigid festival.
An Important Nuance
The overlap between pagan festivals and Christian holidays does not mean Christianity "stole" these celebrations in a malicious sense. It reflects the normal process by which new religious movements adapt to existing cultural frameworks. It also does not diminish the genuine spiritual significance these dates hold for either Christians or pagans who observe them. Both communities can find meaning in the same seasonal rhythms. Acknowledging shared roots is not a claim of ownership.
The Ethics of Modern Witchcraft
Do witches have an ethical code?
Yes. The most widely known ethical principle in modern Wiccan witchcraft is the Wiccan Rede: "An it harm none, do what ye will," first publicly stated by Doreen Valiente on 3 October 1964 at a dinner hosted by the Witchcraft Research Association, meaning that practitioners are free to act according to their own will provided their actions cause no harm to others.
The Rede is a guideline rather than a law. Wicca has no equivalent to the Ten Commandments, no religious police, no external authority who enforces compliance. The Rede reflects the underlying value of personal responsibility: you are accountable for the consequences of your actions, which is itself a demanding ethical standard. Non-Wiccan pagan traditions have their own ethical frameworks: Norse tradition emphasises honour, reciprocity, and the web of obligation connecting all beings; Celtic traditions value hospitality, truth, and the protection of the vulnerable.
What all pagan ethical frameworks share is the absence of a punishment-based morality. The motivation for ethical behaviour is not fear of divine punishment or threat of hellfire. It is the recognition that one's actions have consequences, that those consequences affect oneself and others, and that living in accordance with one's values is its own reward and its own cost when violated.
Read: The Wiccan Rede and Threefold Law ExplainedWhat Pagan Witchcraft Actually Involves
The gap between what critics imagine pagan witchcraft involves and what it actually involves in practice is substantial. Contemporary pagan witchcraft consists primarily of:
- Herbalism and plant knowledge: The use of herbs, plants, and botanical ingredients for healing, ritual, and magical purposes. This tradition has direct historical roots in the folk medicine practices of pre-modern Europe and predates both the witch trials and the modern herbal medicine movement.
- Seasonal observance: Marking the eight points of the Wheel of the Year, including solstices, equinoxes, and the four cross-quarter days. This is the primary structure of pagan religious practice and grounds the practitioner in the natural cycles of the earth.
- Divination: The use of tarot, runes, oracle cards, and other tools to seek insight and guidance. Divination is not prediction of a fixed future but a practice of bringing the unconscious into conscious awareness and seeking patterns in complex situations.
- Meditation and inner work: Practices of stillness, visualisation, shadow work, and psychological self-examination that constitute the inner dimensions of magical practice.
- Spellwork: The intentional working of energy through ritual, spoken intention, and natural materials toward a specific outcome. Modern witchcraft understands spellwork through the framework of intention, energy, and the natural correspondences between different materials and outcomes.
- Ancestor and deity connection: Building relationships with deities, ancestral spirits, and the forces of the natural world through offering, prayer, and ritual. This is the relational and devotional dimension of practice.
- Community: Gathering with others who share the path, celebrating the seasons together, and supporting the broader pagan community in the same way that any religious community gathers and supports its members.
A Grounding Ritual Before Difficult Conversations
A simple five-minute practice for centring yourself before navigating conversations about your practice with sceptical or critical people. This ritual builds clarity, patience, and groundedness so that your response comes from understanding rather than defensiveness.
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Find five minutes alone. Sit with your feet flat on the floor. Place both hands on your thighs, palms down. Close your eyes.
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Take three slow breaths with a longer exhale than inhale. With each exhale, feel your weight drop more fully into the chair and the floor. You are grounded. You know what you believe and why.
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Recall one true thing about your practice: something you have personally experienced, not a claim you have read. Hold that truth clearly in your mind. It is yours. It does not require anyone else's validation.
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Set one intention for the conversation: not to win, not to convert, but to be honest and clear. Speak: "I enter this conversation with honesty and patience. I represent my path accurately. I hold my ground without aggression."
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Open your eyes and proceed. The goal of representing your practice accurately is within your reach. The goal of changing the other person's mind is not, and releasing it will make the conversation significantly more productive.
Sources and Further Reading
- Robin Briggs, Witches and Neighbours (Oxford, 1996): peer-reviewed historical analysis of witch trials, estimating 40,000 to 50,000 executions
- Brian P. Levack, The Witch-Hunt in Early Modern Europe: estimates approximately 110,000 trials and 60,000 executions from surviving records
- The Venerable Bede, De Temporum Ratione (725 CE): primary source documenting Eostre and the naming of months
- Doreen Valiente, speech to the Witchcraft Research Association, 3 October 1964: first public record of the Wiccan Rede
- Gerald Gardner, The Meaning of Witchcraft (1959): early Wiccan ethical framework
- Malleus Maleficarum, Krämer and Sprenger (1486): primary source for medieval witch-hunting doctrine
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