BY LETTER
Paganism, Neopaganism, Ecopaganism
Generic terms for nature-based caretakerist, ecospiritual, polytheistic or pantheistic types of religions, often related to powers of sexuality, cycles of bio-habitat seasons, and so on.
Paganism is popular on Caretaker, Utopia Sphere, and Organicist worlds, especially among splice, rianth, and shamanically orientated nearbaseline groups. In each of these milieus and among each of these groups paganism differs tremendously, so much so that it is almost impossible to define it, except by what it is not. Generally, pagans dislike any memeticities that teach that the body or sex is shameful, or that postulate or worship a God or Archailect that gives imperious commands from on-high. They are also very rarely found outside natural, terraformed, or very large orbital or deep space biospheric habitats. They tend to be either prims or to favour biotech and bioaugmentation (although many are also not adverse to hylonanotech), and often (although there are exceptions) adopt a strong attitude of sacredness and caring towards biospheres and all sentient (not just sophont) beings. However they also rarely form large organizations, and hence have little memetic power of persuasion, unlike the missionary archailect religions and even non-archailect religions like Xenodharma or the Universal Church. This, plus their unfortunate tendency to bicker among themselves (more over issues of personality and leadership that doctrine) means that pagan-type religions have always found it difficult to establish themselves in anything other than a local context.
Paganism is popular on Caretaker, Utopia Sphere, and Organicist worlds, especially among splice, rianth, and shamanically orientated nearbaseline groups. In each of these milieus and among each of these groups paganism differs tremendously, so much so that it is almost impossible to define it, except by what it is not. Generally, pagans dislike any memeticities that teach that the body or sex is shameful, or that postulate or worship a God or Archailect that gives imperious commands from on-high. They are also very rarely found outside natural, terraformed, or very large orbital or deep space biospheric habitats. They tend to be either prims or to favour biotech and bioaugmentation (although many are also not adverse to hylonanotech), and often (although there are exceptions) adopt a strong attitude of sacredness and caring towards biospheres and all sentient (not just sophont) beings. However they also rarely form large organizations, and hence have little memetic power of persuasion, unlike the missionary archailect religions and even non-archailect religions like Xenodharma or the Universal Church. This, plus their unfortunate tendency to bicker among themselves (more over issues of personality and leadership that doctrine) means that pagan-type religions have always found it difficult to establish themselves in anything other than a local context.
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Development Notes
Text by M. Alan Kazlev
Initially published on 09 December 2001.
Initially published on 09 December 2001.
