There are, I know, in this world, neo-pagans, who believe in and have tried to revive the worship of religions that existed in Europe before Christianity. So, you have people worshiping the Celtic gods, people worshiping the Norse gods, people worshiping the Roman gods and so on.
Now, I don’t know much about the Celtic or Norse religious practice, so I’m not confused about that, but I admit I’m a little puzzed as to how Roman neo-paganism works. As I understand it, worship of the Roman gods was inherently communal and state run. The state would appoint priests, who would preside over the festivals honoring the gods. If somebody wanted something from a Roman god, he’d swear an oath saying something like, “Neptune, if you let me travel safely, when I get off the boat, I’ll sacrifice a sheep to you.”. Then, at the end of his trip, he’d buy a sheep, go to the temple of Neptune, and pay a priest to conduct the sacrifice for him.
It’s my understanding that the public worship and the sacrifices in exchange for favors thing was the core of the Roman faith. Obviously, nowadays, we don’t have any of that, so how do neo-Roman pagans do it? Do they pick a priest from among their members who says prayers and conducts sacrifices? Or how does it all work? Because neo-paganism seems to be an individual thing for a lot of people, and I don’t know how that works in a Roman religious concept. Any Roman neo-pagans who can enlighten me?
Trying to pin down the beliefs of Neo-Pagans, at least insofar as coming up with a cohesive belief system that covers all of them, even a subset like Neo-Roman worshipers is difficult. There are some who refer to themselves are Reconstructionist who try to revive the ancient practices. Some of them are crackpots who claim to come by this information via past life experience, or, a popular favorite, as a custom that’s been handed down though their family for the past few thousand years or so. Others take a good look at what reliable sources we have today and attempt to build their practices around that.
I don’t know anyone that actually sacrifices animals or desires to have the state involved their religion.
I can’t speak for anyone’s devoutness, of course, but I would assume that most members of a religion believe, to some lesser or greater extent, in that religion. This would, I assume, be all the moreso true in the case of the neopagan faiths, which are relatively new, and have therefore gotten most of their members by conversion rather than being born into the faith.
Although I will point out that my question was more about practice than about belief.
To clarify, are you referring to Roman religion, or to Greco-Roman? The original Roman religion, before the heavy Greek influence, was a sort of pantheism: All things had spirits associated with them, and the spirits of very important things, like the sky, were powerful enough to be considered gods. But there was no qualitative difference between the spirit of agriculture and the spirit of the third blade of wheat from the left in the back acre of cousin Louie’s farm-- The one was more powerful than the other, but they were both the same sort of spirit. Nor did these spirits have humanoid form: The Greek Zeus would be depicted as a strong, handsome man holding a bolt of lightning, but the Roman Jupiter would be depicted as just the bolt of lightning itself.
It certainly isn’t! But Christianity has countless generations raising their children in the most mater-of-fact ethos, while Roman religion is taught to everyone as just a bunch of famous fairytales. I’d imagine it’s pretty hard to recover from that. But if that’s what happened, it’s fascinating.
Maybe I just have a different perspective - I wasn’t raised in a Judeo-Christian household. It ALL looked like “famous fairytales” to me. In fact, on my mother’s bookshelf the bible was usually smooshed between Greek myths, the Epic of Gilgamesh, and the Egyptian Book of Coming Forth By Day*
Often referred to as “the book of the dead”, but what I gave is the original title
Can you do ritual sacrifices as they were still? I mean both logistically and legally. Since the animals are probably marked for slaughter the killing part probably isn’t in the way, but aren’t there some pretty strict control laws designed to minimize suffering and such that could get in the way? (I’m assuming, of course, the animal starts off living, which may not be the case since I don’t think that’s the important bit)
And logistically it HAS to be hard to get sacrificial animals in any appreciable quantity. I mean, it’s not like they’re doing it every night or anything, but still.
There are laws in place that actually define (certain kinds - Judeo-Islamic) of ritual slaughter as protected. And a Supreme Court case that applies the same level of protection to other religious animal sacrifices. So I’ve no doubt that if neoPagans approached things the right way, they could get the same legal protections for their rituals.
Demanding the right to shower in the blood of a white bull is probably not the ideal test case for them, though…but then Mithraism is Eastern Mystery cult, not Roman Paganism.
