Word: paganization
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...globe. Islam gives cohesion to complaints about the injustices of the world. The Muslim tradition provides the language and symbolism to express a wide social message: it is not necessarily a religious phenomenon. It is not antiChristian. In fact, Muslims really regard modern Westerners as a species of pagan. Ironically, some of the resentment has been aroused by the emergence of oil-rich classes within the Islamic countries themselves. With that wealth came a widening gap between rich and poor, a dangerous ambivalence of rising expectations and an anxiety that old ways might be endangered. The resentment of modernization...
...substance of Sugar Babies (if sheer fluff has substance)? Not so much, admittedly, for its cornball bag of tricks as for its relaxed mental climate, its absolution from thought. We relish its tipsy humors, its panting satyrs and bird-brained nymphs, who pursue each other with a strangely pagan innocence...
Equally hostile to capitalism, Marxism and the Judaeo-Christian tradition, New Righters look fondly back to pagan and Indo-European cultures for alternative social models. Explaining paganism's curious fascination for them, New Right Journalist Louis Pauwels says, "We do not wish to burn Bibles or churches, but their message is only part of the European tradition." Just as important, says Pauwels, are "the mores of the ancient pagan cultures and heroes like Prometheus and Faust, who show that man is made to conquer the world...
Originally, modern interest in ancient pagan practices was spurred by research early in this century by British Anthropologist Margaret Murray, who sought to dispel folklore that witches were invariably malevolent. But today's neopagan movement has its roots in the counterculture. Though many neopaganists live otherwise ordinary lives as, say, bank tellers or bartenders, others gather in communes. Psychologists say that neopaganism functions as a form of "folk therapy," a sort of ritualized search for self-worth in an increasingly complex society...
...Modern pagan groups tend to be small (at most 20 members) and eclectic, drawing their beliefs from such diverse sources as ancient Egypt, the Druids, Greek and Roman antiquity and the American Indian religions. But the groups share some tenets. Most believe in reincarnation" and in a universe ruled by a supreme godhead comprising two parts: a male half, which includes the sun, and a female half, which includes the moon. The distaff side is frequently considered to have more status, which makes neopaganism especially attractive to some feminists...