In our modern age, we live within the framework of the norms imposed by society, which in turn has been fostered and is operated by and within the norms of Abrahamic religions, technological developments and an education system largely built upon both. There are religious people who practise the orders of their faith, like Muslims praying five times a day or a Catholic going to the church on Sunday. There are people who identify as non-religious, also living within an ambience and milieu surrounded by technological devices, while never actively leading a life based on religious principles. There are many other people leading completely different lives, meddling in and interacting with religion and technology in varying degrees depending on the need and the environment they are living in.

Have we always been this way, however? Abrahamic religions and technology are recent phenomena in the history of humanity when we take into account the fact that Homo Sapiens has an approximate history of 300.000 years. We have lived as hunter-gatherers throughout most of our history. Our early ancestors leading a settled life in villages and cities were mostly pagans, worshipping gods and goddesses in their pantheon. An Aztec monk living in the 13th-century Mesoamerica was willing to offer sacrifices to Huitzilopochtli while a citizen of Ancient Athens believed Zeus was the greatest god ruling the world.

For our pagan ancestors, interacting with nature was of utmost importance. They connected to the divine and the cosmos through nature. They interpreted the earth and the sky in their own manner. They observed the cycles of seasons and celestial events, observed rivers and lakes, scrutinized animal and plant behaviours and created a life for themselves based on the criteria they invented after all this careful observation and reasoning.

In other words, they were connected to their own human nature through all the rituals they created for themselves as a result of their pagan beliefs.

What, then, could mean having a pagan spirit in our technology-driven age bearing the strong legacy of Abrahamic religions?

Probably not much. As is already clear inside the expression, it means having that spirit and living according to that. You don’t need to carry out the rituals the pagans did; you don’t need to go to forest to observe animals and plants; you don’t need to revolve around a pile of stones praying to spirits living in the wilderness.

For me, having a pagan spirit means having a free spirit just like our pagan ancestors were supposed to have. It means not being necessarily bound by the impositions of modern life. It means having a sane, assertive and agile mind that you can use to think for yourself and question norms of society imposed on you from an early age. It means being connected to your pure human spirit as much as possible in a world that is trying to turn you into anything but human. If you are a person agreeing with these principles and able to observe them in your day-to-day life, you already are a person with a pagan spirit, in my opinion.

If you are a pagan in spirit, you don’t need to be afraid of your own humanity. You don’t need to ignore your emotions. You don’t need to turn into a crook without empathy in order to climb the ladders to ” success ” in your professional life at the expense of crushing other people. You don’t need to lose touch with beautiful feelings like love, mercy, affection just because manifesting them would supposedly make you look weak and stupid. You know that you are a human and you have a beautiful spirit which the social order you are living in is programmed to destroy day by day.

I am someone who intends to feed this pagan spirit each day. What about you?