Myth-understood Words and Phrases
Pejoration is the process or condition of worsening or degenerating. In linguistics, pejoration is the process by which the status of the meaning of a word changes for the worse over a period of time. For example, the word “egregious”, which formally meant “distinguished or remarkable”, has come to mean “conspicuously bad or flagrant”. Talk about your fall from grace!
1. a person who is not a Christian, Moslem, or Jew; a heathen
2. one who has no religion
3. a hedonist
*The American Heritage Dictionary, Houghton Mifflin Company, Boston,1991.
Originally, however it derived from the Latin word “paganus”, meaning country dweller (from pagus=country.)So began the demonization of the term “country people”, as more and more people moved from the country into the cities, and therefore considered themselves more civilized.
The urban dwellers began to distinguish themselves from the rural people (“country dwellers” or pagans), by considering that their religion (monotheistic vs. polytheistic), their economic basis (industrial vs. agricultural), even their style of dress was superior to their simple country cousins. In their ignorance and fear, and often forgetting their own origins were from the country, the city dwellers began to call anyone connected with the country a “heathen”, which currently means a person who is not a Christian, Moslem, or Jew;the unconverted, note definition No.1.However, the word heathen, whose roots reach back to Old English, simply means “of the heath”, the heath being large tracts of uncultivated land covered with shrubbery. In essence, they were calling their country bumpkin cousins “landless, godless and uncultivated”!
The connotation of the word “pagan” then degraded further by being considered to mean irreligious, note definition No. 2. Yet, according to the first definition, a Buddhist, an Indian Shaman, a Hindi, a Wiccan, and a New-Age Mystic are to be considered pagans.
How can they claim the other religions don’t count as religions? Simply because they did not agree on religious views didn’t mean other people didn’t have their own beliefs. Still, the persecution persisted, if the country people didn’t agree to convert to the new religions, they were often put to death.
As we can see, the word pagan began as name calling between city folk and country folk, and then was degraded into a word that has come to be reviled and feared.
However, in my experience, Pagans are not devil worshippers, or people who loll about having orgies, (note definition No. 3).
We are, by definition, people who regard the Earth with respect and try to adhere to a more natural way of life.
Our next Myth-understood Word will be Wiccans.
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To the Dance!
