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unusual facts about Pagan



Anglo-Saxon Christianity

Pope Gregory issued more practicable mandates concerning heathen temples and usages: he desired that native temples be Christianized and asked Augustine to Christianize pagan practices, so far as possible, into dedication ceremonies or feasts of martyrs, since "he who would climb to a lofty height must go up by steps, not leaps" (letter of Gregory to Mellitus, in Bede, i, 30).

Augustaion

The noise and pagan rituals that accompanied the statue's inauguration were criticized by Patriarch John Chrysostom, provoking the Empress' ire and his subsequent deposition and exile.

Banner of Poland

It was both a religious and military symbol; the stanice were kept either inside or outside pagan temples in peacetime and were taken to war as military insignia.

Battle of Pagastin

Pagan Prussians rose against their conquerors, who tried to convert them to Christianity, after Lithuanians and Samogitians soundly defeated the joint forces of the Teutonic Knights and the Livonian Order in the Battle of Durbe in 1260.

Battle of Skuodas

In 1251, Mindaugas, pagan Grand Duke of Lithuania, concluded a peace treaty with the Livonian Order: he was to be baptized and crowned as King of Lithuania in return for portions of Samogitia, Nadruva, and Dainava.

Bishopric of Lübeck

The original diocese was founded about 970 by Emperor Otto I in the Billung March at Oldenburg in Holstein (Aldinborg or Starigard), the former capital of the pagan Wagri tribe.

Blaise Daniel Staples

The Apples of Apollo: Pagan and Christian Mysteries of the Eucharist explores the role that entheogens in general, and Amanita muscaria in particular, played in Greek and biblical mythology and later on in Renaissance painting, most notably in the Isenheim Altarpiece by Matthias Grünewald.

Boricua Ahora Es

The Group is represented by their spokesmen Joel Isaac Díaz (free association), Michael González Cruz (independence), Carlos R. Ruiz Cortés (independence) Edwin Pagán (statehood), and led by Ricky Rosselló.

Clark Heinrich

The book The Apples of Apollo: Pagan and Christian Mysteries of the Eucharist deals with possible occurrences of entheogens in general, and Amanita muscaria in particular, in Greek and biblical mythology and later on in Renaissance painting, most notably in the Isenheim Altarpiece by Matthias Grünewald.

Cloondacon

The name Cluain Dá Chon refers to an ancient legend according to which a pagan chieftain set two wolfhounds on Saint Patrick.

Constantius II

In From Constantine to Julian: Pagan and Byzantine Views, A Source History, edited by S.N.C. Lieu and Dominic Montserrat, 164–205.

Cornovii

Graham Webster in The Cornovii (1991), about the Midlands tribe, cites Anne Ross's hypothesis and points out that it is interesting that the Abbots Bromley Horn Dance has survived from pagan ritual – Abbot's Bromley being only 55 km away from the tribal centre of Viroconium.

Daizang

It marked the mass conversion of the Zou community from their pagan Sakhua religion to the Christian faith.

Dodona

Though the surviving town was insignificant, the long-hallowed pagan site must have retained significance for Christians given that a Bishop Theodorus of Dodona attended the First Council of Ephesus in 431 CE.

Eanswith

King Eadbald, whose sister St. Ethelburga married the pagan King Edwin two or three years before, recalled that this wedding resulted in Edwin's conversion.

Ecospirituality

'Earth-based' spirituality is another term related to ecospirituality; it is associated with pagan religious traditions and the work of prominent ecofeminist, Starhawk.

First Swedish Crusade

The First Swedish Crusade was a possibly mythical military expedition around 1150 that has traditionally been seen as the conquest of Finland by Sweden, with pagan Finns converting to Christianity.

Frankish mythology

Pagan Frankish rulers probably maintained their elevated positions by their "charisma" or Heil, their legitimacy and "right to rule" may have been based on their supposed divine descent as well as their financial and military successes.

Hadath El Jebbeh

And the popular tradition claims that the church dedicated to the saint patron of Hadath, Saint Daniel, was built on the remnants of a pagan temple.

Heavy metal fashion

Folk metal, viking metal, black metal and power metal fans often grow long thick hair and beards reminiscent of a stereotypical Viking, Saxon and Celt, and wear Thor's Hammer pendants and other pagan symbols.

House of Perkūnas

At the end of the 19th Century it was renamed "House of Perkūnas", when a figure, interpreted by the romantic historians of that time as an idol of the Baltic pagan god of thunder and the sky Perkūnas was found in one of its walls.

Hungarian neopaganism

These movements have roots in the ethnological studies of the early 20th century, later the elaboration of a national Hungarian religion was endorsed in the interwar Turanist circles (1930s-40s), and finally blossomed alongside other Pagan religions in Hungary since the fall of the Soviet Union.

Iclingas

Penda, who became king of Mercia in about 626 and is the first king named in the regnal lists of the Anglian collection, and at the same time the last pagan king of Mercia, gave rise to a dynasty that supplied at least eleven kings to the throne of Mercia.

India in World War II

Later in the war however, the INA's second division, tasked with the defence of Irrawaddy and the adjoining areas around Nangyu, was instrumental in opposing Messervy's 7th Indian Infantry Division when it attempted to cross the river at Pagan and Nyangyu during the successful Burma Campaign by the Allies the following year.

Johannes Bureus

Bureus was born in 1568 in Åkerby near the famous city of Uppsala (where the largest and last of the pagan temples once was) in Sweden as a son of a Lutheran parish priest.

Kerr Cuhulain

He is a frequent contributor to The Witches' Voice networking website, and has applied his abilities as an investigative journalist to the histories of several controversial individuals in the Neo-Pagan and New Age communities, such as John Todd and Michael Warnke.

Kyansittha

Unable to blockade the fortified walls of Pagan, his army drifted north to near the present-day Ava (Inwa).

Liubice

Gottschalk was killed during an uprising in 1066 and replaced as Obotrite prince by the pagan Kruto.

Mari native religion

A similar number was claimed by Victor Schnirelmann, for whom between a quarter and a half of the Mari either worship the Pagan gods or are adherents of Neopagan groups.

Muspilli

The poem has been theorized as a Christianized version of the pagan Ragnarök, with figures represented in 13th century sources swapped with Christian figures; Surtr replaced by the Antichrist whom Elias – replacing Thor – fights, Loki by the old fiend.

National Museum of Beirut

The emperor ordered the destruction of pagan temples, but cults like those of Adonis and Jupiter Heliopolitanus were kept alive by the local population and survived in some form for centuries.

Överhogdal tapestries

The contents of the pictures are much debated, some characters have a pagan content, featuring the detailed look of Odin's horse Sleipner, while other characters are clearly part of Christian imagery.

Pagan studies

Pagan studies scholar Chas S. Clifton argued that the discipline had developed as a result of the increasing "academic acknowledgement" of contemporary Paganism's "movement into the public eye", referring to the emergence of Pagan involvement with interfaith groups and the Pagan use of archaeological monuments as "sacred sites", particularly in the United Kingdom.

The earliest academic studies of contemporary Paganism were published in the late 1970s and 1980s by scholars like Margot Adler, Marcello Truzzi and Tanya Luhrmann, although it would not be until the 1990s that the actual Pagan studies discipline properly developed, pioneered by academics such as Graham Harvey and Chas S. Clifton.

In 1999, the American sociologist Helen A. Berger of West Chester University published A Community of Witches, a sociological study of the Wiccan and Pagan movement in the north-eastern United States.

Pope Cornelius

A legend told at Carnac states that its stones were once pagan soldiers who had been turned into stone by Cornelius, who was fleeing from them.

Pre-Adamite

The first known debate about human antiquity took place in 170 AD between Theophilus of Antioch and an Egyptian pagan "Apollonius the Egyptian" (probably Apollonius Dyscolus), who argued that the world was 153,075 years old.

Redbad, King of the Frisians

In Harry Harrison's The Hammer and the Cross series of novels, Radbod becomes the founder of "the Way", an organized pagan cult, created to combat the efforts of Christian missionaries.

Rocca San Casciano

Rocca San Casciano is popular in the area for its Festa dei Falò ("Bonfires Feast"), which is believed to originate from Celtic Pagan rites.

Rosnaree

The legendary High King of Ireland Cormac mac Airt is reputedly buried at Rossnaree, having refused to be buried at a pagan site after converting to Christianity.

Rumwold of Buckingham

There have, however, been doubts about whether these were his parents: for instance, the Northumbrian king is described as a pagan, but Alhfrith was a Christian (at least according to Bede, who says Alhfrith convinced Penda's son Peada to convert to Christianity).

Saint Vigor

In Bayeux itself, he destroyed a pagan temple, then still frequented, and built a church over it.

Skalmantas

Skomantas of Sudovia, last tribal leader and pagan priest of the Sudovians/Yotvingians

St Anne's Church, Jerusalem

During the Roman Period a pagan shrine to either the Egyptian god Serapis or the Greek god Asclepius, both gods of healing, stood on the grounds next to the two Pools of Bethesda.

St Boswells

In the 7th century Northumbria was ruled by the pagan leader Oswald who, upon converting to Christianity, established, with the help of St Aidan, a monastery at Lindisfarne, the Holy Island.

Technomancy

Also another character, Jenny Calendar is a techno-pagan who uses the Internet as a place to gather with her circle and from which they cast their spells.

The Wicker Man soundtrack

The songs were arranged to hint at a pre-Christian pagan European culture and vary between traditional songs, original Giovanni compositions and even nursery rhyme in "Baa, Baa, Black Sheep".

Trivial Act

A month later, Erik Wroldsen left the band for personal reasons and was later replaced by the drummer Stian Kristoffersen of Pagan's Mind.

Yazakumar

At Pagan, Kyansittha was sent into exile again—this time to Dala (modern Yangon) for renewing his affair with Manisanda.

Þorri

The pagan sacrifice of Þorrablót disappeared with the Christianization of Iceland, but in the 19th century, a midwinter festival called Þorrablót was introduced in Romantic nationalism, and is still popular in contemporary Iceland, since the 1960s associated with a selection of traditional food, called Þorramatur.


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