A number of recent discussions with Christians interested in Paganism and magick - and questions whether two seemingly disparate religions/spiritualities can form a dual but unified spirituality - got me thinking about Christo-Paganism and similar paths.

Christo-Pagans, Christo-Druids, Jewitchery, Christian Witches, Christo-Eclectic, Trinitarian Wiccan, Christo-Hellenics, etc are often derided within and without Pagandom as people who simply want to hold on to what is familiar, while attempting to grab onto something which is new - kind of standing with one foot on the cross and the other in the cauldron.

So I started wondering whether Christo-Pagan paths are mix-and-matches or merely mixed-mismatches?

Looking back into history, it seems that what is now termed Christo-Paganism has been with us for a long time in one form or another, thanks to syncretism. Syncretism is the attempt to reconcile disparate or contrary beliefs and melding practices of various schools of thought - as such syncretism functioned as a main feature in many ancient pagan religions.

Overall, Hellenistic culture in the age that followed Alexander the Great itself showed syncretist features, essentially blending of Persian, Anatolian, Egyptian and Etruscan-Roman elements within an Hellenic formula - the Egyptian god Amun developed as the Hellenized Zeus Ammon after Alexander the Great went into the desert to seek out Amun’s oracle at Siwa. Such identifications derive from interpretatio graeca, the Hellenic habit of identifying gods of disparate mythologies with their own.

The Romans, identifying themselves as common heirs to a very similar civilisation, identified Greek deities with similar figures in the Etruscan-Roman tradition, though without usually copying cult practices.

Gods of the Hellenistic period found also wide favour in Rome: Serapis, Isis and Mithras, for example. Cybele as worshipped in Rome essentially represented a syncretic East Mediterranean goddess. The Romans imported the Greek god Dionysus into Rome, where he merged with the Latin mead and wine god Liber.

Likewise, when the Romans encountered Celts and Teutons, they mingled these peoples’ Northern gods with their own, creating Apollo Sucellos and Mars Thingsus (Mars of the war-assembly), among many others. In the Germania, the Roman historian Tacitus speaks of Teutonic worshippers of Hercules and Mercury; most modern scholars tentatively identify Hercules as Thor and Mercury as Odin.

So what is this Christo-Pagan path? Isn’t it a contradiction?

In the early years of the “new religion” Christianity, many of our European ancestors were “Christo-Pagans”, followers of folk religions and perhaps even ethnic-Christians or ethnic-Pagans.

In Europe the historical Dual Faith period lasted from approximately 450 CE to 1100 CE, and during that period many of our European ancestors practiced both their pagan/folk ancestral religions and the “new religion” coming from Rome.

More ancient Christo-Paganism also includes Gnosticism, which had Christian, pagan, and Islamic variants at the turn of the 1st millennium of the Common Era – but, although Gnosticism has been considered by scholars to originate as a branch of Christianity, alternate theories have proposed traces of Gnostic systems existed some centuries before the Christian Era.

The Gaelic literati of the early Middle Ages (pre-Norman invasion of the 12th century) saw no problem mixing and matching as it were, but still saw there being one path to heaven - a kind of “no matter what you do or think, it is your approach that matters” way of thinking. They freely included enormous amounts of pre-Christian information in their work. Likewise, there is some evidence that the druids freely incorporated other teachings in their own spirituality as well.

A “Mass in the Morning and the Moon at Night” made sense in medieval Europe, and it is obvious that the Pagan and Christian paths have been intertwined for many centuries.

Many cultures adopted Jesus as an additional divinity: the Norse referred to him as the White Christ. Many Slavic cultures adapted their myths of gods such as Beylobog (god of light) and Czernobog – (god of death and darkness) by renaming the main characters “God” and “Satan”; pagan and Christian beliefs lived alongside each other for quite some time.

Throughout the Jewish (or Old) Testament, there are references to Astoreth, a variation of the Ancient Mother Goddess Inanna of pre-Babylonian Sumer. The Song of Solomon may in fact be derived from the annual spring wedding ritual between the King of Babylon and the High Priestess of Astoreth.

Within the New (or Christian) Testament, Mary mother of Jesus may be compared to the Goddess Isis protecting her son Horus beneath her wings. Her traditional blue and white robes are also reminiscent of Sophia, Goddess of Wisdom - wisdom is referred to as “she” throughout the Book of Proverbs.

There are in fact many other commonalities between what many seem to think of as incompatible religions.

“The Kingdom of God is within you.” (Luke 17:21). Jesus also said, “If your leaders say to you, ‘Look, the (Father’s) kingdom is in the sky,’ then the birds of the sky will precede you. If they say to you, ‘It is in the sea,’ then the fish will precede you. Rather, the (Father’s) kingdom is within you and it is outside you…

…Now, compare this to the Charge of the Star Goddess: “... for if that which you seek, you find not within yourself, you will never find it without.”

Thus, the idea that some form of Christian belief and some form of Pagan belief are by definition incompatible fails a very simple historical test (and there are many more examples of this form of syncretism throughout the world). People have been taking bits of their old paths that matter to them and incorporating them into new ones for a very long time.

What about magick and Witchcraft within a Pagan-Christian contex?

There are various forms of Christian Mysticism. Esoteric Christianity is a term which refers to an ensemble of spiritual currents which regard Christianity as a mystery religion, and profess the existence and possession of certain esoteric doctrines or practices, hidden from the public but accessible only to a narrow circle of “enlightened”, actively engage in magickal practices

Other examples of established syncretic systems that link elements of Christianity and magick are that of African American hoodoo, Vodun, Santeria , Macumba, Candomble and Lucumi, which sometimes combine cultural traditions with Christian prayers and psalms in magickal practice. Sometimes the saints were a cover for Pagan gods to help people avoid persecution for their beliefs.

Taking it a bit further and closer within contemporary Paganism, can there be such a path a Christian-Wicca? Isn’t the definition of Wiccan in direct opposition of the definition for Christian. You can not be both a monotheist and a polytheist.

Trinitarian Wicca is an American Wicca path that works with the Christian Pantheon - it is polytheistic, highly influenced by the Alexandrian and the Dianic Traditions and a form of non-dogmatic Christianity.

This tradition tends to favour many Goddesses from Gnosticism, Kabbalah, the Pseudopigrapha (a collection of early Jewish and some Jewish-Christian writings composed between 200 BCE and 200 CE, not found in the Bible or rabbinic writings), and early cross patterns between the Jewish and Greco-Roman pantheons: Sophia, Shekinah, the Virgin Mary, Mary Magdalene, Lilith, Asherah, etc.

Trinitarian Wicca (or Christian-Wicca) is described as being “the merger of the Christian Trinity of the God, Goddess, and the Sun (Son) God Jesus.” Saints, angels, and elemental spirits also supplement the ritual and spell techniques of Trinitarian Wicca.

Christo-Paganism is what European folk culture was for centuries: a mix between pagan folk beliefs and folk people’s understanding of Christianity. Much of European folk craft (witchcraft) was also a mix of paganism and Christianity. This is still the case today in Italy, Greece, Ireland, central- and south America, etc. In fact, it was not until the late 19th/early 20th century that a witchcraft and occultist revival took place in Europe in which the elements of Christianity were stripped out.

So can one take Christianity and Witchcraft and slap them together and call it a path? I think yes, but not without a lot of compromise. I think that, for obvious reasons, for one to become a Christian Witch, one’s understanding of Christianity must be relatively liberal, for taking the Bible as one’s only source for spiritual knowledge would be immensely difficult when incorporated with magickal and Pagan practice.

Another more flexible definition of Christianity is necessary: a path that incorporates a version of Jesus, god and the holy spirit, either as three separate entities with one divine essence or three aspects of the All could potentially still offer some space for magick.

Christo-Paganism may be controversial but is that any reason to not follow what you believe in? In all fairness, Pagans worship the Egyptian pantheon, Celtic pantheon, Norse pantheon, etc. So why not have Pagans worshipping the Christian pantheon?

Remember: “It is (only) the patriarchal gods that are jealous and who demand no other gods before them.” As Pagans we shouldn’t make such demands.

SPOURCES:
http://wicca.timerift.net/christianwicca.shtml; http://www.christopagan.net/; http://bunny-puppy.net/folk/christopagan.html; MedLibrary.org; The SBNS Online Forum; www.magdalene.org/; http://witchychristian.tripod.com:80/ChristianWitch.html; http://www.crystal-forest.com/articlesessays.html; http://www.paganspace.net/profiles/blogs/a-list-of-definitions-that; www.cs.utk.edu/~Mclennan/BA/ETP/IIII.html;
http://bunny-puppy.net/folk/christopagan.html;
http://www.paganspace.net/group/trinitarianwicca;
http://feu.answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20090523103414AAyOeKE;
http://witchychristian.tripod.com/ChristianWitch.html;
http://jewitchery.com/essays.html;
http://www.witchcraft.com.au/christian-witch-craft.html;
http://jeffdiehl.com/;
http://www.neopagan.net/:
Wikipedia;
Witchvox