American Paganism

A Challenge for a Young People

Yesterday, on X, the topic of American Paganism (what is it) came up in the comments of one of my posts. This is a subject that I’ve delved into through video content on YouTube in the past, and something I planned to get into the weeds about in the next calendar year. However, today I want to provide a few cliff notes to better answer the questions asked of me yesterday and to wet the appetite of anyone who is kind enough to read this post.

On the surface, my definition will be simple—perhaps even obvious: American Paganism is a practice evolving in real time by yoking together the pre-Christian traditions of the ancestors of the American people and the spirit of the land in America, in an American cultural context.

If you find that definition unsatisfying, I don’t blame you. The details are everything—and we will get into that in a few weeks from now. In the meantime—here’s a few points to consider.

What I DON’T mean by American Paganism

• Adoption of Tribal, pre-American faiths. Those are different civilizations, didn’t Peoples. They did not name this landmass America (we owe that name to an Italian), they have their own names for themselves and American civilization is not a continuation or evolution of the Tribal civilizations.

  • This isn’t to say that we ignore the sum of their experience. For example, the Tribes are more than aware of things that “go bump in the night” on this continent and if they say a particular spirit or creature is NOT friendly, I will most certainly take their word for it and proceed with due caution.

  • The relationships various Tribes formed with the land spirits evolved over a considerable period of time. It is not a forgone conclusion that American Pagans will have the same process of evolution with those spirits—we have to forge those relationships for ourselves and see where it goes

• Pretending that Americans are not a distinct people or that the label is a matter of legal classification. That is a topic in and of itself, fraught with ideological landmines on all sides, and requires more energy to get into then I have at the moment. For the time being I will leave it at this: Americans are a People, not Paperwork.

• Embracing one part of our heritage and ignoring the rest in spiritual matters.

What I DO mean by American Paganism:

• Acknowledging our Roots—America came into being because transplanted Englishmen created communities on this land, got cross with the King and Parliament, lost their tempers and went feral. That was the beginning of our People, the formation of a new Tribe—and it was about boundaries and the proper treatment of productive people who attend to their responsibilities and by virtue of such are entitled to corresponding freedoms.

• The Frontier and Pioneer Spirit—just as the earliest settlers tamed the wilderness they landed on, the Westward Expansion required the bravery to start over from scratch, ingenuity to adapt to a new landscape, and the determination to stick it out and survive. This was a period of initiation—it transformed us from being the descendants of successful rebels to People who knew who they were and brought their domain to heel.

• Recognizing that our ties to pre-Christian deities are de facto family ties and are not dissolved no matter where we live. Where we walk, the Gods are present—as are various spirits and our ancestors. We aren’t rejecting or forgetting them—we are discovering how those relationships evolve on a land that was unknown to our ancestors—a bit like a family moving into a new house in another state. The relationships endure—but a variety of things around those relationships, how they’re maintained and their way of life does change.

• Bonding with the land we actually live on. Regardless of where our ancestors came from, this is where we live and the sum of energies where we live is what we are actually dealing with. From the native species of animals and plants, to the mineral composition of the land, and the land spirits and any lingering ghosts of yesteryear—we need to focus our spiritual development on what’s around us.

• Blending American cultural traditions with our Pagan faith. It should go without saying, but in the Age of the Internet everything has to be spelled out, that embracing one’s culture means embracing its VIRTUES, not its VICES. Whenever someone assumes the opposite and calls upon me to clarify, I get the most dreadful pounding headache.

• Telling and loving the American story—our homegrown myths, legendary characters, and historical figures are all part of who we are. Interpreting them in a Pagan way—or in the case of historical figures, honoring them in a Pagan way is at the heart of American Paganism.

• Our culture, our philosophy means we sort out our own way of doing things. All the pantheons of Europe are here because their descendants are here, and the cultural influences from all from the Founding onward. (People can bellyache all day about how the Founding Generation was Christian, but take a good long look at Aristotle, Marcus Aurelius, the Celtic Triads and the Havamal and just TRY to convince me that their wisdom didn’t echo through the American psyche. Christianity has never been anything other than a veneer, and I am no longer willing to humor treating it as if it were a building block of the West). Consequently, it’s up to us to decide on our cycle of seasonal celebrations, the formation and operation of Pagan groups, and the structure of our rites and rituals. This is why, from time to time, I’ve advocated to re-naming our holy days in plain English—if we make our gatherings focused on the meaning of the occasion, instead of just one inherited Tradition, I think we’ll be better off and it will be easier for us to form community.

These are just a few notes, and any one of these points could be transformed into a book. For now, I will leave you with the broad strokes. Come 2026—we will get into the details.