Paganism (from Latin paganus, meaning "country dweller, rustic") is the blanket term given to describe religions and spiritual practices of pre-Christian Europe, and by extension a term for polytheistic traditions or folk religion worldwide seen from a Western or Christian viewpoint. The term has various different meanings, though, from a Western perspective, it has modern connotations of a faith that has polytheistic,Catholic Encyclopaedia (1917 edition) on paganism spiritualist, animistic or shamanic practices, such as a folk religion, historical polytheistic or neopagan religion.

The term has been defined broadly, to encompass all of the religions outside the Abrahamic monotheistic group of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. The group so defined includes most of the Eastern religions, Native American religions and mythologies, as well as non-Abrahamic ethnic religions in general. More narrow definitions will not include any of the world religions and restrict the term to local or rural currents not organized as civil religions. Characteristic of pagan traditions is the absence of proselytism and the presence of a living mythology which explains religious practice.

The term "pagan" is a Christian adaptation of the "gentile" of Judaism, and as such has an inherent Abrahamic bias, and pejorative connotations among Western monotheists, comparable to heathen, and infidel also known as kafir (كافر) and mushrik in Islam. For this reason, ethnologists avoid the term "paganism," with its uncertain and varied meanings, in referring to traditional or historic faiths, preferring more precise categories such as polytheism, shamanism, pantheism, or animism; however others criticise the use of these terms, claiming that these are only aspects that different faiths may share and do not denote the religions themselves.

Since the later 20th century, "Pagan" or "Paganism" has become widely used as a self-designation by adherents of Neopaganism. As such, various modern scholars have begun to apply the term to three separate groups of faiths: Historical Polytheism (such as Celtic polytheism and Norse paganism), Folk/ethnic/Indigenous religions (such as Chinese folk religion and African traditional religion), and Neo-paganism (such as Wicca and Germanic Neopaganism).

Pagan

The term pagan is from the Latin paganus, an adjective originally meaning "rural", "rustic" or "of the country." As a noun, paganus was used to mean "country dweller, villager." The semantic development of post-classical Latin paganus in the sense "non-Christian, heathen" is unclear. The dating of this sense is controversial, but the 4th century seems most plausible. An earlier example has been suggested in Tertullian De Corona Militis xi, "Apud hunc Christum tam miles est paganus fidelis quam paganus est miles infidelis," but here the word paganus may be interpreted in the sense "civilian" rather than "heathen". There are three main explanations of the development: