“Pagan Vestiges” Are Largely A Myth

The myth of “Pagan Vestiges” existent in Christianity is an idea that’s largely derived from Protestant Anti-Catholic propaganda that was originally predominantly formulated during the First Reformation by Lutheranism. It was further perpetuated and expounded upon by the rise of Calvinism- which itself (at least in part) bred the rise of American Evangelical Protestantism after a group of derived religious extremists fled Europe when they failed to succeed at a political coup; going on to found their own countries under the lie of “freedom from religious persecution”.

But it is not, in fact, actually true. Nearly none of it is. Indeed, the entire school of folkloric theory that was later developed to support and / or investigate such ideas during the rise of the Victorian Occult Revival, and the period of the Celtic Twilight, was not only largely based on Yeats work of all things (#YeetYeats) … But was widely seen as completely defunct and outdated by the time the 1930′s rolled around. By the 1950′s it had been almost completely abandoned altogether.

It was mostly abandoned after discovering the origins of the majority of “pagan vestiges” they investigated frequently didn’t even have anything to do with religion at all and were just random people completely making up things to do for fun. The rest have largely been abandoned over time as continued advancements in archaeology and history have repeatedly shown that many more practices (and figures, too) were just straight up made up by blatant Nationalists in order to further their agendas, and never actually existed at all- or have been the result of people intentionally misleading others about their data in order to support their claims and theories. Few were found to be true religious practices in direct origin (though many were found to have taken on religious significance over time), but very rarely was it found that their history could be legitimately traced to any period before the area’s Christianization- even if they did contain a few small traces of minor practices within the whole that could be presupposed to have been.

With very few incredibly rare exceptions, the entire concept of “Pagan Vestiges” is a blatant lie. It only continues to survive now because NeoPagans white knuckle grip their pseudohistory as if their entire lives and identities revolve around and completely depend on its validity ... But it doesn’t ... The rest of the world has already moved on, and there really is no point in refusing to modernize; it’s well past time we accept the truth and finally did away with the idea once and for all.