Quick introduction: "Paganism" (Latin: pāgānus, "rural") was supposed to be a slur that was invented by the catholic church to apply to every non-xtian religion but has since been reappropriated as a general term. Specific ethnic "Pagan" polytheistic religions are: Heathenry is Germanic Paganism ("Asatru" is one of the religions that fall under this category). Fyrnsidu is Brittonic Paganism. Druidry is Celtic Paganism. Hellenism is Greek Paganism. Religio Romana is Roman Paganism. Rodnovery is Slavic Paganism. Romuva is Baltic Paganism, etc. Every polytheistic ancestral European religion is basically the same, they just have different regional/ethnic names for the religions and deities. (1)
There's only two things that you need to know to understand Polytheistic Ethnic European ("Pagan") Religions:
1. Cosmology: the cosmology of the ancient Aryan religions is Dharmic (non-dogmatic). You could be a polytheist, pantheist, polydeist, atheist (2) and still find value in tradition, rituals, and ancestor veneration. Some polytheistic religious followers see the polytheistic deities as sentient personal gods, others see them as allegorical personifications of natural forces (numen/animism) and the cosmology is pantheism/polydeism to them, others are atheists (3) who are attracted to tradition, ancestor veneration, and ancestry. A large number of atheistic "Pagans" are inspired by Carl Jung who combined psychoanalysis with Heathenry, the polytheistic deities = "archetypes (4) of the collective unconscious (5)" to these "Pagans".
2. Rituals: rituals (6) are about manifesting the deities or forces of nature/laws of physics into your daily life. To Pagans who are inspired by Carl Jung, rituals are ways of inducing 'active imagination' (7) or a part of the process of 'individuation' (8).
You can learn more about your specific ethnic traditions and rituals here:
https://ecer-org.eu/organisations/ [link]https://salonvert.eu [link]
Footnotes:
1. For example, Dyaus Pita (Vedic), Zeus (Greek), Jupiter (Roman), Odin (Nordic), Wotan (German), Wotanaz (Slavic), Ukko and Väinämöinen (Finnish), and so on are all derived from the Aryan allfather Dyeus Pter which translates to Sky Father. The name Zeus even comes from the pronunciation of Dyeus. See this chart: [link]
2. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charvaka [link]
3. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Secular_paganism [link]
4. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jungian_archetypes [link]
--"She suddenly became aware of an entirely heathenish image that comes fresh from the archetype. She had no idea of a Christian god or of an Old Testament Yahweh. It was a heathenish god, you see; a god of nature, of vegetation; he was the wheat himself; he is the spirit of the wheat; the spirit of the wind. And she was in the arms of that numen. That is the living experience of an archetype.” -- Dr. Carl Gustav Jung
5. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Collective_unconscious [link]
--"No, memories of the old German religion have not been extinguished. They say there are greybeards in Westphalia who still know where the old images of the gods lie hidden; on their death beds they tell their youngest grandchild, who carries the secret… In Westphalia, the former Saxony, not everything that lies buried is dead." -- Dr. Carl Gustav Jung
--"Jung believed that Christianity was a Jewish cancer, a 'foreign growth' imposed on the Germans which cut them off from their biological and spiritual roots and made them ill.". [Source: a letter Jung wrote to Oskar Schmitz in 1923.]. In the same letter Jung also said: "the gods were felled and a wholly incongruous Christianity, born of monotheism, was grafted onto the stumps. The Germanic man is still suffering from this mutilation... We must dig down to the primitive in us, for only out of the conflict between civilized man and the Germanic barbarian will there come what we need: a new experience of God."
6. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eleusinian_Mysteries [link]
7. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Active_imagination#Carl_Gustav_Jung [link]
8. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Individuation#In_Jungian_psychology [link]
Read more:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_modern_pagan_movements [link]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Modern_paganism_in_Europe [link]
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_c7zzZeT-ws [link]
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