According to most historians and archaeologists, the roots of the Pagan religion are as old as civilization itself. Ancient man was dependant on the earth, and nature, for survival. If the hunts were unsuccessful, or if the crops failed, starvation and death followed. These ancient peoples had to be attuned to nature and her rhythms.

As civilizations developed, they sensed a Divine Power, and sought ways to understand and use this power. Imagine them studying the world around them, seeing the natural cycles of life and the seasons, becoming aware of the movements of the planets, and trying to understand. If they could understand these natural movements, if they could predict the cycles; then they knew when to plant and when to harvest. They could predict when the sow would be fertile, when the game would return, when to expect bad weather, and all sorts of vital information. Is it any wonder that they built Stonehenge and other sites like it, to help them calculate the changing of the seasons? These would have been some of the most important tools of ancient man.

Initially, humans did not understand the relationship between sex and having children, only that women of the tribe could produce offspring. So the early creator Deities were female. She was typically displayed as a womanly figure with huge breasts and wide hips, representing her fertility and ability to create and sustain life. Because the first food gatherers and farmers were mainly women, this Goddess also represented the earth. In early human societies, this left the other duties to the men: like hunting for food, and protection from invading tribes of humans and other carnivores. A Deity of the Hunt was created and typically was represented by a male figure with animal features such as horns, hoofs, pointed ears and sometimes a tail. Eventually man discovered the relationship between sex and pregnancies and realized that it took both man and woman to create life. They then looked around and discovered that all of nature required male and female to reproduce.

As the early tribes grew and diversified, so did the Deities they used to represent their developing environment. In societies where women hunted, a Huntress Deity arose. In societies where men farmed, nature Deities such as the Green Man developed. All the world’s different cultures and societies had some things in common. All early Deities were nature oriented; the Gods and Goddesses interacted with man in this lifetime; and each served the needs of the society that worshipped them. Men and women who understood the Deities and the natural rhythms of the world were prized. They became the priesthood and initiates: the advisors, judges and important people in their communities.

In native American traditions, they were the Shamans; in India, the Brahmins. In developing Britain and Ireland, some became the Druids (early Druids were male, there was a female sect at the time called Dryads.) There is evidence that Merlyn was a Druid and advisor to kings. In Eastern and Northern Europe they were known as Witan, (some believe this word was later to become "Witch"). In every corner of the world, belief systems were developing and being practiced by the native populations.

This almost universal view of the Gods and Goddesses (yes, I include eastern religions) lasted for many eons. It was based in the sensible and natural concept of Deities in our image, male and female, who worked with us, and changed with us. And mankind was changing and developing. In the Fertile Crescent between the Tigris and Euphrates rivers, and on the flood plains of the Nile River, the hunter gatherers stopped their wandering and started founding farms and villages. These later became towns and then cities, and finally the early civilizations of Mesopotamia, Babylon, and Egypt were founded. These cultures were old when the Greeks arrived. Still this concept of Gods and Goddesses continued, from Greece to Rome, and throughout the Roman Empire. But within, it carried the seed of its own downfall.

It was in ancient Egypt, long before Greece and Rome, that a new concept developed. It started with a Pharaoh, Amenhotep IV when he renounced the multitude of Gods worshipped by the Egyptians and abolished the priesthood of Amun and the polytheistic worship of many Deities. Amenhotep established a new monotheistic order to worship the Sun God Aten and changed his own name to Akhenaten, meaning "Servant of the Aten." Interestingly enough Akhenaten was the father of King Tutankhamun (King Tut). Akhenaten's rule only lasted 17 years, and when it was over, the Egyptians thankfully went back to the old ways. But he did influence one group of slaves, the Israelites, who gave up their many Gods for just one God. It is not the concept of just one God that is revolutionary: it is that this one God is the God of all, and that everyone must worship this God alone. This intolerance for other religions and beliefs would be passed on to the Christians and Muslims, and these two groups would spread throughout the western world.

Then, in the fifth century C. E., a group of priests and monks gathered together and created the New Testament - and with it, the modern concept of Christianity. Initially adopted by the Roman Empire, the spread of Christianity - and the assertion of the church's power - would spell the violent and bloody end to the Old Religions. The holocaust that followed came to be called the Burning Times.