The word has been described generally, to include the entire religions exterior the Abrahamic monotheistic set of Islam, Judaism and Christianity.  The group defined comprises the majority of Eastern religions, Native American mythologies and religions, and non-Abrahamic racial religions in common. More narrow definitions would not comprise any of the globe religions and limit the term to restricted or rural currents not prepared as civil religions. Feature of pagan traditions is lack of proselytism as well as the occurrence of living myths that clarifies spiritual practice.

The phrase "pagan" is the Christian version of gentile of Judaism, as well as has an intrinsic Abrahamic bias, as well as connotations amongst Western people similar to heathen, as well as in Islam. For this motive, ethnologists evade the term "paganism," with its unsure and diverse meanings, in referring to customary or significant faiths, preferring more accurate categories like animism, polytheism, shamanism or pantheism; though others disapprove of the use of these terms, declaring that these are just aspects that dissimilar faiths might share as well as do not signify the beliefs themselves.

Since the later twentieth century, "Paganism" or "Pagan" has become extensively used as the self-designation by supporters of Neopaganism.  As such, a variety of current scholars have started to apply the word to 3 separate groups of trusts: Historical Polytheism (like Celtic polytheism) Folk/ethnic/indigenous religions like Chinese Folk religion as well as African customary religion plus Neo-paganism like Wicca and Germanic Neopaganism.

The expression pagan is from Latin paganus, originally meaning rustic or rural or "of the nation." As a noun, paganus was utilized to signify "nation dweller, villager." The semantic expansion of post-classical Latin paganus in sense "non-Christian, heathen" is uncertain. The dating of this sense is contentious, however the forth century seems most reasonable. There are 3 main explanations of the expansion:

Neopaganism is the term used to recognize a broad variety of contemporary religious movements, principally those influenced by the historical pre-Christian European pagan religions.

Neo-Pagan religious movements are tremendously varied, with beliefs that vary extensively from polytheism to animism to pantheism as well as other paradigms. A lot of Neopagans practice a religion that is completely contemporary in origin, whereas others try to precisely rebuild or revitalize indigenous, racial religions as discovered in the historical as well as folkloric sources.

Neopaganism is the postmodern growth in industrialized countries, found in specific strength in US and Britain, however also in Europe plus elsewhere.

The main Neopagan movement is Wicca, although other considerably sized Neopagan faiths comprise Neo-druidry, Slavic neopaganism and Germanic neopaganism.