Paganism: An Antidote to Contemporary Nihilism?
The Ethics of Honor Versus the Morality of Sin
In this essay, Alain de Benoist explores the enduring presence of paganism in the modern world, not as a relic of the past but as a fundamental cultural and spiritual undercurrent. It contrasts the pagan worldview with monotheism, highlighting the former’s deep connection to nature, the sacred, and collective identity. Alain de Benoist critiques the modern era as one marked by nihilism, materialism, and the erosion of sacred meaning, arguing that what some perceive as a "return to paganism" is, in fact, its antithesis. Rather than a revival of rooted traditions, contemporary society is characterized by disconnection and the commodification of existence. True paganism, as the essay posits, is not a faith of salvation but a way of being—an embrace of beauty, honor, and the cyclical nature of existence.
Originally published in Éléments no. 212, February-March 2025.
Translated by Alexander Raynor
«Comment peut-on être païen?» (On Being a Pagan) asked Alain de Benoist in a book published in 1981. More than forty years later, the question arises with even greater urgency, as our contemporary world—desacralized and disenchanted—seems to be inexorably sinking into materialistic obsession and individualist neurosis. Is paganism the ultimate refuge against the nihilism of our time?
I write on the eve of Christmas, an ancient celebration of the winter solstice among Europeans. Unable to vanquish Sol Invictus, the Church set this date as the supposed birth of Jesus, about whom we actually know nothing. It is a joyful family celebration, but also a solemn one: during these twelve sacred nights, it is about reaffirming faith in the lengthening of days, surrounding oneself with evergreens for shelter against the cold and darkness. It is in the heart of the night that one must believe in the light. And children await Father Christmas, who, as everyone knows, resides in the far North.
Today is Tuesday, a day whose etymology reminds us that it is dedicated to the god Mars, just as Wednesday belongs to Mercury, Thursday to Jupiter, and Friday to Venus. Soon, we will enter the month of January, so named after the god Janus, deity of doors and thresholds, who also presides over the opening of the New Year (his Latvian counterpart, Janis, oversees the rites of the summer solstice).
As soon as one looks to the long span of history or seeks out one's roots, one is inevitably led back to paganism. Paganism is everywhere, like an unconscious presence surfacing just beneath the modern world. This is evident in the "mythological" inspiration of artists, writers, and poets; in the work of archaeologists and linguists; in the passion of antiquity enthusiasts; in the fascination with films and series that recount the great deeds of ancient times. Paganism filters through all popular traditions, preserving its seasonal rhythms. It is found in a masterpiece by Botticelli, in a painting by Caspar David Friedrich, in a poem by Alfred de Vigny, in the memory of sagas and epics, in the evocation of the Battle of Mag Tured (Tuireadh), the Odyssey, or the Mahābhārata, in the life of Cincinnatus or Regulus, in the lives of the peasant-farmers of ancient Rome or the philosophers debating beneath the porticoes of Delphi or Newgrange.
Paganism is everywhere—but how can it be defined, even in broad strokes?
An Identitarian Religion
Paganism refers to the indigenous religions of Europe, all of which stem from the Indo-European heritage. It was only replaced by Christianity after centuries of struggle. What is essential to understand about this conflict is that Christianity triumphed over paganism only by means of compromise, transforming itself—at least on the surface. It absorbed everything from paganism: its places of worship, its customs, its liturgical calendar, covering them with a superficial veneer. The result was that rich and vibrant popular religiosity—with its pilgrimages, processions, and nativity scenes—that allowed Christianity to endure through the centuries. Its decline today, closely tied to the disappearance of the rural world (along with the modernist Christian desire to eradicate "superstitions"), is a fundamental cause of Christianity’s current retreat.
It is a natural religion, but not merely a religion of nature—a cosmic religion, distinct from the naïve pseudo-pantheism of the New Age. It stands apart from sects with ceremonial costumes and from parodies of "secondary religiosity." It is a religion in which the eternal return is not merely the return of the same (the spherical conception of history). A religion that celebrates not only vitalism and the power of instinct but also gravitas and meditative thought.
It is an identitarian religion, where conversion is regarded as self-renunciation. A religion that speaks to the members of a people, a community, a city, a nation—not indiscriminately to all humanity beyond borders. The Greeks worshipped Greek gods; it was through this that they forged a "Greek heart." Even today, this remains the religion of those who feel more spiritually at home reading Homer or listening to Der Ring des Nibelungen (The Ring Cycle) than reading Saint Paul or Augustine.
Through the contrast between monotheism and polytheism, the opposition between unity and diversity already emerges—two distinct mental universes. In the face of the natural world, the pagan attitude is one of wonder—not because nature was created, but because it bears the sacred. Christianity stripped the world of its intrinsic sacredness, emptied it of any sacral dimension, turning it into a mere object. No more sacred springs, sacred mountains, sacred rivers, sacred sites, sacred time, or sacred geography. The saint, a moral notion, replaced the sacred, which is not. Paganism is a religion of rootedness in the world, embracing both its visible and invisible dimensions. It aspires to what reveals itself in the light of Being, at the center of the quadrilateral formed by Earth and Sky, Men and Gods.
In paganism, the gods are powers, models, archetypal figures that shape and animate the symbolic imagination—but they neither demand, promise, nor impose anything. Subject to Fate themselves, they bear witness to the presence of Being, to the invisible dimension of the world—not to some other world of ontological perfection that ours supposedly lacks. Whether they dwell in Asgard or atop Olympus, their worship seeks to establish and maintain on Earth an order that mirrors the cosmic order. The divine presence is immanent.
Paganism is a religion of beauty—an epiphany of beauty. The beautiful reveals the good, which in turn takes precedence over the just. Ethics is inseparable from aesthetics. Paganism is cult, not "faith"; veneration, not adoration; the ethic of honor, not the morality of sin; a friendly kinship with what transcends us, not submission; mythos, not logos.
Paganism is not a religion of salvation; it is not practiced to secure redemption in some otherworldly realm. Nor does it seek to convert. Paganism knows no dogmas, no crusades, no heresies. It is a religion without penance or repentance, without mea maxima culpa. Its demands lie elsewhere: in the pursuit of excellence and in devotion to the common good. In this, paganism fundamentally differs from revealed religions, which are oriented toward individual salvation and built upon the concepts of guilt and sin.
The distinction between "believers" and "practitioners" does not apply to paganism either. Paganism is not about orthodoxy, but orthopraxy. As such, it is inseparable from collective existence and, more specifically, from civic life. One is a good citizen when one honors the gods of the city.
The Collapse of Truth and the Cult of Merchandise
Chantal Delsol has recently adopted the thesis of Hippolyte Simon, former Archbishop of Clermont-Ferrand1, seriously claiming that "our time is witnessing a return of paganism." She refers to eugenics and "cosmotheistic" ecology, which, according to her, seeks a "return to cyclical time," a time in which "there is no freedom" (sic), which she asserts is a "substantial element of paganism." Her argument is that "in their natural state, all human societies are pagan or polytheistic" and that "when monotheism fades, society naturally reverts to forms of paganism."2
If only that were true!
The era we are living through is, in reality, the era of the collapse of truth in the sense of alétheia—the fulfillment of nihilism. It is the heir of the Enlightenment, which offered nothing but secularized monotheistic truths, beginning with linear time, rebranded as "progress." This is a society where the sense of honor has disappeared, where the dominant cult is that of merchandise, where the individual claims to be free of all belonging, where the plague of humanitarian agapè has replaced true love, where the cult of victims has supplanted that of heroes. We are not witnessing a "return of paganism" but, against a backdrop of practical materialism and nihilistic chaos, the very antithesis of what paganism has always been.
"Today," said Jean Beaufret, "we are all atheists. Not in the sense that atheism is an option born from the decline of faith or from scientific progress triumphing over it, but in the way Oedipus was, according to Greek myth—abandoned by the divine and by the gods." Abandoned is indeed the right word. In ancient paganism, the gods spoke and embodied the presence of a world—not a revealed world, but a manifested one. The divine has withdrawn from the world we inhabit, a world seemingly doomed to nomadism and the demonic reign of quantity, a world where the Earth is exploited but no longer honored. Yet a society that no longer feels itself drawn upward by something greater than itself, a society where the sacred has disappeared, is a society condemned—because it is incapable of answering the fundamental question of our presence in the world. The forgetfulness of Being will only end when nihilism has run its course and the conditions are right for a new beginning.
Hippolyte Simon, Vers une France païenne, Cerf, Paris 2019.
Interview, Valeurs actuelles, October 21, 2021.
Beautiful essay. One can tell that most Christians who speak disparagingly about paganism have never read a word of Alain de Benoist or Jonathan Bowden.
I look forward to reading more of your stuff!
I can feel that! To put it, perhaps too succinctly, I am weary of transcendence! My brain and heart hurt having to grind through all that theological density! The emanation of the divine, right here by my side, feels right!