Did Ancient “Pagans” Really Worship Nature?

If you go around and ask a bunch of people what “paganism” is, chances are, most people will tell you something like “nature worship.” It is true that some contemporary Neopagans do indeed worship nature, albeit in various forms and in various ways. Even many Neopagans who do not literally worship nature still hold nature in very high regard. This conception of “paganism” as “nature worship,” however, is, for the most part, not applicable to the ancient world.

The term “paganism” is problematic in a historical context for all kinds of reasons, but it is most often applied to the various polytheistic religions that were practiced in the greater Mediterranean region (i.e., the Middle East, North Africa, and Europe) in ancient times before Christianity. When we look at these religions, we actually find a rather startling absence of nature-worshippers.

For most people in the ancient Mediterranean world, nature was a frightening and dangerous thing that could never really be trusted. Most of the deities worshipped in ancient times by so-called “pagans” were not seen as personifications of nature or natural forces, but rather as supernatural beings governing certain areas of human endeavor. Some deities were associated with aspects of the natural world, but the deities themselves were almost always clearly distinguished from the phenomena with which they were associated. Furthermore, even those deities associated with natural phenomena were usually associated with cultural phenomena as well.

A review of the idea of “pagans” worshipping nature

Many modern Neopagans have certainly embraced the idea that paganism is all about worshipping nature. The website All about Spirituality defines pagan beliefs as follows:

“History records that worship of many gods, goddesses, and deities was viewed by people as important in worship. It was thought that everything had a spirit and was polytheistic, so people had gods and goddesses of the forest, sea, and all aspects of nature.”

[. . .]

“Today, Paganism (neo-paganism) celebrates the Earth, living creatures, nature, and so on. Most modern-day pagans believe in more than one god, while others are atheistic.”

It is possible to find examples of actual Neopagans expressing their love of nature publicly. For instance, here is a video of a live performance of the song “Hymn to Pan” by the German Neopagan folk band Faun at Castlefest in the Netherlands in 2014. In the middle of the song, the singer breaks off to make an announcement that I suspect many contemporary Neopagans would agree with:

“We strongly believe that it is time to wake up. Time to recognize who we are and what we are. Time to recognize that we’re proud of nature, that is very much alive and that was always waiting for us with the arms wide open. And all we have to do is just let yourselves fall, fall into these arms. So let yourselves fall, maybe this summer, maybe this week, maybe tonight. Let yourselves fall.”

It’s fine if modern Neopagans want to “fall into the arms” of nature. I’m still not quite sure what exactly that’s supposed to mean, but, if they want to do it, that’s their choice.

This worldview centered around the idea of nature as a caregiver into whose arms people can choose to fall, however, is very much a modern one. In fact, this whole idea of “falling into the arms” of nature would be almost completely out of place in the ancient world.

ABOVE: Screenshot from this YouTube video of the singer from Faun proclaiming the need for modern people to “wake up” and “fall into the arms” of nature

A comment about terminology

First of all, the term “pagan” itself is a deeply problematic one when it comes to history because, up until the rise of Neopaganism in modern times, no one ever thought of themself as a “pagan” in the religious sense. Prior to the rise of Christianity, there were various peoples in the ancient Mediterranean world who worshipped various deities in various ways. These various “pagan” peoples had absolutely no sense of collective identity as “pagans”; instead, they simply thought of themselves as people worshipping the same deities their ancestors had worshipped.

With the rise of Christianity in late antiquity, Christians in the western Roman Empire where Latin was the spoken language began lumping all people who weren’t Christians together as pagani, which basically means “ignorant yokels” in Latin. In lumping all these peoples together under one derogatory label, Christians ignored the tremendous level of diversity that existed among so-called “pagan” peoples.” Indeed, many so-called “pagans” had more in common with Christians than they did with other so-called “pagans.”

The entire concept of “paganism” is ultimately very much a Christian invention. It has only been in the past couple centuries that Neopagans have sought to reclaim the word “pagan,” which was originally used as an insult. Because the concept of “paganism” is a Christian invention, however, it is problematic to think of ancient religions as “pagan” at all, because the use of this term obscures the very real religious diversity that existed in the ancient world.

Despite all their very real differences, however, the religions of the ancient world did have some things in common. Most notably for our purposes, the vast majority of these religions were not focused on worshipping nature.

ABOVE: Eastern Orthodox Christian icon of the bishops at the First Council of Nikaia holding the text of the Nicene Creed in Greek. The concept of “paganism” is very much an invention of early Christianity.

What ancient “pagans” really thought about their deities

People in the ancient world worshipped all kinds of different deities, but most of the deities they worshipped were not generally seen as personifications of natural phenomena. Instead, most deities worshipped in ancient pre-Christian cultures were seen as literal supernatural beings who governed specific areas of human endeavor. These deities could be expected to offer help and protection to certain groups of people under certain circumstances, but only if they were properly invoked and presented with the proper offerings.

Ancient pre-Christian peoples did not generally think of their deities as loving. Instead, they saw deities as dangerous, capricious, and unpredictable. They believed that, if the deities were properly worshipped and the proper sacrifices and invocations were made, they could be helpful. On the other hand, if the deities were not treated with the proper care and attention, they could just as easily be vengeful and destructive.

Ancient peoples knew that they could never fully trust their deities. A deity might like someone one moment, but turn on them the next. Likewise, one deity might like someone, but another deity might hate them. For instance, throughout most of the Odyssey, an ancient Greek epic poem composed in around the late seventh or early sixth century BC, the hero Odysseus is helped by the goddess Athena but hindered by the god Poseidon.

Likewise, in Euripides’s tragedy Hippolytos Stephanophoros, which was first performed in Athens at the City Dionysia in 428 BC, the hero Hippolytos is favored by the goddess Artemis, but cursed by the goddess Aphrodite. Ultimately, Artemis fails to save Hippolytos from Aphrodite’s wrath and he suffers a gruesome and horrible death at Aphrodite’s hand. Central to the play is the idea that one deity’s favor cannot necessarily protect someone from the wrath of another deity.

ABOVE: The Death of Hippolytus, painted in 1860 by the English Academic painter Sir Lawrence Alma-Tadema

Most polytheistic peoples in the ancient world worshipped the deities not because they believed that deities were naturally deserving of praise and adoration, but rather because they were genuinely afraid that, if they didn’t worship the deities, the deities might unleash their terrible vengeance upon them. It is because of this that sacrifices—usually animal sacrifices—were absolutely central to nearly all ancient pre-Christian religions of the Middle East, North Africa, and Europe.

The almost complete absence of animal sacrifice from modern Neopaganism is perhaps the single most significant difference between genuine ancient religious practice and modern Neopagan religious practice. Virtually every ancient people in the Middle East, North Africa, and Europe practiced some form of animal sacrifice. Most of these peoples regarded animal sacrifice as absolutely essential for appeasing the deities.

Ritual sacrifice in the ancient Mediterranean world generally operated on the principle of do ut des, which means “I give so that you may give” in Latin. First, a person would appeal to a deity or group of deities and ask for something they wanted, promising to give the deities a sacrifice in return. Then, they would either perform the sacrifice right away or wait until they got what they wanted from the deity and then perform the sacrifice.

It was believed that the effectiveness of a sacrifice directly correlated with how valuable the animal being sacrificed was and that a larger request from a deity demanded a larger sacrifice in return. Thus, a person might sacrifice a small animal like a rooster if they were only making a small request. If they were making a larger request, they might sacrifice a pig, a goat, or a lamb. If they were making a really big request, then they might sacrifice a bull or an ox.

In some ancient cultures, whole-burnt offerings were the most common form of sacrifice, meaning that, after a person sacrificed an animal, they would burn it whole as an offering to the deities without eating any of it. In other ancient cultures, people occasionally made whole-burnt offerings for specific reasons, but these were not the normal kind of sacrifice.

Notably, in ancient Greece and Rome, after ritually slaughtering the animal, the person performing the sacrifice would usually divide the parts of the animal that were edible from the parts that were not edible. They would then cook and eat the parts that were edible and burn the parts that were not edible as an offering to the deities.

ABOVE: Tondo from an Attic red-figure kylix dating to c. 510 – c. 500 BC, depicting two men ritually sacrificing a pig to Demeter

As I discuss in this article I published in November 2019, nearly every ancient culture practiced human sacrifice in some form or another at some point in their history. Human sacrifice was extremely rare in ancient Greece and Rome, but it does seem to have occasionally been practiced during the very early periods of Greek and Roman history.

Notably, the Greek writer Ploutarchos of Chaironeia (lived c. 46 – c. 120 AD) records a story in The Life of Themistokles 13.2-3 that, supposedly, in 480 BC, the Athenian general Themistokles ritually executed three Achaemenid prisoners of war as a human sacrifice for the god Dionysos right before the Battle of Salamis.

The incident described by Ploutarchos is one of the very few known instances of the historical Greeks performing human sacrifice. By the end of the fifth century BC, human sacrifice seems to have died out in the Greek world. Other ancient cultures, however, such the Celts, seem to have continued to practice human sacrifice until much later in their history.

Roman authors record Celtic peoples performing human sacrifices to appease their deities as late as the first century BC and, although the Romans may have exaggerated how common human sacrifice was among Celtic peoples, it is unlikely that they completely made up the practice out whole cloth.

ABOVE: Attic black-figure amphora dating between c. 570 and c. 550 BC, depicting the mythological scene of the sacrifice of the Trojan princess Polyxena

A case study in Greek religion

To test the popular idea that ancient “pagans” thought of their gods as personifications of natural phenomena, let’s do a little case study. The most important deities worshipped in ancient Greece were the members of the group known as the δωδεκάθεον (dōdekátheon), or “Twelve Gods.” Here is a list of all the deities who made up the Twelve Gods, along with their most important associations:

• Zeús, the son of Kronos and Rhea, the king of the deities, and “Father of Deities and Men”; associated with the sky, lightning, storms, law, justice, and kingship
• Hḗra, the wife and sister of Zeus; associated with marriage, women, childbirth, and family
• Dēmḗtēr, the sister of Zeus; associated with agriculture and agricultural fertility
• Poseidôn, the brother of Zeus and ruler of the seas; associated with the sea, storms, earthquakes, and horses
• Athēnâ, the daughter of Zeus; associated with the city, wisdom, warfare, military strategy, and various handicrafts, especially weaving and metalworking
• Aphrodítē, either the daughter of Zeus and Dione or the daughter of Ouranos; associated with sexual desire, sex, fertility, beauty, the sea, and—in some local forms—warfare
• Apóllōn, the son of Zeus and Leto, twin brother of Artemis; associated with plagues, diseases, healing, medicine, archery, music, poetry, dance, oracles, and prophecy
• Ártemis, the daughter of Zeus and Leto, twin sister of Apollon, and patron goddess of hunters; associated with hunting, wild animals, and virginity
• Hermês, the son of Zeus and the nymph Maia, the messenger of the gods, and psychopomp of the deceased; associated with roads and boundaries, the patron and protector of messengers, doctors, merchants, thieves, travelers, and shepherds
• Diónysos, the son of Zeus and the mortal woman Semele; associated with wine, grapes, sexual and agricultural fertility, religious ecstasy, the theater, and acting
• Hḗphaistos, the son of Zeus and Hera; the patron god of metalworkers, carpenters, sculptors, and other craftsmen
• Árēs, the son of Zeus and Hera; associated with warfare, violence, raging bloodlust, carnage, and devastation

As you can plainly see, most of these deities really don’t fit well with the idea that most “pagan” deities were natural personifications. In fact, some of these deities (e.g. Hera, Athena, Hephaistos, Hermes, and Ares) have almost no associations with nature whatsoever. All of these deities, however, are closely tied to specific areas of human endeavor. This is very typical of how deities were generally thought of in ancient pre-Christian cultures of the Mediterranean world.

People in ancient pre-Christian cultures generally did not tend to think of deities as personifications of natural phenomena; instead, they most often thought of deities as supernatural beings who could be appealed to for aid in certain situations. As we shall see in moment, the idea that deities were personifications of natural phenomena did exist in ancient times, but it was an idea that circulated mainly in philosophical circles and was not at all popular with the masses.

ABOVE: Photograph from Wikimedia Commons of the Athena Giustiniani, a Roman marble copy of an ancient Greek statue of the goddess Athena, who had almost no association with nature and was primarily associated with wisdom, warfare, and various handicrafts

Genuine ancient Greek deities closely associated with aspects of nature

Some major Greek deities certainly were associated with aspects of nature in various ways. Zeus was associated with lightning and storms. Poseidon was associated with the sea, storms, and earthquakes. Artemis was associated with wild animals. All of these deities, though, were also associated with cultural phenomena as well as natural phenomena.

If you want Greek deities that were mostly only associated with nature, you’ll have to look at some of the less prominent deities. For instance, the god Pan, who was not a member of the Twelve Gods, was closely associated with nature, especially with wild places such as forests, pastures, and mountains. He was seen as the patron and protector of shepherds and their flocks.

It was believed that Pan had the horns and legs of a goat, but the head and upper body of a man. He was originally a local deity associated with the region of Arkadia in the central Peloponnesos, but he eventually came to be worshipped throughout all of Greece. Most Greek deities were worshipped in temples, but Pan was unusual because he was most often worshipped in caves and other wild places.

The ancient Greeks also believed in the existence of a wide variety of nature spirits. For instance, they believed in satyrs, which were male nature spirits said to haunt woodland clearings, pastures, and mountains. In works of Greek art from the Archaic Period (lasted c. 800 – c. 510 BC) and Classical Period (lasted c. 510 – c. 323 BC), satyrs are represented as comically hideous nude men with the ears and tails of horses and enormous, permanent erections. From the Hellenistic Period (lasted c. 323 – c. 31 BC) onwards, satyrs are usually portrayed with the legs and horns of goats.

The ancient Greeks also believed in female nature spirits known as nymphs, who looked like beautiful women and were said to inhabit specific trees, mountains, and bodies of water. In most early depictions, nymphs are shown fully clothed, but, in depictions from the fourth century BC onwards, they are often portrayed nude.

Despite all of this, it is absolutely critical to emphasize that, even when a deity was associated with natural phenomena, the ancient Greeks clearly distinguished the deity itself from the natural phenomenon the deity was associated with. Generally, the Greeks believed that natural phenomena were caused by deities; it was very uncommon for people to believe that the deity actually was the natural phenomenon itself.

Thus, when the ancient Greeks saw lightning, they did not usually think that the lightning itself was Zeus, but rather that the lightning had been sent by Zeus. This same reasoning also applied to nymphs; the Greeks believed that nymphs might inhabit certain trees, but they viewed nymphs as supernatural beings inhabiting the trees—not as personifications of the trees themselves.

ABOVE: Attic red-figure plate from the Etruscan city of Vulci dating to between c. 520 and c. 500 BC, depicting a hideous nude satyr with horse-like ears, a horse-like tail, and an enormous erection

Nature in Greek mythology: a dangerous, untrustworthy, and frightening thing

Furthermore, the ancient Greeks did not think that these deities and spirits associated with nature were always friendly. Indeed, it was quite the opposite; Pan, satyrs, and nymphs were all terrifying, otherworldly beings that needed to be carefully appeased and avoided if necessary.

Pan may have been the protector of shepherds, but he was also dangerous. The very sight of him was said to have been utterly terrifying. The Greek historian Herodotos of Halikarnassos (lived c. 484 – c. 425 BC) records a legend in his Histories 6.105 that, supposedly, at the Battle of Marathon in 480 BC, Pan appeared on the battlefield and scattered the Persian forces, sending them running in sheer terror. It is from Pan’s name that we get our English word panic.

In the second-century AD Greek novel Daphnis and Chloë by Longos of Lesbos, which I will talk about more later in this article, the character Chloë warns her lover Daphnis in book two, chapter thirty-nine, section two:

“θεὸς ὁ Πὰν ἐρωτικός ἐστι καὶ ἄπιστος.”

This means:

“Pan is an amorous god and an untrustworthy one.”

Later in the novel, there is a vivid, terrifying description of Pan unleashing his wrath upon a group of pirates that honestly sounds like something straight out of horror movie. Longos says that, as the pirates were celebrating, the sea all around them went aflame and they heard oars approaching as though they were under attack. They heard sounds of battle and saw corpses appear on the deck of their ship, but no enemy ships appeared.

When the next day came, the goats they had stolen became magically crowned with ivy and the sheep they had stolen began howling like wolves. A crown of pine appeared on the head of the girl Chloë, whom they had abducted. When they tried to lift their anchors, they found they were stuck to the seabed and, when they tried to row, their oars broke off in the water.

Dolphins arose out of the water to attack the ship, causing the planks along the sides of the ship to come loose. The sound of the syrinx echoed over the water. As the pirates were quaking in fear, Pan himself appeared to the captain, threatening the pirates with annihilation if they did not give back Chloë and the livestock they had taken. No matter what else you think, you’ve got to admit that, if this really happened, it would be very terrifying.

ABOVE: Photograph from Wikimedia Commons of the face of Pan, as depicted on a Greek bronze situla, dated to between c. 340 and c. 320 BC

Satyrs could also be quite terrifying. They were said to have uncontrollable sexual appetites and they had a reputation for abducting and raping human women. Nymphs were genuinely frightening creatures as well. It was believed that nymphs would seduce or even outright abduct young men and trap them in their lairs. Most famously, the Greek bucolic poet Theokritos (lived c. 300 – after c. 260 BC) tells the story in his Idylls 13 of how the nymphs lusted madly after Hylas, a young companion of Herakles, so they abducted him.

Theokritos says that the nymphs suddenly grabbed Hylas by the arm when he wasn’t expecting it and pulled him into the water, dragging him down into the murky depths where no one could hear his screams. Herakles came searching for his companion. Hylas heard him calling his name. He tried to answer, but Herakles couldn’t hear him because his voice was muffled under the water. Eventually, Herakles gave up and left, leaving Hylas trapped with the nymphs forever, utterly cut off from everyone he’d ever known. If that’s not a terrifying story, I don’t know what is.

Quite frankly, the ancient Greeks were more terrified of nature than in awe of it. The natural world as it is portrayed in Greek mythology is a world absolutely chock full of horrors and perils. It is a world in which no one is ever safe, in which even a strong young men like Hylas could be seized by capricious supernatural beings with unknown motives at any moment for no understandable reason.

ABOVE: Third-century AD mosaic from Roman Gaul depicting the nymphs forcibly dragging Hylas down into the murky depths

Greek deities who were commonly thought of as personifications

To be very clear, the ancient Greeks did regard some deities as personifications. These deities, however, are generally personifications of abstract concepts, such as Nike (“Victory”), Kratos (“Authority”), Bia (“Violence”), Dike (“Justice”), Eris (“Strife”), Nemesis (“Retribution”), and so forth. Only a small handful of deities were widely thought to personify concepts that we today would generally think of as aspects of “nature.” Arguably, these deities might include Eros (“Desire”), Thanatos (“Death”), Hypnos (“Sleep”), Gaia (“Earth”), and Ouranos (“Sky”).

Here, though, we face a problem, which is that all the deities who were commonly thought of as personifications were relatively minor figures in the Greek pantheon. In fact, for the vast majority of them, we have very little or no evidence that they were even worshipped as deities at all.

Most of these deities appear occasionally in various mythological and allegorical contexts, but they are never invoked as deities in religious contexts and almost no one ever seems to have actually worshipped them. For instance, as I discuss in this article from March 2020, we have literally no evidence that anyone in ancient Greece ever worshipped Kratos or Bia under any circumstances. Heck, as far as we have evidence, no one ever even made statues of them!

Even the handful of divine personifications who we know were actually worshipped seem to have mainly been worshipped in association with the cults of other deities who were not generally seen as personifications; they did not have independent cults of their own.

For instance, Nike is perhaps the most prominent of all the deities who were seen as personifications. She is widely depicted in art and was widely worshipped in association with other deities such as Zeus and Athena. Nonetheless, only a handful of small sanctuaries dedicated to her alone are known to have existed.

ABOVE: Photograph from Wikimedia Commons of a stone relief carving of Nike from the ancient Greek city of Ephesos, located on the west coast of Asia Minor

Gaia: a special case

The one deity who is most often cited by proponents of the idea that the Greeks and Romans worshipped nature is Gaia, the divine personification of the earth, who appears prominently in the Theogonia, a long narrative poem about the origins of the cosmos composed by a poet named Hesiodos in around the eighth century BC. She also appears in a few other works of literature.

Despite her prominence in some literary sources, however, Gaia had very little independent cult to speak of. The travel writer Pausanias (lived c. 110 – c. 180 AD) mentions a few altars and sanctuaries to Gaia scattered across Greece in his book The Guide to Greece, but it’s clear that the Greeks didn’t build any colossal temples to Gaia, hold major festivals in her honor, or compose lengthy poems praising her like they did for other deities who were generally seen as more important. Moreover, even when Greek people did worship Gaia, it was usually in association with other deities, especially Demeter.

In addition to being a relatively minor figure in the ancient Greek pantheon, Gaia also didn’t represent the same things for the ancient Greeks that she represents for many modern Neopagans. Many modern Neopagans see Gaia as “Mother Nature” and believe that she represents all the living things that exist on the planet earth, including all the plants, animals, fungi, and single-celled organisms.

For the ancient Greeks, however, Gaia represented none of these things; instead, she represented the literal dirt itself. In fact, Gaia’s name itself is nothing more than the poetic form of the Greek word γῆ (gê), meaning “dirt” or “soil.” The ancient Greeks didn’t think of living things as being “part of” Gaia and they only associated plants with Gaia to the extent that plants grow from the dirt.

ABOVE: Depiction of Gaia from an Attic red-figure kalyx-krater dated to between c. 410 and c. 400 BC

Ancient Greeks seeing deities as personifications of natural phenomena

To be clear, although most ancient Greeks certainly thought of the major deities in their pantheon as personal supernatural beings, the idea that these deities might simply be personifications of natural phenomena was not totally absent from ancient Greek thought.

Starting in around the late fifth century BC, some radical thinkers and intellectuals began to consider the possibility that the deities might be personifications of the things with which they were associated. For instance, the Sophist Prodikos of Keos (lived c. 465 – c. 395 BC) writes in fragment D-K B5:

“πάντα τὰ ὠφελοῦντα τὸν βίον ἡμῶν οἱ παλαιοὶ θεοὺς ἐνόμισαν διὰ τὴν ἀπ’ αὐτῶν ὠφέλειαν… καὶ διὰ τοῦτο τὸν μὲν ἄρτον Δήμητραν νομισθῆναι, τὸν δὲ οἶνον Διόνυσον…”

This means (in my own translation):

“Ancient people regarded all things that benefit our life as deities on account of their benefit … and, on account of this, they regarded bread as Demeter and wine as Dionysos.”

Thinkers like Prodikos, however, were far outside the realm of mainstream Greek religious thought. Indeed, on account of his arguments, Prodikos was widely accused of being an ἄθεος (átheos), which, as I discuss in my article from September 2019 about the evidence for atheism in ancient Greece, literally means “a godless person.”

The Athenian comic playwright Aristophanes (lived c. 446 – c. 386 BC) ruthlessly mocked the idea of deities as personifications of natural phenomena in his comedy The Clouds, which was originally performed at the City Dionysia in Athens in 423 BC. In this play, Aristophanes portrays the philosopher Socrates as teaching that Zeus has been replaced by “the Whirlwind.” This is clearly a parody of the sorts of ideas that people like Prodikos were floating around at the time.

It is quite possible that some philosopher in the late fifth century BC may have argued that “Zeus” was actually embodied in natural phenomena, such as the whirlwind. The fact that Aristophanes portrays this notion as absolutely absurd, though, illustrates just how strange and unusual this idea seemed to the majority of Athenians in the late fifth century BC.

In other words, there were some individuals in ancient Greece who did think that all or most of the deities were personifications of natural phenomena. Such individuals, however, were generally quite rare and their opinions were not at all popular with the masses, who continued to see most of the deities in the traditional sense, as intelligent supernatural beings who governed specific areas of human endeavor.

ABOVE: Photograph from Wikimedia Commons of a whirlwind in Ramadi, Iraq in July 2007. Aristophanes intentionally absurdly portrays Socrates as claiming that Zeus had been replaced by “the Whirlwind.”

A look at another ancient, pre-Christian culture

Now, I’m sure some people are already insisting that my analysis here is not valid because so far I have only talked about the ancient Greeks and not any other ancient, pre-Christian cultures. People will surely be insisting that the Greeks were super humanistic and that they must have been an exception to the overall trend and that most other ancient “pagan” peoples surely must have been primarily nature-worshippers.

Well, let’s take a look at some of the most prominent deities that were worshipped in another ancient culture. In fact, to make sure we get as ancient and primitive as possible, let’s examine the major deities worshipped in ancient Sumer, the earliest known literate civilization. The ancient Sumerians believed that there were seven deities who reigned supreme over all other deities. These seven deities were known as the “seven deities who decree.” Here is the list:

• An, the divine personification of the sky, the oldest and most exalted of all the deities, patron god of the city of Uruk; associated with kingship and political power
• Enlil, the son of An, ruler of all the deities, and patron god of the city of Nippur; associated with wind, air, storms, agriculture, and kingship
• Inanna, the “Queen of Heaven” and patron goddess of the city of Uruk; associated with a wide array of domains, including love, sexual desire, sexuality, sexual and agricultural fertility, warfare, military might, law, justice, chaos, kingship, and political power
• Enki, the brother of Enlil and patron god of the city of Eridu; associated with water, cunning, fertility, various handicrafts, and kingship
• Utu, the god of the sun, twin brother of Inanna, and protector of the kings of Uruk; associated with morality, truth, justice, wisdom, knowledge, and kingship
• Nanna, the son of Enlil, god of the moon, and patron god of the city of Ur; associated with wisdom, the occult, and kingship
• Ninḫursaĝ, mother goddess associated with mountains, agricultural fertility, and kingship

Here we do admittedly see a lot more associations with nature than we saw among the Greek deities. For instance, An at least counts as a genuine personification of an aspect of nature (i.e. the sky), although he was certainly seen as a deity in the traditional anthropomorphic sense as well. Meanwhile, nearly every single one of these deities was associated with some form of fertility.

On the other hand, we still see a lot of associations that don’t work well with the conception of paganism as “nature worship.” Notably, literally every single one of these deities was associated in some way with politics. Likewise, nearly every single one of these deities was the patron of a particular city. Ancient Sumerian religion was at least as much about law and politics as it was about nature.

ABOVE: Impression from an ancient Akkadian cylinder seal dating to between c. 2334 and c. 2154 BC, depicting the Sumerian goddess Inanna wielding a weapon while resting her foot on the back of a roaring lion, which she holds on a leash. An attendant pays obeisance before her.

How nature is portrayed in Sumerian mythology

Additionally, we also find that, throughout Sumerian mythology, nature isn’t really portrayed as something to be admired and worshipped. Instead, it is portrayed as something dangerous and terrible that heroes and deities must dominate and force into submission. In the poem Inanna and Ebih, which was written in Sumerian in around the twenty-third century BC by the Akkadian poetess Enheduanna, the goddess Inanna is portrayed as vindictively destroying a mountain that refused to acknowledge her supremacy.

In the poem Gilgamesh, Enkidu, and the Netherworld, Inanna is portrayed as raising a huluppu tree with the intention to chop it down and carve it into a throne once it is big enough. Instead, though, natural forces take over; the serpent “who knows no charm” takes up residence at the base of the tree, the demoness Lilitu takes up residence in the trunk of the tree, and the terrible Anzû-bird makes its nest in the branches of the tree.

Inanna calls upon her brother Gilgamesh to slay the horrible creatures that have taken up residence in her tree and chop it down. Gilgamesh slays the serpent “who knows no charm,” causing the Lilitu and the Anzû-bird to flee in terror. Then Gilgamesh and his companions chop down the tree and use the wood to make a throne and bed for Inanna. Thus, the forces of nature are fended off and the tree is chopped down so its wood can be put to a useful purpose.

In the Sumerian poem Gilgamesh and Huwawa, Gilgamesh and his companions go to the Cedar Forest to chop down trees. The forest, however, is guarded by a terrible ogre named Huwawa, whom the heroes are forced to fight. In the end, Gilgamesh triumphs over the terrible giant and succeeds in his quest to chop down trees in the Cedar Forest.

In all of these myths, there is a very clear message about nature: that it is a wild, dangerous thing in need of being tamed. I’m sure that some Sumerians did find some things worth appreciating about nature, but, on the whole, they were about as far from nature-worshippers as it is possible for anyone to be and, in this regard, they are typical of most ancient peoples. People in the ancient world honestly did not have much of a concept of admiring nature just for nature’s own sake.

ABOVE: Photograph from Wikimedia Commons of an ancient Babylonian terra-cotta plaque depicting the terrible ogre Huwawa, the guardian of the Cedar Forest fought by Gilgamesh and his companions in Gilgamesh and Huwawa

Why do we even think ancient “pagans” worshipped nature?

Now, at this point you may be wondering why on Earth everyone seems to think that people in ancient pre-Christian cultures worshipped nature. The answer is that the reason why we all think this is because our modern conception of “paganism” has been deeply and irrevocably shaped by a romantic view of “paganism” that has developed ever since antiquity.

This romantic conception of paganism is, to an extent, a literary creation of pagan authors themselves. The ancient romance novel Daphnis and Chloë was written in Greek by a Greek author named Longos of Lesbos in around the late second century AD at a time when Greece was ruled by the Roman Empire. At the time when the novel was written, most people in the ancient Mediterranean world still practiced some form of traditional religion.

Despite this, Daphnis and Chloë conjures up a very romanticized, nostalgic view of what ancient religion was like. The novel begins with a prologue in which the author describes how, when he was hunting on the island of Lesbos, he accidentally stumbled across an ancient shrine to the nymphs that was in ruins. The shrine was decorated, he says, with a faded painting of immense age depicting the story that he is about to relate.

The author goes on to tell a lovely story about Daphnis, a young boy, and Chloë, a young girl, growing up in remote antiquity in the idyllic paradise that he imagines the island of Lesbos once was. A recurring theme throughout the novel is the importance of worshipping the spirits of nature, namely the nymphs and Pan. Daphnis and Chloë honor the nymphs and Pan and, in return, they offer them protection.

The idyllic world that Longos conjures up in the novel is neither his own world of the second century AD nor the real world of classical Greece in the fifth century BC, but rather a fantasy world that he imagines might once have existed in a long ago, ancient time when people honored the deities the right way and the deities did their part to protect those who honored them. It is a very sentimental vision.

ABOVE: Daphnis and Chloë, painted c. 1850 by the Swiss-French painter Marc Gabriel Charles Gleyre, depicting how he imagined the central characters in the ancient Greek romance novel Daphnis and Chloë, written in around the late second century AD by Longos of Lesbos

The Romantic movement

In his novel, Longos of Lesbos clearly portrays Daphnis and Chloë as worshipping deities associated with nature, not nature itself. Much later generations, however, failed to grasp this crucial distinction. In western Europe during the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries there was a major literary and artistic movement known as “Romanticism.”

Western European Romantic authors and artists of the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries were particularly interested in the relationship between human beings and nature. At the time, classical Greek and Roman literature was widely studied in elite intellectual circles. Naturally, the Romantics drew heavily on classical mythology in their works. They especially tended to focus on aspects of classical mythology that were associated with nature, such as fauns, nymphs, satyrs, the god Pan, and so forth.

The Romantic authors of the modern era were mostly at least nominally Christians, although a few of them were irreligious. (Most notably, the English Romantic poet Percy Bysshe Shelley was an avowed atheist; he even published an anonymous pamphlet in 1811 titled “The Necessity of Atheism” in which he argued that there was no God.)

In any case, none of the Romantics actually believed in any of the ancient Greek or Roman deities. Thus, when the Romantics wrote about the Greek and Roman deities, they saw them as merely symbols rather than as capricious supernatural beings who demanded sacrifices. Naturally, then, they came to see classical deities as personifications of natural phenomena and classical religion as a form of nature worship.

Probably the ultimate expression of the Romantic conception of paganism can be found in the poem “The World Is Too Much with Us,” written in around 1802 by the English poet William Wordsworth (lived 1770 – 1850). The poem was first published in Wordsworth’s collection Poems, in Two Volumes in 1807. It is a meditation on humans’ relationship with nature. In the poem, Wordsworth imagines modern people living in early industrial England as being out of touch with nature. He contrasts people of his own time with ancient “pagans,” whom he imagines as being more in touch with nature. Wordsworth writes:

“The world is too much with us; late and soon,
Getting and spending, we lay waste our powers;—
Little we see in Nature that is ours;
We have given our hearts away, a sordid boon!
This Sea that bares her bosom to the moon;
The winds that will be howling at all hours,
And are up-gathered now like sleeping flowers;
For this, for everything, we are out of tune;
It moves us not. Great God! I’d rather be
A Pagan suckled in a creed outworn;
So might I, standing on this pleasant lea,
Have glimpses that would make me less forlorn;
Have sight of Proteus rising from the sea;
Or hear old Triton blow his wreathèd horn.”

This association of classical religion with nature also occurred in art. Paintings of nymphs, fauns, and Pan became wildly popular in the nineteenth century, as well as woodland and pastoral scenes set in classical antiquity.

The Greek region of Arkadia, located in the central Peloponnesos, was widely portrayed as a beautiful, rural paradise in which people lived in perpetual peace and harmony with the gods and nature. Many artists produced paintings of offerings being performed to the pagan gods in Arkadia.

These offerings are always portrayed as bloodless and as being performed in beautiful woodland clearings, even though we know that most sacrifices in ancient Greece were actually extremely bloody animal sacrifices that were performed at altars outside large temples in large urban centers. Historical facts have never gotten in the way of romanticism.

ABOVE: Arkadian Landscape, painted between 1680 and 1726 by the Dutch Golden Age painter Johannes Glauber, depicting ancient goatherds in the Greek region of Arkadia making offerings to a deity in a woodland clearing, surrounded by the beauty of nature

ABOVE: Satyr and Nymphs, painted in 1873 by the French Academic painter William-Adolphe Bouguereau, depicting a satyr with nude nymphs trying to force him into the water in the woods to take a bath

ABOVE: Opfer römischer Jungfrauen, a German engraving from 1887 showing a Romantic imagining of a “pagan” offering

ABOVE: Sacrifice in Arcadia, painted by the German artist Friedrich August von Kaulbach (lived 1850 – 1920)

Conclusion

This heavily romanticized nineteenth-century view of what ancient “paganism” was like eventually gave rise to the modern Neopagan movement. Thus, the idea that most people today have in mind when they hear the word “pagan” is one that has been irrevocably shaped by the Romantic movement and by contemporary Neopaganism. This idea, however, is not generally an accurate reflection of what ancient pre-Christian religions were like.

Most deities worshipped by ancient pre-Christian peoples were not seen as personifications of natural phenomena, but rather as supernatural beings governing specific areas of human endeavor. Furthermore, ancient pre-Christian peoples saw the deities as dangerous, capricious, and untrustworthy.

Deities that were particularly closely associated with nature were often seen as especially frightening and unpredictable. Entities like Pan, satyrs, and nymphs were seen as frightening and potentially dangerous. They could never quite be trusted and people sought not to make friends with them, but rather to appease and avoid them whenever possible.

The idea that ancient pre-Christian peoples worshipped nature is, for the most part, an invention of the late eighteenth and early nineteenth-century western European Romantic movement and is, for the most part, not a very accurate reflection of historical reality.