Ancient religions share common characteristics such as magic, taboo, ancestor worship, and focus on food sources and seasonal cycles. Modern paganism differs from ancient paganism. Ancient religions believe in everyday magic through rituals, including sacrifice. Superstition and taboo are still observed in isolated tribes today. The shared characteristics of ancient religions reveal tendencies shared by humanity, and modern religions are evolutionary descendants of ancient religions.
Ancient religions have many characteristics in common, such that some scholars argue that they are simply variations on a universal human intuitive religion. Shared characteristics include a strong emphasis on magic, especially magic based on sympathetic connections (such as influences like) and contagion (once in touch, always in touch); the concept of taboo people, places and things; transfer or expulsion of evil; connections between political and spiritual authority; ancestor worship; polytheism; focus on rituals related to food sources, such as plants and animals; focus on the sun and seasonal cycles, and many more. These convergent features of ancient religions have occurred over many tens of thousands of miles, among human groups who have had no contact with each other for over 50,000 years.
The shared characteristics of ancient religions are somewhat related to what is now known as “paganism,” but modern paganism recognized among post-World War II societies is very different from the paganism of millennia ago, as it was practiced almost worldwide . Practitioners of ancient religions firmly believe that everyone can engage in everyday magic by performing certain rituals. One of the most important rituals is sacrifice: regular sacrifices to please the gods/spirits. The grander they are, the more the gods or spirits are satiated, and the better hunting/gathering/good luck the sacrificer can expect. Rather than seeing the benefits as coming from an intermediary god or spirit, the ancients saw themselves as influencing the target directly through magic, drawing on laws embedded in the very fabric of the universe.
Ancient religions are the height of superstition and taboo. This can be observed in the traditions and customs of some of the most isolated people today, such as some tribes from the Amazon rainforest, Central Africa, Southeast Asia and Western Australia. In Central Africa there are tribes who avoid saying thousands of words because they sound vaguely similar to the name of a dead ancestor. In the Amazon rainforest, wives of warriors must engage in unnecessary sympathy rituals while their husbands are at war, such as sitting on the floor and repeatedly bowing in the direction of the war party for hours or days. When some Southeast Asian tribes are afflicted with contagious diseases, they bring a totem pole to each house and then throw it into the river, apparently expelling the evil along with it.
There are many shared characteristics that ancient religions possess – you just have to study them. The nature of these shared characteristics reveals interesting tendencies shared by all of humanity. Modern religions share so many characteristics of ancient religions, it’s easy to see how the former is an evolutionary descendant of the latter rather than a discontinuous leap.
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