When we think of the Romans, gift-giving, carol-singing and celebrating the birth of Christ don’t immediately present themselves. Waging wars, general oppression and a never-ending desire to rule the...
In the Doctor Who Christmas Special from 2010, Michael Gambon’s Scrooge-like character remarks that across different cultures and worlds people come together to mark the midpoint of winter. It is, he...
Every year, almost without thinking about it, we incorporate certain plant species into out Christmas celebrations. The most obvious is the Christmas tree, linked historically in England to Prince...
Rooted in the cyclical pagan year, Christmas can be linked back to the celebration of the Winter Solstice around December 21st, a time when the night was at its longest, and the coming of the “light...
Egeria was a young woman who decided to make the trip of a lifetime and go to the Holy Land. But what inspired her to make that journey and walk half of the world all alone? She was born in beautiful...
In the post-war years of the 1950’s through to the late 1980’s (when it began to be usurped by Halloween) Mischief Night was the “big” night before Bonfire Night, whereas Halloween on the 31st was...
The region of Prussia in Central Europe is a unique place due to the large number of cultures which have resided and met there. These lands were also a hotbed for witchcraft and a cruel fate for...
A ‘Doom’ is a remarkable survival of a type of church decoration once common in the Middle Ages but largely destroyed during the iconoclastic excesses of the English Protestant Reformation during the...
Devil or angel? Sometimes it’s hard to tell. The concept of demons is an old one, harking back to the confiscation of pagan nature deities by the Roman Empire, which turned them into something more...
Archaeologists in Serbia have discovered the first known golden curse tablets in ancient Roman tombs in Serbia. The tablets contain inscriptions in long-forgotten languages with strange magical...
Even though there are hundreds of thousands of followers of pagan religions, the old beliefs haven't survived enough to be included in the group of the five major religions of the world. Officially,...
Slavic mythology is one of the less appreciated of all the ancient folklore traditions. The myths grew in the hearts of the tribes of a great civilization, and in the minds of people whose lives were...
Alexander the Great died three centuries before Christianity officially appeared, but his cult was so strong that some symbols connected with the ancient Macedonian king were adopted by the new...
A pagan basilica of first century AD Rome dedicated to Pythagoras’ and Plato’s metaphysics but depicting many types of Greek and Roman mythical beings has opened to the public. The family that...
Archaeologists say the circumstances of the death and double burial of two little children who died in Medieval Frankfurt, Germany, will probably never be known. One of the children had an apparently...
Early Viking settlers in Iceland were Pagan worshippers of the Aesir, the family of gods that included Thor and Odin. However in 1,000 AD Iceland converted to Christianity by decree of the country’s...
The grave of a prince who was to become the khan of Bulgaria but refused to deny Christ and was then martyred for it by his brother in the year 833, has been excavated in Pliska, Bulgaria. St. Boyan...
In the small seaside village of Miramar, along the spectacular coastline of Portugal, sits a tiny chapel perched on top of a rock known as Capela do Senhor da Pedra (“Chapel of the Lord of the Stone...
The Crusades are best known as a series of military campaigns launched by Western European states, and sanctioned by the Roman Catholic Church, aimed at reclaiming the Holy Land from the Muslims...
One of the most important quandaries to discuss in relation to the Green Man, a representation of a face surrounded by foliage and greenery, is how he came to grace the interiors and exteriors of...
The Coptic Church of Egypt is the earliest Christian church in the world, going back to around 42 AD. According to Bishop Eusebius of Caesarea, as well as Coptic traditions, Saint Mark the evangelist...
The word "paganism" has come to refer to various pre-Christian religions belonging to a number of ancient cultures—those from Greece, Rome, Egypt, Scandinavia, and so on. It has come to also...
Uplistsikhe, whose name translates to 'Fortress of the Lord', is an ancient rock-hewn town which played a significant role in Georgian history over a period of approximately 3,000 years...
A Russian fishermen has hauled in an incredibly rare ancient figurine from the bottom of a riverbed in the village of Tisul in southern Russia, an area known to have been inhabited in ancient times...
