Pagans: Sacred Landscape (2008)

Channel 4

Watch Part Number: 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5
Not yet rated
Views: 18,683
Date Added: 12 years ago.

Documentary Description

Is paganism a living tradition with roots deep in prehistory or just a collection of superstitions, magic tricks and witches' spells? Pagans explores the origins, history and beliefs of Europe's ancient religions. We see pagan tradition through the prism of generations of modern religious thought. Through history and prehistory, the representations of the ancient gods and traditions followed by pagans have been marred by propaganda from other religious groups eager to rein in those they defined as `wild barbarians`. In truth, the word pagan is a Roman term meaning `country folk`, and the general concept of paganism is of oneness with nature and a quest to fully understand the world around us. Though historical accounts lead us to images of stone dildo-wielding women flashing their genitals at cattle, chieftains having sex with horses before slaughtering them and whipping sessions in mixed saunas, the underlying theme is of human similarity with animals and nature. Where modern religion aims to emphasise the difference between humans and the world around us, the ancient pagan perspective is that human beings are interdependent with the world they inhabit and that sexuality is a powerful and natural element in the success of a people.

A strong pagan belief is that the natural world is embedded in all of us. One method of defining the landscape is by building monuments. The construction of tombs at the boundaries of territory illustrates to outsiders that the area is rightfully yours, since it belonged to your ancestors. A succession of ritual monuments known throughout prehistoric Europe, from wooden trackways to henges (stone or wooden circles), suggest the strong influence of altering the landscape as a way of defining territory within the pagan belief system. So what happens when people cannot lay claim to their territory by marking it with the graves or other signs that their ancestors lived there? In 874 AD Viking leader Ingolfur Arnarson threw two lengths of timber into the sea and swore that he would settle where they came ashore. They landed at the site of present day Reykjavik in Iceland. At the time the island had virtually no links with any past society, but this last new pagan European society survived because its members lived with the natural world rather than fighting against the harsh terrain. By 940 Iceland witnessed the first parliament of leaders in a pagan general assembly at a time when the rest of Europe was gradually becoming Christian. Source:Channel 4

 

Pagan is a series in 4 episodes:

Episode 1: Sexy Beasts
Episode 2: Magic Moments
Episode 3: Band of Brothers
Episode 4: Sacred Landscape

Comments

Displaying 1 comment:

yamile916 wrote 11 years ago.
The videos listed above are no longer available.

  Post comment as a guest user.
Click to login or register:
Your name:
Your email:
(will not appear)
Your comment:
(max. 1000 characters)
Are you human? (Sorry)
 
All external videos in CosmoLearning are merely links to outside video hosts that make available embed codes to be used by external websites or blogs. CosmoLearning will never be responsible for any kind of hosting of external productions. To contact the original host company or uploader, please click on the video displayed to be forwarded to the original video.