Pagan Theology

Weekly interesting facts about paganism around the world.

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Do you have any questions about paganism? Please don't hesitate to ask—I'd be more than happy to answer absolutely any question you have about any culture.

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In the Roman pagan tradition, the founding of a city played a role greater than mere agriculture or the cold marking out of boundaries. It was a mysterious act in which a person, by lifting the plow, consecrated the land. Rome was born out of the liturgy of the boundary: first a circle was marked out, then a center was established, and only then did the possibility arise for a life that would be orderly, lawful, and visible to the gods. Lucius Mestrius Plutarch relates: when the city was founded, Etruscan experts in sacred rites were invited, who taught Romulus how to establish the city as a religious rite. First, a circular ditch called mundus—a name also given to the sky—was dug near the Comitia; into it were placed the first fruits and soil brought by each of the future citizens from their homelands. This spot was designated as the center, and they laid out the city around it.

The city of Rome begins with sacrifice and remembrance. In the Roman pagan tradition, the earth must be reconciled with humanity through ritual, sanctified by an offering, marked with a sign, and made habitable through religion. Lucius Mestrius Plutarch states: the first fruits of what was recognized as good and necessary were laid upon the mundus. Thus Rome acquired its soul, creating a space in which the community could live as a unified whole.

Romulus, having fitted the plow with a bronze plowshare, harnessed a bull and a cow to it and plowed a deep furrow around the future city walls. Those who followed him were to turn the clods of earth inward, toward the city, so that none of them would fall outward. Marcus Terentius Varro states: this rite is of Etruscan origin, for cities in Latium were often founded in this manner “on a sacred day,” with a team of a bull and a cow. Nothing is cast outward; everything sacred is returned inward; the city is assembled, as if a vessel filled and sealed with a blessing.

This furrow serves as a religious boundary. Marcus Terentius Varro states: in this way the pomerium was defined, and its stone markers served as the boundary of the city’s auspices. Lucius Mestrius Plutarch states: the line was called pomerium, since this word means “behind the wall” or “beyond the wall,” and in places where gates were to be erected, the plow was lifted, leaving a free opening in the line for them. In the Roman pagan tradition, the sacred boundary must be intact; it separates the city. Gates are an exception, for life must be able to enter and exit. The city takes on the form of a sacred distinction: within, its own order; outside, a different space that is bounded.

The entire ritual expresses the fundamental truth that any community exists only when it acknowledges the supreme law of the city above itself. Publius Ovidius Naso recounts: before plowing the furrow, Romulus offers a sacrificial pledge to the earth, erects an altar, kindles a new fire, and then calls upon Jupiter, Mars, and Vesta to support the city’s foundation. The city is built as an object of the deities’ care, built under their auspicia. Publius Ovidius Naso recounts: the plow was drawn by a white cow and a snow-white bull, on a day associated with the Paralia, which the Romans later celebrated as the birthday of Rome. The city is born of purity, ritual, and the invocation of the heavenly canopy.

The boundary of the city of Rome was a religious demarcation, within which space became a moral reality. Marcus Terentius Varro states: pomerium marked the limit of the city’s auspices; on one side of the line, the city already stood in a special relationship with the deities; on the other, it did not yet. In the Roman pagan tradition, the city boundary ushered citizens into a way of life marked by responsibility. Not all space is the same; there is consecrated space and unconsecrated space, there is order and disorder, there is the city as a form of human harmony with the heavenly law, and there is the external world, which must yet be brought into proper measure. The founding of Rome is a sacred-anthropological act: a person becomes different because they enter into a consecrated order.

In Roman tradition, the city’s first boundary is linked to the tragedy of Remus. Lucius Mestrius Plutarch recounts: Romulus, upon seeing a furrow in the earth, began to mock his brother’s work and even leaped over it, for which he was killed. Publius Ovidius Naso recounts: the brother who crossed the line perished, and Romulus declared that this would be the fate of anyone who dared to cross its walls. The city’s boundary is so sacred that violating it is not a mere technical infraction but a sacrilegious crime. Sacred space tolerates no mockery, for mockery is the beginning of the disintegration of form.

But the Roman rite was not cruelty for cruelty’s sake. It asserts that the world is habitable only when there is a boundary, and a boundary is effective only when it is recognized as sacred. The Roman wall is the external form of internal harmony, a visible sign that the community is gathered together. That is why the plow serves as an instrument of consecration: it furrows the space for citizenship. That is why clods of earth are turned inward: everything that rises from the depths must be brought into the heart of the city so that urban order may emerge as a sense of unity. Rome conceives of itself in advance as a sacred form of the human multitude, where place and law, earth and worship, memory and power are united in a single act of foundation.

When the ancient Romans spoke of walls, they were speaking of the boundary between the cosmos and chaos, between the inhabited and the untamed, between the sacred and the profane. Their city began with a moat—a sign of its chosen status, of its consecrated order. Rome is a religious vision of the world, in which space becomes righteous when it is measured, consecrated, and enclosed. Where there is no measure, disorder reigns; where measure is marked out by the plow and confirmed by sacrifice, there begins the city that dares to call itself eternal.

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The forest is a force with a will of its own. The forest spirit, commonly called a Leshy or Lesovik, is the guardian of the forests and animals. Leshy are Slavic forest spirits that can take the form of an old man or an animal, and their role is to protect the forest. The forest is a territory with a master, a guardian, and a will of its own.

This is the logic underlying the ritual caution observed before entering the forest. The relationship between humans and the wild world is reciprocal: people enter the “foreign territory” of the forest to gather mushrooms, herbs, berries, or healing water, but they do so as part of an exchange. “Any contact with nature” is based on reciprocity, and peasants would begin these relationships with an offering in order to receive a gift in return. They would negotiate with the forest.

These negotiations took the form of a direct request or a small gift. Offerings to the forest spirit include eggs, bread, salt, corn grits, pancakes, nuts, fruits, honey, fish, and poultry. When people go into the forest, they arrange the first three mushrooms in a triangle as an offering or place the first mushrooms in a rotten tree while reciting a prayer. This is striking symbolism. The first and best gifts are what are given first and foremost to the invisible master of the place.

The forest is a moral space. Forest spirits expect proper behavior, and offerings are part of that proper behavior. The forest spirit is honored with food offerings intended to appease it: this is a way to soothe, acknowledge, and establish the right relationship with the being that “owns” this place. Offerings made when laying the foundation during construction appease the spirit that rules the place: whether it be a house, a grove, or a forest, human actions must be in harmony with the invisible power already present there.

The sacredness of the forest is reflected in the broader Slavic attitude toward trees and groves. The Slavs worshipped lesser spirits associated with the forest; they “worshipped specific trees,” or more precisely, the sacred spirits dwelling within them. The Slavs did not worship the tree itself, but rather the tree as the dwelling place of a god; associated groves were sites of sacrifice in early Slavic religion. Trees and forest groves are viewed as places where the presence of a deity was concentrated, localized, and ritually acknowledged.

This worldview helps us understand the emotional undertones of forest customs. The forest is useful—people seek firewood, food, medicine, pastures, and paths within it—but its usefulness does not preclude danger. The forest is a realm of uncertainty, risk, and otherness, and the forest spirit helps, misleads, punishes, or rewards depending on a person’s behavior. “Asking permission” before entering the forest has cultural significance: it is a formal acknowledgment that a person is crossing from the orderly human realm into a domain governed by a different force. The metaphysical significance is profound.