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Continuing Education For Pagans

Continuing Education For Pagans

Last updated on: September 2, 2025 at 3:00 am by John Beckett

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Continuing Education For Pagans 2025-09-01T16:50:59-06:00 John Beckett

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Paganism is a living religion. Or if you prefer, many living religions. Any healthy religion is a living religion, but that’s another post for another time.

We are inspired by the beliefs and practices of our ancient ancestors, but we are not seeking to exactly duplicate their religion (or at least, I’m not). Instead, we’re building a religion, a tradition, a path that works for us, here and now. Our traditions are not fixed. Our knowledge base is not complete. Our understanding is always tentative.

When certain ways of thinking, of living, and of being prove to be helpful, we keep doing them. There is value in keeping traditions, in hanging on to what we know works and passing it down to those who come after us. But even then we’re always looking to refine our Paganism, to make it even deeper and more meaningful than it already is.

Unfortunately, some people get to a certain point in their spiritual journey and they stay there. Sometimes that’s a choice (“I like it here, why should I leave?”) but more frequently they get so used to doing something one way, or to thinking about something one way, that they stop trying to learn and grow.

Now, if something works for you and you’re happy with it, I’m happy for you. I’m long past the age where the words “new and improved” are anything more than a sales gimmick. At the same time, my Paganism is a living religion and I want to continue learning and growing for as long as I’m in this world. And if it’s possible – and I think it is – beyond that.

And that brings us to today’s topic: continuing education for Pagans.

Outdated information brings stagnant practices

I remember the first time I heard the term “continuing education.” I wasn’t happy about it. “You mean I have to keep going to school forever?” Ironically, while I have never pursued the kind of professional certification that requires continuing education (few industrial engineers do), in my religious and spiritual life I’ve never stopped trying learn as much as I can.

I think most Pagans have the kind of inner curiosity that makes on-going reading, studying, and learning a pleasure, not a chore. If we didn’t we never would have done enough investigation to find this path in the first place. It’s not like there are Pagan temples on every streetcorner with signs encouraging us to come to sabbat school on the next full moon.

And still, I occasionally come across people who are still doing Scott Cunningham Wicca (which, to be clear, was a good thing in its time). I see people who insist Margaret Murray was right about 9 million witches being burned. I run into people who understand that Murray was badly wrong, but who haven’t read anything since Triumph of the Moon.

More frequently, I come across people who’ve never been to Pagan Pride Day (much less to a convention or festival), who don’t talk to other Pagan leaders and practitioners, and who don’t read outside a very narrow set of topics.

Now, if what you do works for you, I’m the last person who’s going to tell you you’re doing it wrong. At the same time, I can’t imagine doing – and thinking – the same things year after year and never taking advantage of advancements in scholarship and practice.

Pagans need continuing education too. Here are some areas where you may want to do some up-to-date reading and study.

Anthropology and Archaeology

For me, Paganism isn’t so much about reconstructing and reimagining old religions for new times as it is about trying to understand the experiences and lines of thinking that led our ancestors to form the beliefs and practices they did, and then using those experiences and lines of thinking in our own times.

Göbekli Tepe – humanity’s earliest attempt at organized religion (that we’ve discovered so far, anyway) – is still largely a mystery. What new discoveries will be dug up? What will we learn as this site and others like it are studied in greater depth? More importantly, how will these new discoveries help us better understand how our ancient ancestors related to their Gods, to each other, and to the wider world?

And how can we adapt their methods to our lives and our communities?

Keep reading anthropology and archaeology.

History

Most Pagans I know – especially polytheists and other reconstructionists – love history. Our pre-Christian ancestors may not have left us detailed instructions on what to do and how to do it (although the Egyptians carved it in stone) but we have some of their stories and other records of their religion. This gives us a good place to start.

But like other disciplines, history is constantly progressing. New evidence is discovered, old theories are debunked, new theories are developed. What we thought was certain turns out to be unlikely, or vice versa.

If we build our Paganism on history (inspirationally, not slavishly) we need to build it on the best history we can find. And also, we need to weed out the pseudo-history and outright fabrications we find on some website and social media feeds.

Keep looking for – and vetting – good Pagan history.

Religious Studies

Religious Studies is an academic approach to religion: what people believe and do and why they believe and do it. It leaves the question of metaphysical and theological truth to practitioners and attempts to create an objective and empirical description of a given religion or religious group.

Works of religious studies can be difficult for practitioners to read. None of us like being the lab rats for someone else’s thesis. But particularly when they’re done well, they can help us get a judgement-free outsider’s view of our traditions.

And such works can help us understand the wider religious environment, especially in times like these when things are changing so quickly.

Works of religious studies can be harder to find than history and anthropology, but when you find good ones, read them. And share them.

Current trends in modern Paganism

As a Pagan practitioner and leader, this is what I think is most important. What are other witches, Druids, Heathens, and other Pagans doing right now? What are they thinking? How are the foundations of their spiritual traditions shifting? What’s influencing those who are leading, speaking for, and speaking about Paganism?

More importantly, what and who are influencing the Pagan community in general – for better and for worse?

The first three categories of this post are scholarly and it’s a fairly straightforward process to find new scholarly works relevant to Pagans (but you do have to look for them). I don’t know of any way to keep up with current trends beside being in the middle of them yourself. The days when blogs and websites were a good source of new trends are long gone. People just aren’t blogging the way we did in the 2010s.

Social media can help, but it also presents the challenges of falling into an echo chamber that tells you only what you want to hear, or of having your attention spread so widely you couldn’t possibly keep up with it all. And of course, not every new and popular idea is a good and helpful idea…

This is why I like going to events like Pagan Pride Days, festivals like Harvest Gathering, and conventions like Mystic South. They’re a chance to see first-hand what other people are doing and thinking, and then to sit down over a cup of tea or a glass of wine and talk about them in detail. These events aren’t in every town and travel is expensive. But if you can go to one or two, it’s well worth it.

Lifelong learning

Of course, none of this is a substitute for doing your own daily spiritual practice, celebrating the high days (whether the Wheel of the Year or the holy days of a different tradition), and building good relationships with other people where you are. It’s possible to get so caught up in chasing trends we forget who and what we are.

But done right, education is a process that is never finished. If we keep looking, we can keep learning more and more about the sacred topics and trends that are important to us, and in doing so, we can make our personal and group practices deeper and more meaningful.

Education and Religion

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