If there had indeed been pagans of our kind in Europe during the Hidden Years, and

if those old paganisms had managed to survive in backwaters here and there, and

if they had undergone the usual kinds of culture loss and internal innovation, and

if the old ways had been influenced, as one would expect, by the new religion, and

if those ways had managed to survive into modern times, and

if our ancestors had brought those ways with them to the New World in their heads, their hearts, and their steamer trunks, and

if those ways had become naturalized to the local weather patterns, vegetation and wildlife, and

if those ways had been influenced by the lore both of the indigenous peoples and of other incomers, and

if those ways had survived industrialization and the Wars, and

if they had managed to come down intact to us today in the second decade of the so-called twenty-first century:

then what would our paganism look like?

 

Authenticity: contextual cognitive resonance.