Pagan and Christian Creeds - Their Origin and Meaning

by Edward Carpenter

First published in 1921, this vintage book looks at paganism and Christianity, exploring their various connections and analysing where these similarities came from and what they mean. Edward Carpenter (1844 - 1929) was an English philosopher, poet, and pioneering activist for gay rights. He had many notable friends including the Bengali polymath Rabindranath Tagore and celebrated American poet Walt Whitman; and also corresponded with many famous figures, including Jack London, Mahatma Gandhi and Annie Besant, amongst others. Contents include: "Solar Myths and Christian Festivals", "The Symbolism of the Zodiac", "Totem-Sacraments and Eucharists", "Food and Vegetation Magic", "Magicians, Kings and Gods", "Rites of Expiation and Redemption", "Pagan Initiations and the Second Birth", "Myth of the Golden Age", "The Savior-god and the Virgin-mother", "Ritual Dancing", "The Sex-Taboo", etc. Many vintage books such as this are becoming increasingly scarce and expensive. It is with this in mind that we are republishing this volume now in an affordable, modern, high-quality edition complete with a specially-commissioned new biography of the author.

128 pages, Kindle Edition

Published January 8, 2021

About the author

Edward Carpenter was an English socialist poet, socialist philosopher, anthologist, and early gay activist.

A leading figure in late 19th- and early 20th-century Britain, he was instrumental in the foundation of the Fabian Society and the Labour Party. A poet and writer, he was a close friend of Walt Whitman and Rabindranath Tagore, corresponding with many famous figures such as Annie Besant, Isadora Duncan, Havelock Ellis, Roger Fry, Mahatma Gandhi, James Keir Hardie, J. K. Kinney, Jack London, George Merrill, E D Morel, William Morris, E R Pease, John Ruskin, and Olive Schreiner.[1]

As a philosopher he is particularly known for his publication of Civilisation, Its Cause and Cure in which he proposes that civilisation is a form of disease that human societies pass through. Civilisations, he says, rarely last more than a thousand years before collapsing, and no society has ever passed through civilisation successfully. His 'cure' is a closer association with the land and greater development of our inner nature. Although derived from his experience of Hindu mysticism, and referred to as 'mystical socialism', his thoughts parallel those of several writers in the field of psychology and sociology at the start of the twentieth century, such as Boris Sidis, Sigmund Freud and Wilfred Trotter who all recognised that society puts ever increasing pressure on the individual that can result in mental and physical illnesses such as neurosis and the particular nervousness which was then described as neurasthenia.

A strong advocate of sexual freedom, living in a gay community near Sheffield, he had a profound influence on both D. H. Lawrence and E. M. Forster.