>>1877506>>1877634>when it simply refers to the rustic non-Christian traditions of... whoever in the world.I think it's useful to think of "paganism" as meaning any non-universalist spirituality. And in this case, I think we can exchange the word "spirituality" for "aesthetic" with nothing lost. For comparison, in Japan there were originally local pagan traditions, which were bundled into "Shinto" and mostly papered over by Buddhism. It's a totally different context, but the principles work the same: there are the local traditions that grew up organically among a particular people, and then there is the systematized moral-spiritual system which seeks new converts and slowly crushes the smaller traditions. You find similar stories the world over. The compromises that come inherent to wanting to convert everyone in the world (in the ideal universalist plan) are what cause the hollowness and other problems of universalist religion, as opposed to iconoclastic local religions that don't really mind if anyone else believes and are free to be specific and particular.
As far as what religion really is, at root, I highly recommend The Golden Bough. The short version of that vision of "religion" is that it's stage 2 of a three-stage evolution. We started with Magic, where people believed that they could influence the world directly and that while "gods" existed, they weren't particularly more powerful than people. Eventually though, people noticed that magic was highly unreliable (because it's not real). So the next stage of rationalization was religion, where the shaman became a priest and didn't work magic himself, but was a simple middleman for gods/God. Then you can explain that "my magic didn't work because God is displeased." Just a passing-the-buck strategy for maintaining shamanic prestige. And the most recent stage is scientific mindset, where you dispose of gods entirely.
