This is posted in the waiting room of an Irish hospital. Interesting glimpse into their culture.
The full text of the poster
This symbol has been developed by the Hospice Friendly Hospitals Programme to respectfully identify the End of Life.
This symbol is inspired by ancient Irish history; it is not associated with any one religion or denomination.
The white spiral represents the interconnected cycle of life, birth, life and death.
The white outer circle represents continuity, infinity and completion.
Purple has been chosen as the background colour as it is associated with nobility, solemnity and spirituality.
In this hospital the symbol may be displayed on a ward to add respect and solemnity during end of life or following the death of one of our patients.
Thank you for the informative response. It seems that in this context, "pagan" is less of a religion name and more of a category of otherwise unrelated religions characterized by a mystical connection to nature.
No problem! I think you're missing that we are saying "Celtic Paganism" and not just pagan.
No I'm not missing that, I'm arguing that it's the equivalent to saying "American Monotheism" when you mean "Christian". It strikes me as strange that there's no, like, actual Celtic word for their belief system/way of life that we could use instead of [Region][Category]
Many if not most religions historically didn't have a word for their particular belief system; the scholarly name for Germanic paganism is "Germanic paganism" because pre-Christian Germans didn't have a name for their shared beliefs. Sometimes you may see neologisms or names for neopagan movements applied to the now-dead religion — I've seen Germanic neopaganism (aka "Heathenry")'s less commonly-used "Asatru" used for the original religion in a game. Same with others like "Kemetism", which refers to the neopagan movement and not the ancient Egyptian religion.
Not a historical scholar but, to my understanding, for a lot of folks "what's your religion" would have been a nonsensical question because that's just how the world works and you wouldn't think of it as being a belief system separate from physically evident reality. Folks are free to correct me on that.
Celtic isn't a region though, it's an ethnic group and a language family. "Celtic paganism" typically refers to one of two things: the spiritual beliefs and practices of the historical Celtic civilizations, or the modern reconstruction based on it. It's fairly specific in that respect.
"Pagan" alone is a large umbrella, and most modern pagans will acknowledge that, but often they'll differentiate themselves as "Celtic pagan" or "Norse pagan" or "Greek pagan" or whathaveyou.
But historically, there wasn't much of a point to naming one's religion, because even if they had contact with different cultures, they were distinguished by their ethnic groups/language families, and their religion was as indistinguishable from those things as any other aspect of culture.
That was long before the modern day, when civilizations now have more heterogeneity and thus distinctions such as language, culture, ethnicity, religion, cuisine, etc., each refer to unique sets of characteristics that can blend in various ways within a multicultural society in a globalized world.
"Celtic Paganism" would be more akin to "Catholicism". It's a sect or branch of Paganism.
Like how Catholicism is a branch of Christianity
To be fair, Catholicism is a famously singular religion.
Not really. You have Roman Catholicism, Greek Orthodox, Russian Orthodox...
Not really - that's more like saying "European polytheism" when you mean paganism.
Though I do believe there are non-European traditions that might call themseves pagan. But then again, christianity is also not confined to America.
The term "pagan" originally meant "anything other than christian." Maybe before that it meant something like "country bumpkin," referring to people who lived outside the cities and major towns. The meaning changed as population centers converted faster than rural areas.
It originated in Europe though, so obviously it's more deeply rooted in European paganism and other cultures that had close contact, like Egypt and Anatolia.
Further removed cultures probably didn't/don't think of themselves as pagan. For example, a Shinto priest probably doesn't call himself pagan. There's no cultural reason to.
But that sorta breaks down when you look at post-colonized cultures, where the cultural cross-pollination lent the word pagan to their cultural identity. For instance, some followers of Native American spirituality refer to themselves as pagan. It's a way of reclaiming the term, which was originally used to exclude and oppress them, but now it just frightens christians. A lot of people who call themselves pagan use the term that way deliberately.