Every modern pagan thinks from time to time what it would be like to live in a pagan country. Few, if any, of us will ever get to find out.
But that doesn't stop us from wondering.
Here's one thing that I can tell you for sure about our Paganistan of the future: there will be movies about the gods.
That's how it is in India. (“Hinduism,” of course, isn't pagan—it stopped being pagan back in the Upanishadic period when it became world-denying—but there's no denying that it's remained truer to its pagan roots than any of the other Big Box religions.) There's even a specific Bollywood genre called the Theologicals: films about gods.
They're great. Back in the 80s a friend and I would regularly rent them from our local Indian grocery. ("Oh, you like the religious ones," the owner would say, nodding his head.) Now, you might think it challenging to watch an unsubtitled 3½ hour film in a language that you don't understand. So it is, but—Theologicals being Theologicals—the genre is formulaic enough that, watched sympathetically, it's easier than you might think to figure out what's going on. Pretty much all of them, after all, have the same premise: Stick with your god/goddess, and he/she will see you through.
Really, there are worse premises.
Let me tell you the story of one such. At this remove of time, I can no longer remember the title of the film or even the name of the heroine, but this much I can tell you: she loved Durga, and Durga loved her.
Theological
There was once a poor family with two sons: the elder industrious and good, the younger lazy and bad. The younger had not yet married, but the elder son's wife—an orphan, and our heroine—was a pious worshiper of Durga, India's tiger-riding warrior goddess.
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Jai Ma! Oh, how I miss our Kali pujas. I remember a dinner with friends in Paganistan many years ago where we screened a theolog
