How Many Polytheists / Pagans Are There?

Actor Jeremy Irons lights a huge effigy of the "Borgia Bull"
in a Pagan inspired celebration in season two of The Borgias

One thing seems certain – there are not too many people in Western nations who identify as polytheists … or are there? If social media, such as Facebook and reddit, is anything to go by there are perhaps only a few thousand people in the English speaking world who practice Roman polytheism. The number of Germanic polytheists in English language dominant countries seems to be higher, but even then it seems the numbers are only in the tens of thousands at most.* Statistical information only gets us so far, because meaningful data is limited, with the United Kingdom giving us perhaps the best hint of the true numbers. In the 2011 UK census the following written answers were given to “what is your religion”:**

• Pagan = 56,620
• Wicca = 11,766
• Druid = 4,189
• Heathen = 1,958
• Witchcraft = 1,276
• Shamanism = 650
• Animism = 541
• Reconstructionist = 251
• Total of the above listed categories = 77,251

There are approximately 64 million citizens of the United Kingdom. The combined population of three culturally similar countries – Australia, New Zealand and Canada – is close to that of the UK so we can perhaps add up to another 75,000 polytheists into the mix (or at least 60,000).*** I was unable to find meaningful statistical information regarding niche religions in the United States, though I came across estimates ranging between 200,000 and 1,000,000: pluralism.org. The US has roughly five times the population of the UK so we might guess that there are around 385,000 polytheists in the US. This gives us over half a million in the English speaking world alone. My guess is that there are at least a million people worldwide, speaking numerous languages, who adhere to European and near eastern polytheisms (aka Paganism or Neo-Paganism) – maybe. The truth is that there are no reliable figures available for this. Western polytheists very often reside in the shadows. Many of us are discreet, deliberately choosing not to reveal our spirituality to friends, work colleagues, or even family members to avoid adverse judgment. I think this is because in Western societies polytheism is often perceived as a somehow unworthy form of religious expression. As the Encyclopaedia Britannica points out in its “monotheism” entry:

“Because Christianity is a monotheistic religion, the monotheistic conception of the divine has assumed for Western culture the value of a self-evident axiom. This unquestioned assumption becomes clear when it is realized that for Western culture there is no longer an acceptable choice between monotheism and polytheism but only a choice between monotheism and atheism [britannica.com].”

I have often keenly felt the reality of this Western tendency – it was only through prolonged exposure to Buddhism that the legitimacy of polytheism as a methodology for understanding and interpreting the divine was established for me. Before I explored Buddhism it did not even occur to me that polytheism was a viable religious path.

As it is, Pagan religions can feel somewhat underground and scattered; it can be hard to feel that one is part of a widely practiced form of spirituality, but the truth is that we are not really the minority group it can be tempting to think we are. It may be that Paganism is practiced by a proportionally small number of the world but polytheistic religions in general are flourishing, and I think it is fair to say that European and near eastern polytheisms are on the same spectrum as polytheisms worldwide.

The most obviously similar polytheistic religion is Hinduism, which has over a billion adherents and is certainly not a homogenous religion but rather is the sum total of numerous polytheistic belief systems emanating from the huge geographic region that is south Asia and linked by “various common elements such as Vedic tradition, the caste system, religious and moral law, epics and myths, and reverence for spiritual teachers” (Dallapiccola, Hindu: Visions of the Sacred). Shinto is also obviously similar to Paganism, and claims at least three million followers. Less obvious, but no less polytheistic, are folk religionists worldwide.

“Folk or traditional religions are faiths closely associated with a particular group of people, ethnicity or tribe. They often have no formal creeds or sacred texts. Examples of folk religions include African traditional religions, Chinese folk religions, Native American religions and Australian Aboriginal religions. 

Folk religions are challenging to measure. Less institutionalized and more diffuse than many other faiths … [pewforum.org].”

The statements above could be easily adapted to describe many polytheists exploring traditional European spirituality. Not counting Pagans reviving European and near eastern traditions, it is estimated that there are over four hundred million folk religionists worldwide. The nature of their spiritualities are immensely diverse but at the very least Chinese folk religion is certainly polytheistic. There are at least 1.357 billion people in China alone and more than 20% of that number are conservatively estimated as being folk religionists. This equates to over 295 million Chinese folk religionists in China alone. Then there are the millions of Chinese living throughout the rest of the Asia Pacific region who, in my experience, are often much more devout than mainland Chinese, but whose numbers are difficult to estimate.

Then there is Buddhism, which is often regarded in the West as being somehow non-theistic or even atheistic. Deeper inspection demonstrates that many if not most lineages of Buddhism are polytheistic, though worship of Gods is not the centrepiece of Buddhist practice. The number of Buddhists in the world is estimated at over 487 million.

If we add the number of Hindus, Shinto adherents, folk religionists and Buddhists together we get a staggering number of 1,927,660,000 polytheists worldwide. Even if we feel that some of the folk religionists are not really polytheistic for some reason (eg, I confess to knowing very little about African and Native American folk religions) and recognise that many Western Buddhists are non-theistic (the number of Buddhists in the Americas and Europe are estimated to be over 5,620,000) we are still left with easily more than a billion and a half polytheists worldwide. As people who revere the divine in the form of a universe consisting of multiple Deities we Pagans are part of the worldwide polytheistic community – diverse as it is. As the Encyclopedia Britannica states:

“Polytheism characterises virtually all religions other than Judaism, Christianity, and Islam, which share a common tradition of monotheism [britannica.com].”

Through this gaze polytheism is a worldwide religion with hundreds of millions of adherents practising in many diverse ways, just as there are many Gods. Vive la différence.

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* In a 2013 English language online census of Germanic polytheists worldwide 16,700 Heathens were counted (norsemyth.org), however I believe that number to be lower than the real count, judging by the number of people connected with Facebook pages and groups associated with Germanic Heathenry. 

** The option to tick a box, as was the case for the more common religions, was not available – note that it seems no-one, or less than one hundred people, wrote “polytheism”: ons.gov.uk.

*** In a 2011 census in Canada 25,495 respondents identified as "Pagan" (and 10,225 of this number identified as Wiccan), but the number of respondents who may have given other answers that amount to the same thing (eg, Heathen or Druid) are unknown. In the same census 40,195 people were listed as belonging to religions that were “not included elsewhere”: www12.statcan.gc.ca. In a 2011 census in Australia respondents had to look up specific codes to select religions already designated within the census (thus people identifying as "Heathen" or "Shamanist" or  another term not already provided for in the census could not be counted). Saliently, the results were:

- Paganism = 16,861

- Wiccan/Witchcraft = 8,413

- Nature Religions = 3,507

- Druidism = 1,049

- Animism = 780
- Ancestor Veneration = 509
- Nature religions not further defined = 92

- Total of the above = 31,211

The number of respondents who selected "Religious Belief not further defined” was 35,168 and the respondents who selected the virtually identical code for “not defined” was 132,597. The number of respondents who selected “Australian Aboriginal Traditional Religion” (which I understand to be polytheistic) was 7,360: sbs.com.au/censusexplorer. In a 2013 census in New Zealand the following salient results were recorded:
- Nature and Earth Based Religions not elsewhere classified = 3,099

- Wiccan = 1,452

- Nature and Earth Based Religions not further defined = 699

- Animist = 243

- Druid = 165

- Total of the above = 5,658

The number of respondents who selected “Other Religions nec” was 225 and for “Religion Unidentifiable” it was 16,146: stats.govt.nz.

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Additional sources: pewforum.org/methodolgy; pewforum.org/hindus; pewforum.org/global-religious-landscape-other; pewforum.org/buddhists; worldpopulationreview.com.

Written by M' Sentia Figula (aka Freki), find me at neo polytheist and romanpagan.wordpress.com