Protestantism

Many authors have argued that significant memes in contemporary Paganisms have their origins in Protestant thinking, such as "the priesthood of all believers", the idea that one's own inner convictions are paramount, and so on. In this article, Fritz Muntean argues that this might not necessarily be a good thing:

• The Protestantization of Paganism by Fritz Muntean (adapted for a general audience from a longer and more scholarly piece)

19th century Romanticism

Many of the key ideas of 19th century Romanticism were to feed into the renascent Pagan movement in the late 19th and early 20th century: magical thinking, the pathetic fallacy, a love of nature, the personification of Nature and the Earth as a woman, the idea of genius, the importance of the soul, enjoyment of ritual, and so on (in spite of the fact that many Romantics upheld mediaeval Christianity as their ideal - hence the fashion for Gothic architecture).

18th century Enlightenment

Many Enlightenment thinkers held up ancient Greece (and by extension, ancient Greek Paganism) as their ideal.

Some notes gleaned from Enlightenment Britain and the Creation of the Modern World by Roy Porter.

It seems to me that modern Paganisms are empiricist, whereas revealed religions are a priori and essentialist or systematic. This would go a long way towards explaining the lack of any formalised theological system in modern Paganisms.

Apparently (p 56), the idea of the pineal gland as "the seat of the soul" comes from Descartes. It was part of his attempt to separate the body from the soul (orthodox Christian thought had insisted on the unity of body and soul, because of the doctrine of bodily resurrection). Descartes' insistence that body and soul were separate represented a mechanistic view of the universe; he also didn't believe that animals had consciousness.

The phrase "the Book of Nature" comes from early science, and the writings of Francis Bacon in particular (circa 1620). In 1605, Bacon (as Lord Chancellor) separated science from theology in order to get round the problem of churchmen who were wary of prying into God's secrets. Bacon said that theologians studied the Bible, whereas natural philosophers studied the Book of Nature. (p 56)

The idea of the priesthood of all believers is a Protestant idea which has fed directly into modern Paganisms, and which was strongly influenced by Locke's empiricism. Locke said that the mind matures from ignorance (the tabula rasa) to knowledge by gaining practical experience through the senses. His ideas of rational self-responsibility tie in nicely with the idea of direct contact with the divine. (pp 69-71)

Another similarity is the belief in formulating your own belief system.

Indeed, it was during the Enlightenment that some early advocates of a return to Paganism began to make themselves heard, including Erasmus Darwin (who wrote about Linnaeus' sexual system of plant classification in terms of classical mythology, and believed that sex was the basic principle of life), William Hamilton (excavator of Pompeii and Herculaneum), and Richard Payne-Knight (a friend of Josiah Wedgwood and William Hamilton's publisher). (p 273)