Contemporary Western Paganism as a Portal for Healing From Spiritual Trauma

When survivors of spiritual trauma leave the religious communities that harmed them, where do they go? For many, the answer is somewhere unexpected: Contemporary Western Paganism. This paper follows that journey, asking what it is about Pagan practice — its attunement to the rhythms of the natural world, its insistence that the individual is their own spiritual authority — that resonates so deeply with people rebuilding their spiritual lives after harm. I argue that Pagan healing philosophies offer a rich and largely overlooked framework for understanding recovery from spiritual trauma. To explore this, I listen closely — through trauma-informed qualitative interviews with survivors, and through a longitudinal study of the communities they have built on Reddit. Together, these methods trace both the intimacy of individual healing and the contours of a much larger, quietly growing movement of spiritual reconstruction.