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.
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.