From Agora Movie to Paganist Conclusion

I just watched a movie called Agora released in 2009. It is a historical drama film directed by Alejandro Amenabar and written by Amenabar and Mateo Gil. Agora is actually a central place in an Ancient Greek city that has literal meaning as a ‘Gathering Place’. If you search by googling word Agora, you can find a description about Agora from Wikipedia which Agora was the center of athletic, artistic, spiritual, and political life of the Ancient Greek city. The movie took a place in this Agora (or mentioned as a library in the movie) and told about the Ancient Greek people that live with three different faiths: Pagan, Christian, and Jews. So basically it is about religions and science.

Let me bring you to be a bit bias of me for this. I have been in friend with a Paganist from Span since I lived in Seoul. We met once in a conference and unintended having some conversations about Paganism and Muslim. Poor me knew nothing about Paganism as a religion, and even I didn’t know Pagan in a word, but lucky me met him. So, according to what his telling me about the Paganism, many years ago, Paganist was used to be called as a witch and be killed by Christian. And for all I know, a witch is usually a woman having a supernatural power with her at first. But not until I watch the Agora movie. In Agora movie, a Paganist is a person who has faith in philosophy. Just a person who has curiosity to the philosophy power not the supernatural. A paganist in that movie is used to spend the entire of life in learning, thinking, and finding a philosophy about living and non-living things, or anything in this universe. Then makes a theory, concepts, or philosophy about it. One more thing, Pagan people are always illustrated as a wealthy group that have slaves and always wear great clothes.

A female named Hypatia played by Rachel Weisz is a mathematician, philosopher, and astronomer in late 4^th-century in this movie. She investigates the flaws of the geocentric Ptolemaic system and the Heliocentric model that have always challenged herself. And she is a Paganist. She teaches and shares her knowledge to several men interested in her group discussions, but only until a riot between Paganists and Christians happened, and Agora ruins due to this. So what next? The Paganists that are used to research and study at Agora leave that place and move to new place out of city. And Hypatia keeps doing her curiosity till that day comes when she is called a ‘witch’ by a bisop and his Christian followers.

I am not sure why a Paganists is then called as a witch in the real life. But according to this movie, it is due to the curiosity of life and philosophy of live that they fight for. Then I finish with a conclusion that a Paganist is called a witch because they are quite smart in their argumentation and high philosophy stuffs.