In today’s society, we have the concept of religion as separate from the rest of our lives. The Proto-Indo-Europeans, on the other hand, like people in traditional societies in general, wouldn’t have considered that they had a religion. They just did what they did. What we think of as religion would have been part of their culture, like what they ate and what they wore, how they built their houses, and how they took care of their cattle.
Nonetheless, the society we live in does have such a concept. Those who believe in Proto-Indo-European deities and practice Proto-Indo-European rituals will think of themselves as being Proto-Indo-European Pagans.
It might be desirable to them to have both a name for their tradition and a symbol to use for things like jewelry. For a name, I suggest “Sentos,” which is one Proto-Indo-European word for “Path.”
For a symbol, I designed this:
The three vertical lines represent all the threes in Indo-European culture. Together they form a join between the Tree (the angled lines at the top representing branches) and the Well (the curves at the bottom representing water). The horizontal line represents our world, Medhyom, the “Middle” world. It also has the practical purpose of tying the three verticals together so that the symbol can be made into a pendant.
The name and symbol are very much my own thoughts, using Proto-Indo-European ideas, adapted to modern life, but not things that are reconstructible. In fact, the idea of having them would have baffled the Proto-Indo-Europeans. I’m putting them forward to serve a modern purpose for modern Pagans who want to identify themselves as operating in the Proto-Indo-European tradition.
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