Define "back," please?

This happened on the Internet this week.

When I read it, I didn’t know what to think at first, but one of the earlier comments (which has since fallen so far down that I can’t find it) captured it very well: the writer obviously hasn’t done his research.

One of the fallacies many people have when they first think about any kind of Western polytheism, Hellenism included, is mistaking myths for practice. Christianity has explicit relationships between myth and cult that even a four-year-old could understand. The holidays and the rituals within Christianity have obvious connections to events and actions within the life of Jesus as depicted in Biblical stories. Jesus breaks bread and wine? Boom! Communion!

Let’s do this for Hellenism: Zeus and Demeter give birth to Persephone who is hidden in a cave to weave the world when Zeus comes in the form of a snake to sire Zagreus whom Hera loathes and instigates the Titans to murder whose ashes are built into humankind after smiting, and the heart of Zagreus becomes Dionysos in Semele’s womb, whom Zeus accidentally kills and thus bears Dionysos in his thigh? Orphic Mysteries! And that’s one of the easy ones.

One of the downsides of having explicit myths, though, is that if you’re not exposed to a more subtle relationship between myth and ritual behavior, it becomes difficult to understand what exactly people did and how it relates to the stories. Hellenic myths are a tapestry of overlapping and intertwining stories, with many divine actors performing a role in the same story in different regions to make different points about the Gods and their relationship to humanity and the world of the senses. Gods blur around the edges.

This is the difference between organic, ancient narratives and relatively young ones.

And, as for the question the post raised: “Can we bring the Greek Gods back, please?”  — It’s somewhat hard for Beings that are part of the very fabric of reality to go away.