There is an argument sometimes made that the termination of a religious tradition reflects poorly on the object(s) of that tradition. Maybe it means the God and its entourage never existed in the first place, or that they were defeated, or at least that they abandoned their people. But whatever it means, it isn’t good.

This problem has been posed to me numerous times over the years, and as a friend recently inquired about it, I thought maybe I could collect some thoughts on it from a veteran polytheist.

The bottom line, for me, is that we should get clear on what it is we’re actually dealing with. Once we do, I submit, any appearance there may have been of tension for the polytheist evaporates like a mirage.

(i) To begin getting clear on what it is we’re actually dealing with, consider first that we must be careful not to commit the Prosecutor’s Fallacy, which mistakenly infers that just because a proposed explanation predicts or makes sense of the data, it’s probably right. The problem is that this inference doesn’t even acknowledge or take into account *other* possible or proposed explanations, nor does it factor in how plausible the given explanation itself is in the first place. So, it may very well be that *if* the Gods don’t exist, or aren’t so powerful, then we should expect their traditions not to endure or stand the test of time. But we should also expect their traditions not to endure or stand the test of time if *we* terminate those relationships, or if They only intended those relationships to last for allotted periods, or if They passed divine judgement, or if They secure some greater good by allowing those relationships to be terminated, permanently or temporarily. All kinds of explanations can make sense of the data, so the mere fact of being able to do so just is not enough.

(ii) The next thing we should avoid doing in an attempt to get clearer on what we’re actually dealing with is committing the fallacy of understating the evidence. The narrative is sometimes put in abstract terms such as that one Abrahamic faith or other peacefully and indomitably marched across the world, as it was destined to do, and brought all nations back to the One True God. But the reality is that the decline of the ancient traditions took millennia, never globally occurred anyway, and only through the most savage and disgustingly brutal of means, like rape, torture, and murder. It spread more like death does through drought or plague than life does through justice or liberation. What we are *actually* dealing with is not, for example, the holy triumph of the Gospel over the prince of this world; the return home to their Father of the banished children of Eve, the prodigal children. Far from *vindicating* the divine approval of monotheistic faiths, the details of their transmission *expose* them as thoroughly human occurrences, imbued with all the same, familiar patterns of violence and miscalculation that are the signature and legacy of our species.

(iii) One final road closure to avoid can be spotted where people sense dislike at the thought that we could just terminate divine relationships. The problem often turns out to be a concealed form of the problem of evil. If Gods are able and willing to preserve and spare this sacred relationship, how could they just abandon their people? This pattern of discomfort should be familiar: reality regularly turns out to be traumatizing. How could any of the horrifying things that happen occur if they are in the hands of someone willing and able to prevent them?

Our embedded sense of life’s goodness; its implicit narratival security, and that it all make sense in the final analysis comes into jarring pulverization when things are taken out of our hands and we are made to face how utterly powerless and helpless we really are in the bigger picture. Financial ruin, loss of loved ones, irreversible disease, whatever: the world regularly churns up reasons to turn our confused eyes to the Gods, and search theirs for explanation as to how such things could possibly have happened.

If painful, inscrutable, mysterious occurrences were less frequent, or even isolated to this one case (the permitting of traditions to fall), then perhaps it would be uniquely disturbing to the conscience—though it would still be an invitation to trust. But what we are actually dealing with is a world replete with such phenomena.

So, then, if we should feel that there is here a problem to be accounted for, it is important first and foremost to get clear on what exactly that problem is supposed to be. Across millennia, in a world defined by the struggle to survive, a large portion of ancient traditions were extinguished, more often than not through slow and painful processes that were wrought by all too human means and motives relied upon everywhere else.

So put, the question that seems to be getting asked is why do the Gods run the world like this? We seem in some profound sense to be left to our own devices, with no miraculous interventions around that are so publicly normalized as to be like any other given of sensible reality. Religion seems no less subject than anything else down here to the struggle for survival.

If this sounds atheistically phrased, it is because we are in societies so thoroughly soaked in post-pagan ideas of what theism and religion are supposed to be. All things are not full of Gods. Rather, there is a sharp divide and the truth has to be specially revealed, with verified credentials. Otherwise, it’s just more of the same mundane stuff.

Indeed, the obsession we’ve inherited with suspending our assent to anything supernatural until it rises to our heights is not irrelevant here. No one can know *in* their lifetime whether the line of their religious tradition has been severed completely, or that it won’t be rekindled. The prioritization of one’s own miniscule historical index plays a heavy hand in the problem we are discussing. But one may as well have posed this very argument to Christians during the height of their supposed Roman persecutions, their Arian eclipse, or their being crushed under Islam. One may as well pose this argument to Jews for everything they have endured. Each era would have looked forsaken. So, even if things looked bleak at this coordinate for Paganism, who could say of what significance there is for this sliver on the cosmic scale?

Each of us awoke on this rock hurling through space to find ourselves as mere parts in Nature: a vast ecosystem in which we are not the main characters, one coursing with spirits, and Gods, and genuine uncertainty. There are things that can kill us. There is risk. Loss is inevitable. There is also beauty, depth, adventure, lessons, legacies, love, discovery, and growth. The Gods are not limited to cultic ties we succeeded in making with them once upon a time: it’s their power to *form* those whenever that allowed them to be formed in the first place! We are talking about real, living ones, genuinely available for contact. Our freedom (however that ends up getting cashed out) enables us to never speak to the Gods, or to turn our backs on them. Guess what? They know our souls will continue to be around, and they obviously let people go their own way. Just because we can be rotten doesn’t mean the Gods are fighting with each other. The effects and presences they sovereignly elected to send forth throughout Nature are sometimes dissonant, and collisive. That doesn’t mean they are themselves in different grades of power or dignity.

In short, breathe. There is nothing here new under the sun. The Pagan Eclipse was never even entire, and however far it went, it is well on the wane. Welcome to the world!