If you spend some time with that epic poem of antiquity, The Odyssey, you’ll notice the ease with which the mortals in that narrative will address themselves to the gods, in supplication and in gratitude, as if doing so was no less natural to them than speaking to one another. And that everything in creation seems capable to them of auguring something else. Which I do not cite as evidence of the existence of a divinity (let alone a pantheon), for the poem does not function as such, but only as evidence of the fact that the culture into which it was orated, and allowed to circulate, was disposed to the receiving of that idea. By which I mean that the work could be taken seriously by its listeners, and understood as a dramatization of a relationship that a large portion of its audience would’ve felt to be true, if only allegorically, because, I suspect, that audience hadn’t been plunged, as we moderns have, into an atmosphere that pays nothing but lip service to the religious imagination.