“These are four actions, each of which has a beginning, middle, and end, consequently there must be twelve Gods governing the world. Those who make the world are Zeus, Poseidon, and Hephaistos; those who animate it are Demeter, Hera, and Artemis; those who harmonize it are Apollo, Aphrodite, and Hermes; those who watch over it are Hestia, Athena, and Ares.” - Sallustius, on the Gods and the World

What is the current that animates the world? Can we find it? Can we know it?

Those of us who are millennials have lived long enough now to look backward and see life as the rising, cresting and falling of many waves. Currents of career, sport, love, birth, death, fortune and misfortune appearing and disappearing inexorably. Perhaps assigning to us a particular grace to endure those events, surfacing something in us that we did not know existed.

What spirit holds together a city, a civilization? What built it when once it did not exist at all? What departed from the civilizations of old, leaving ruins behind?

“The gods show more care for us than we do ourselves.” - Juvenal

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“Now, these things never happened, but always are.” - Sallustius, on myths

We may find them in story. How, for instance, a rabbi carpenter from Nazareth lived, preached, was crucified, and rose again. This mysterious story has saved many of us from a downward spiral, giving new life.

“For in them we live, and move, and have our being.” - Epimenides, later quoted by St. Paul

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“In the Macrocosm, these forces are the Elder Gods; in the Microcosm, they are the Forgotten Ones” - Nema

What of the hellish currents? Here too the gods are at work. The essential modern epithet is to deem one “irrational,” but this flattens the perspective. The ancients had a more evocative diagnosis: possessed. The gods are fighting. Their advantage is infinite patience. Where are they going, where do they want to take us?

“When it is quiescent, one is no more aware of the archetype Wotan than of a latent epilepsy. Could the Germans who were adults in 1914 have foreseen what they would be today? Such amazing transformations are the effect of the god of wind, that “bloweth where it listeth, and thou hearest the sound thereof, but canst not tell whence it cometh, nor whither it goeth.” It seizes everything in its path and overthrows everything that is not firmly rooted. When the wind blows it shakes everything that is insecure, whether without or within.” - Carl Jung, Essay on Wotan, 1936

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“But,” he said, “you cannot see my face, for no one may see me and live.” - Exodus 33:20

An atheist wrote a book about all of the good things that religion does. He segmented it, analyzed it perfectly, but couldn’t see the life behind it. Which is understandable, because the gods are entirely invisible. Woe to the young convert who desires to see his Lord face to face. Nonetheless, for those with ears to hear, the symphony of the gods echoes across time.

“In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.” - John 1:1