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Often, what baffles people about ancient paganism is not its numinous spiritual connection with the natural world, but its unabashed pragmatism. Erecting an altar to the Genius of the latrine block because you lost something down the loo just doesn't fit with our preconceptions
We are the children of monotheism, of the Reformation, and of Romanticism - regardless of our current beliefs - and the idea of the spiritual realm as pragmatic and instrumental is profoundly alien to most of us. Inaccessible, even
We are baffled by the idea of a spirituality that is largely without speculative theology, without mysticism, without soul-searching, and even without any conscious adoption of belief. But this is what paganism (and even pre-modern popular Christianity) was probably like
For most people throughout history, religion was not primarily about questions of ultimate meaning and purpose, but a pragmatic exercise in getting what people wanted from the gods/God/saints
If I had to sum up my project as a historian, it would be to study the history of religion and belief without wishful thinking, and with complete honesty. Doubtless I fail to achieve this, but it's the aim. We need to confront the beliefs of people in the past as they really were
