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the old ways of knowing (such as mysticism, alchemy, and gnosticism) still exist, but most of us are divorced from them. The recent widespread interest in occultism is, in part, a wish to reclaim them. These systems are richer in imagery than the Judeo-Christian tradition as it has come down to most of us. Despite this, both Miller and Hillman worry about a Pagan revival. Hillman is apprehensive about a “true revival of paganism as religion, ” fearing that it would bring dogmas and soothsayers in its wake. He advocates a polytheistic psychology as a substitute. 14
    Miller advocates a return to Greco-Roman polytheism because we are “willy-nilly Occidental men and women” and other symbol systems are inappropriate. 15 Much of the remainder of Miller’s book is an attempt to use Greek mythology to explain modern society. He sees the problems of technology as the playing out of the stories of Prometheus, Hephaestus, and Aesclepius; the military-industrial complex is Hera-Hephaestus-Heracles; the outbreak of the irrational is Pan; and so forth. This may be fine for students of ancient Greek polytheism, but most Neo-Pagans diverge from him at this point.
    When Miller’s The New Polytheism appeared, one Pagan journal called it a “stunning victory for our point of view.” Harold Moss, on the other hand, wrote that Greco-Roman polytheism was not a suitable framework for today. 16 And one of the strongest criticisms of Miller’s book came from Robert Ellwood, professor of religion at the University of Southern California, in his Religious and Spiritual Groups in Modern America.
    Ellwood accurately picked up the Neo-Pagan complaint about Miller when he wrote, “One may feel he [Miller] gives our revitalized heritages in Celtic (Yeats), Nordic (Wagner), African (LeRoi Jones), and Amerindian (many names) polytheistic religions short shrift.”
    Ellwood is no proponent of Paganism, but unlike Miller he spent some time among Pagans and Neo-Pagans. He asks, “Is Polytheism in practice what Miller makes it out to be? What would a serious polytheistic stance in modern America be like?”
    Ellwood first looks at the practice of Shinto in Japan and sees polytheism there as a binding, structured system, a reaction, in fact, to increased multiplicity, a means of structuring it into an empire, a cosmos. He argues that polytheism in the past appealed to organizers of the official cults of empires and that the fervent cults of the dispossessed were, largely, monotheistic—the mystery religions, Christianity, and the new religions of Japan.
    As for Neo-Pagans in the United States, he acknowledges their “reverence for sun and tree,” their sincerity, and the reality of their experience. “The personal vision of some of the Neo-Pagans is deep and rich; they are seers if not shamans,” he says. But he sees these groups as unstable, and concludes that “polytheism puts a severe strain on group formation and continuity,” and that it “can only be an intensely personal vision,” the vehicle for the subjective. Each group is “tiny, struggling, and probably ephemeral”; he finds it difficult to believe that Neo-Paganism as a religious view can deal adequately with human alienation. He claims that polytheism has never been a cause, only a backdrop against which causes have moved.
    Ellwood considers the great spiritual problem of the day to be “dealing with multiplicity,” but implies that Miller’s position, and polytheism in general, lead ultimately to a life of “anchorless feelings,” constant changes in lifestyles that will eventually precipitate a backlash. One such form of backlash, he notes, can be seen in the Jesus Movement with its slogan “One Way,” and of course there are many other new monotheistic movements. Certainly one would have to agree that Neo-Paganism is a minority vision, struggling amid the majority trend