great post. I don't know about it taking periods of lawlessness and chaos to bring out a belief in Fortune, however. A trip to Lost Wages or Atlantic City would be most revelatory about the belief in 'Lady Luck' even today. Maybe that belief just gets more overt attention in such periods. I don't think it ever really goes away. It may be just another aspect of the human desire to abdicate responsibility for one's own life by fixing the blame for misfortune on someone outside oneself, rather than acknowledging one's own choices as the true source of one's life conditions.

When the general, widespread belief in a given religious system begins to die out in any culture, there is usually a sort of 'interregnum' during which a good deal of metaphysical floundering takes place among the population until a 'new' religious focus assumes center stage. During such periods, it is quite common for several different religious systems to vie with each other, so to speak, for the central role in forming the rising new cultural system. In our own day, we can see this happening around us with the rise of fundamentalism in older, established religions, the advocation of 'science' as the ultimate cure-all for whatever people see as 'wrong' with their lives, the so-called 'New Age' movement, the growth of neo-paganism, etc., etc., etc. Eventually, a new system will assume dominance, and life will go on.

The Greek pantheon of the ancient religion was a syncretic result of the amalgamation of multiple, similar deific figures present throughout the ancient world, melded into a unifying system by the Hellenic peoples who originally spread into the area we know as Greece from parts north. It furnished the basis for one of the most remarkable cultures of antiquity, and gave to the world a heritage that enthralls us even today. Not bad, as track records go. And I always did like Zeus and Company...
;-)