. You may like the works of archetypal (jungian) psychologists like James Hillman and Thomas Moore. They bring ancient mythology and pagan gods into modern life, through story telling/narrative, and show us that they are very much with us in modern life (and insofar as archetypes are connected to instincts, they may be right). People like interesting and colorful stories. Just scientific explanation may be too dull for most people to accept. Some ancient cultures (like Sumerian/Akkadian) had very elaborate creation myths and a rather impressive pantheon of dieties (perhaps not unlike today’s Hinduism).
Also, a thing to note is that pagan gods (and corresponding myths) were historically connected to a particular natural geography (or climate if you will) as well, so it wouldn’t really make sense for one to plead or invoke a god of say, desert dust storms, or a fertility goddess Taweret, by someone who has never experienced dust storms in their life, or has ever lived in the same environment as hippos because of their evolutionary geography.
This is why it doesn’t make sense for people wearing Egyptian ankhs or pentagrams, or Yin/yangs, when neither they nor their ancestors have any historical connection to them. I say that such people are simply drawn an exotic and mysterious element that they do not even (or really could) understand, and when in fact, any other nonsensical symbol embued with aura of mystic status in public consciousness would have worked just the same. The real purpose would simply be to draw attention to self. This is just my opinion, but you can’t just transplant gods and wear them as a fashion statement. That would be blasphemous, wouldn’t it? At best, even if such person honestly believed in a foreign god he adopted, it likely wouldn’t work the same.