So, as i said there are people here that believe in the ancient gods, but it's a bit more complicated than that. first of all, the official name of these religions is dodekatheism (from the word dodeka which is the greek number twelve, hence the twelve gods), and the followers are often called "dodekatheistes". It has to do more with the culture though, rather than the ancient gods. I think that most of the people do not actually believe in the 12 gods, but maybe in Zeus as the one god, as it was the case sometimes in ancient Greece too. Other than that, they hold the ancient rituals as by the book as they can, with the preserved knowledge that we have today.
The worship of dodekatheon has re-emerged nowdays, meaning that there was probably no continuation throughout the centuries. The ancient religion dissapeared during the Byzantine empire, and in particular from the second half and on, around at 500 A.D and later, when Christianity became the religion of the empire. That of course did not happen without bloodshed. It was one of the dark events of the Byzantine empire, when Emperor Theodosios issued a ban of the ancient religion, and not only that, but a manhunt, and the destruction of many things that represented the dodekatheon. These events are always the main argument at flaming debates nowdays between the dodekatheistes and the Orthodox church, and other people.
But the question is what drove thousands of people to become followers of the ancient ethnic religion. Well, that is complicated. It is about the same as in Scandinavia where many people have returned to the worship of Odin and the Scandinavian gods. Dissapointment from the Christian church, from the priests, and many other things. In Greece it also has to do with "ancient worship". Some people that love the ancient Greek history and are in the same time dissapointed by the Orthodox church and the priests, turn to the ancient religion. And then the conversations go like this: You banned us our ethnic religion centuries ago, Christianity forced it's way through Greece, e.t.c, so we now go back to our ancestral religion.
One of these cults-religions became officially recognised, and now they can build their own temple, and generally worship the twelve gods and perform the rituals officially, of course always under the laws of Greece. The thing is that there are also professors, and other educated people that believe in the dodekatheon. They have written books covering the inner philosophies of the ancient religion that are very interesting, because the ancient Greek religion was very deep in ideas and philosophy, with the Eleusinean mysteries being at the top.
Kind of sad is that Christianity is in some ways a continuation of the ancient religion, having many things in common, and especially being at the same page with Socrates teachings. Of course there are differences, but some of the philosophies are the same. But many people tend to look only at black and white at these matters. You cannot argue about this with someone that has been dissapointed by the priests, blames Christianity for the destruction of the ancient religion-culture, and based his cosmotheory on that. Many people deny Christianity because of what Theodosius or the Crusades have done, or even of what some dirty priests are doing today, and this is wrong, a religion is not to be blamed cause of what some people have done. And this goes for a lot of things too, outside of religion matters.
So that is the situation with the ancient Greek religion today. There are thousands of followers, and it is more of a blend of culture and religion, than pure worship of the twelve gods. There is something else though. Many people have a hate towards Jews, because they think that they hate Greece and have caused destructions and plots throughout the Greek history, so believing in a religion that has partly came from the Hebrews is unacceptable to them. usually many of these people will include this in their arguments of why they believe in the old ethnic religion.
Here are some videos that you may find interesting:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=617qc8gmta8
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PliyUFrH ... re=related
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DHaNPYmF ... re=related
