Gratillonius reflects:
"The world was formless, colourless, empty of meaning. All Gods were gone from it. He wondered if they had ever cared, or ever existed. The question was as vain as any other." (p. 62)
If you invest all your meaning in Gods, then think that the Gods are not there, then you think that there is no meaning. But it is we who invest meaning. A full stomach means more to us than an empty one. We projected the Gods and invested meaning in them. We can find meaning in life without Gods or with Gods that we recognize as symbols and personifications. I was at school and University with a guy who was heavily into Catholicism. He said that, if it could be proved that there was no hereafter, then life would be meaningless for him. For him because he had invested all his meaning in a particular belief about a hereafter. Meanwhile, secularists manage without it.
Apuleius' wife, Rovinda, advises Gratillonius to call on Christ but then changes that to whichever God he wills, maybe the Mithras to Whom he has been faithful. She offers to tell him about an old Goddess Whom she sometimes invokes despite being a Christian. I can see a role for these figures without believing in Their literal existence. Some people report visionary and auditory experiences which I don't have. One guy visualized a seated Buddha only to see Him stand up and walk away.
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