Think religion is dead? Just look at "Game of Thrones."

While the capital whores and gambles and drinks itself into comfortable complacency, the “White Walkers” (frozen zombies, for real) ride. Government, absorbed in an apocalyptic liquidity crisis (the parallels to our world getting eerie), dismisses reports from North of the Wall of this resurgence of presumed-dead religions.

There are whispers of dragons being reborn, but those modern folk doubt it. The Red Priestess and her Lord of Light make war in the south, and again in the north. Even the monstrous skeletal remains of once-upon-a-time dragons have long been removed from the throne room and buried under the Keep of the capital, King’s Landing. Secular complacency clings stubbornly to the empire’s elite.

At the center of power, magic is a myth. The gods and goddesses are a convenient trope, swapping in for social control a la Marx’s opiate of the masses. History is whatever the victors say it is.

If the “Game of Thrones” stories are any indication, then this is the preamble under which those mythical dragons will, quite literally, come home to roost.