This year, Andrea Berman is watching the Olympics for the first time in her life. But she doesn't care who jumps the highest, runs the farthest or swims the fastest. She is watching the games — being held this year in Greece, their ancestral home — for any mention of Zeus, Athena or Apollo.

"I will watch it to see if anything even remotely resembles anything I would know as an ancient ritual and tradition," Berman said. "But I kind of have mixed feelings. On one hand, it will be great to see ancient traditions represented. But on the other hand, I know what the country of Greece thinks of our religion and people there who want to do this do not have the religious freedom to do it."

"This" is worship the Greek gods.

Berman is a Hellenic reconstructionist — a practitioner of the religion of ancient Greece. A spare bedroom in her Boston-area apartment is decorated as a temple room with statues of Apollo, Pan, Artemis, Dionysus and Eros. And like all Hellenic reconstructionists, she knows the original Olympics were not just a massive sportsfest but also a religious rite central to the worship of Zeus, chief among the Greek gods.

Some still put faith in gods of the past

Hellenismos (Hellenic recon)