The French Revolution\u27s state cults were possible because of French intellectuals\u27 preference for pre-Christian Greco-Roman civilization, as well as France\u27s history of heterodoxy. The philosophes endorsed ancient Greco-Roman civilization as embodying mankind\u27s ideal and more natural state; French revolutionary leaders avidly read these ideas of the Enlightenment philosophers. This Enlightenment Classicalism influenced the designers of the French state religions to mirror Greco-Roman paganism in the new regime\u27s festivals and iconography. The French people\u27s fascination with the Occult further created the cultural and intellectual climate for the creation and acceptance of these new religions of the dechristianized republic. Under this worldview, the French revolutionaries viewed themselves as the heralds of a reborn mytho-historical Golden Age of rationalism, equality, and Nature
