Since you asked for further comment from the commentariat, here's my two cents: I come at this from a kind of Platonist/Pythagorean point of view... emphasis on Kind of. In my cosmology there is only one God, and then a multitude of Gods, expressions of or children of the ONE (no, I know that's ambiguous. Schwaller de Lubicz says the one insurmountable mystery is the passage from the one to two, or oneness to plurality. Anyway...). So any prayer to a God or Goddess is being directed to the Divine in one of its aspects which, in an indescribable way, is inseparably united with the One. And, and this is a key understanding to me, EVERY PRAYER GETS ANSWERED. Every single one. However that doesn't mean that we can know at all how it has been answered. Even seeming silence from the Divine just means that we missed the answer. But the Divine always responds to our calls in a way that brings about the highest good for everyone concerned. That highest good for everyone part is what makes it all a bit mysterious sometimes.