gods absence · gods presence
The tension between divine presence and divine absence constitutes one of the most generative and unresolved problematics within the depth-psychological corpus. Hillman poses the question with characteristic urgency: if the gods are the very powers immanent within the world's variety, can they depart at all, or does their apparent absence signal something closer to a failure of human perception and attention? This position stands in productive friction with Jaynes's historical thesis, which reads the silence of the gods as a datable civilizational event — the breakdown of the bicameral mind — registered architecturally in ziggurats built not as divine houses but as landing platforms for gods who might return. Romanyshyn and Corbin approach the same problematic through mystical and hermeneutical lenses: for Romanyshyn, the gods linger as 'absent presence' haunting the ordinary world, and hermeneutics becomes a longing for restored sacred connection; for Corbin, the five divine Presences of Ibn Arabi constitute a complete ontological cartography spanning absolute mystery to sensible manifestation. Glaz's empirical psychometric work documents the phenomenological asymmetry between experienced presence and experienced absence, finding that both correlate positively with religious functioning though by markedly different magnitudes. Vernant, meanwhile, locates the problem in Greek representational practice: the task of the cult image is precisely 'to inscribe absence in presence.' Together these voices establish that divine presence-absence is not a binary but a spectrum — phenomenological, historical, ontological, and imaginal simultaneously.
If they are the world as the powers within its variety, how can they be separated from it? Are they not the immortality, the athnetos, of the world, giving every item of this world its inherent transcendence, its sublime enchantment and beauty
Hillman argues that the gods, being immanent powers within the world's plurality, cannot coherently be said to absent themselves, and that the modern acceptance of divine flight misunderstands their ontological status.
, Mythic Figures, 2007thesis
this paradoxical aspiration exists in order to inscribe absence in presence, to insert the other, the elsewhere, into our familiar universe… that of evoking absence in presence, revealing the elsewhere in what is given to view.
Vernant identifies the foundational paradox of Greek religious representation as the structural inscription of divine absence within visible presence, making the cult image a site where the two poles coexist.
, Myth and Thought Among the Greeks, 1983thesis
a sense of the sacred that lingers as an absent presence in the symbol… hermeneutics as a longing for the sacred is for the sake of healing. When we link Hermes with Aphrodite and Eros, we see also that the healing aspect of the hermeneutic act comes through the expression of love.
Romanyshyn reads divine absence as a productive haunting within symbols and hermeneutic practice, framing the longing for divine presence as itself the therapeutic and redemptive movement.
, The Wounded Researcher: Research with Soul in Mind, 2007thesis
The same dominant theme of lost gods cries out to us from the tablets known as The Babylonian Theodicy… Why have the gods left us? And since they control everything, why did they shower misfortune upon us?
Jaynes locates the historical experience of divine abandonment at the breakdown of the bicameral mind, reading Babylonian lament literature as the earliest documented crisis of divine absence.
, The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind, 1976thesis
The absence of Orpheus belongs to the symptoms of the Weltbild that Western Christian society continues to export… Absent, but present too.
Hillman frames the absence of the god Orpheus as symptomatic of a broader Western cultural pathology while simultaneously insisting that the absent god remains psychically operative.
, Mythic Figures, 2007thesis
During the experience of God's presence, man is aware of His presence in his life or His omnipresence in the world… Man who is convinced of God's presence, can however experience His temporary absence. Sometimes it is accompanied by the inner emptiness and loneliness.
Glaz's empirical framework documents divine presence and absence as distinct but related phenomenological experiences, each with characteristic affective signatures and implications for religious development.
, Psychological Analysis of Religious Experience: The Construction of the Intensity of Religious Experience Scale (IRES), 2020supporting
all of the many ziggurats which the Assyrians built beginning with the reign of Tulkulti-Ninurta were of this sort, huge pedestals for the return of the gods from heaven and not houses for earthly gods as before.
Jaynes reads Assyrian monumental architecture as material evidence that the gods had been experienced as absent from the earth and were being ritually invited to return.
, The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind, 1976supporting
statistical relationship is recorded between the experience of God's presence (PG) (r=.32, p<.01) and the experience of God's absence (AG) (r=.18, p<.01) and the sense of meaning in life (PIL).
Glaz's quantitative data establish that both experienced presence and experienced absence of God correlate significantly with meaning in life, though presence yields a substantially stronger association.
, Psychological Analysis of Religious Experience: The Construction of the Intensity of Religious Experience Scale (IRES), 2020supporting
Experiencing God's absence is conducive to deepening my trust in Him… During the experience of God's absence, I have the opportunity to better understand myself.
Glaz's scale items reveal that experiential divine absence is not merely privative but can serve constructive psychological and spiritual functions, deepening trust and self-understanding.
, Psychological Analysis of Religious Experience: The Construction of the Intensity of Religious Experience Scale (IRES), 2020supporting
After the Holocaust these gods could not be believed in and so the gods died. More: Belief itself died, leaving open other modes of being with the gods, as we are daily with the world, as animals are with events.
Hillman argues that the Holocaust precipitated not merely the absence of specific gods but the collapse of Belief as the mode of relating to the divine, demanding wholly new forms of divine encounter.
, Mythic Figures, 2007supporting
The correlation coefficients of these dimensions of religiosity for the experience of God's presence range from .71 to .74, while for the experience of God's absence from .22 to .23.
Glaz's comparative correlation data reveal a pronounced asymmetry between the integrative force of experienced presence versus experienced absence in relation to broader religious functioning.
, Psychological Analysis of Religious Experience: The Construction of the Intensity of Religious Experience Scale (IRES), 2020supporting
Two poles: (a) The Presence of the absolute Mystery (Hadrat al-ghayb al-Mutlaq; (b) the Presence of the absolute M[anifestation]
Corbin expounds Ibn Arabi's doctrine of five divine Presences, establishing a complete ontological spectrum between absolute hidden mystery and full sensible manifestation as the metaphysical frame within which divine presence-absence is articulated.
, Creative Imagination in the Sufism of Ibn Arabi, 1969supporting
C. G. Jung's 'Answer to Job' exposes a divine deficit: Yahweh 'lacks a relationship to values.' This article locates the mechanics of value-creation in the physics of the soul
Peterson reads Jung's confrontation with Yahweh as an encounter with divine absence of a moral dimension, arguing that the consequent gap drives the human psyche's role in forging value.
, The Iron Thūmos and the Empty Vessel: The Homeric Response to 'Answer to Job', 2025supporting
It would be downright absurd to maintain that one does not 'believe' in Aphrodite, the goddess of love. It is possible to neglect her, to pay no respect to her… but Aphrodite is present, and active, none the less.
Snell demonstrates that for the archaic Greek mind the gods are ontologically always present and active regardless of human acknowledgment, making genuine divine absence conceptually incoherent within that worldview.
, The discovery of the mind; the Greek origins of European, 1953supporting
Although she is invisible, like all the gods, Artemis is present at Hippolytus's side: he hears her voice, he speaks to her, and she r[esponds].
Vernant's analysis of Hippolytus illustrates how the Greek gods can be simultaneously invisible — formally absent from sight — yet intimately and actively present through voice and personal bond.
, Myth and Thought Among the Greeks, 1983supporting
only among the distant Ethiopians do gods feast with men… it is only the outcome, the turn of events, which gives earnest of the fact that a Stronger One was at work here.
Burkert describes the normative Greek experience of divine presence as indirect and posterior — recognized through the outcome of events rather than direct encounter — establishing absence as the default experiential condition.
, Greek Religion: Archaic and Classical, 1977supporting
In the Beginning, human beings created a God who was the First Cause of all things and Ruler of heaven and earth… Gradually he faded from the consciousness
Armstrong traces how the high god of earliest monotheism progressively receded from human awareness, historicizing divine absence as a recurring structural dynamic in the evolution of God-concepts.
, A History of God, 1993aside
We are hunting for modes of absence which, by their very way of being absent, make themselves felt within the sensuous presence of the open landscape.
Abram, drawing on Heidegger and Merleau-Ponty, articulates a phenomenology of productive absence in which the unseen makes the seen possible — a structure applicable to the divine as much as to the spatial horizon.
, The Spell of the Sensuous: Perception and Language in a More-Than-Human World, 1996aside
no divine power be found all this while, that could rectify the things of the world? Or is the world, to incessant woes and miseries, for ever condemned?
Marcus Aurelius registers the philosophical anxiety of divine absence or impotence in the face of worldly suffering, framing it as a question rather than an assertion.
, Meditations, 180aside