Within the depth-psychology corpus, ‘Paganism’ is not treated as a spent historical category but as a living psychological orientation whose suppression by monotheism constitutes one of the central dramas of Western consciousness. Hillman furnishes the most theoretically developed position: recovering the etymology of paganus as ‘people of a place,’ he reconstitutes paganism as the religious dimension of place-consciousness, the animation of the local world, and the ecological sensibility that archetypally persists wherever souls attend to genius loci. Against this, the monotheistic logic of universalism — Cartesian space, Kantian subjectivity, Christian mission — appears as the ‘alien’ force (alieni) displacing native attachment. Miller registers the psychological stakes of this conflict most sharply: the resurgence of ‘psychic paganism’ — individual symbol-formation proliferating as the Christian cult fades — poses both creative and dangerous possibilities, threatening a naive revival of soothsaying and extravagant practice if left psychologically uncontained. Jung himself, in Miller’s reading, navigates the tension by incorporating the ‘pagan past’ as shadow and fourth dimension without abandoning the monotheistic imago Dei. King historicizes the term as a Christian construct, noting its fourth-century coinage and its function as a boundary marker constituting Christian identity against a residual, enormously diverse religious field. Campbell documents paganism’s suppression under Theodosius and its persistence in Germanic and Celtic cultic forms. Across these voices, the central tension is clear: paganism names both a psychological resource — polycentricity, place-awareness, the animation of the world — and a regressive risk that depth psychology must metabolize rather than simply rehabilitate.
The definition of pagan as the people of a place and defenders of this-place-here against the alienation brought by universalist science and religion necessitates archetypal psychology’s turn toward ecological and urban concerns.
Hillman defines paganism etymologically as place-consciousness and makes it the positive ground for archetypal psychology’s ecological turn against monotheistic universalism.
, Archetypal Psychology, 1983thesis
The definition of pagan as the people of a place and defenders of this-place-here against the alienation brought by universalist science and religion necessitates archetypal psychology’s turn toward ecological and urban concerns.
Identical to the Archetypal Psychology passage: Hillman’s foundational claim that paganism, rightly understood, is the psychological and philosophical basis for place-oriented, polytheistic depth psychology.
, Archetypal Psychology: A Brief Account, 1983thesis
Can the atomism of our psychic paganism, that is, the rash of individual symbol-formation now breaking out as the Christian cult fades, be contained by a psychology of self-integration that echoes its expiring Christian model?
Miller identifies a contemporary ‘psychic paganism’ — the proliferation of autonomous symbol-systems as Christianity wanes — and questions whether Jungian self-psychology can contain what it cannot simply repudiate.
, The New Polytheism: Rebirth of the Gods and Goddesses, 1974thesis
Is the restoration of the pagan figures to their place as archetypal dominants of the psyche impossible in a monotheistic psychological world? If so, then we must abandon our attempts at an archetypal approach based on polycentricity.
Hillman frames the rehabilitation of pagan figures as archetypal dominants as the decisive test of whether a genuinely polycentric psychology is achievable within depth psychology.
, Archetypal Psychology, 1983thesis
Is the restoration of the pagan figures to their place as archetypal dominants of the psyche impossible in a monotheistic psychological world? If so, then we must abandon our attempts at an archetypal approach based on polycentricity.
Parallel passage establishing the same polycentric challenge: can pagan archetypes be restored without capitulating to monotheistic psychological frameworks.
, Archetypal Psychology: A Brief Account, 1983thesis
Jung saw as shadow, femininity, Mercurius, and the pagan past. He added to the Christ of orthodoxy the wealth of alchemical imagery, and like the Christian philosophers of earlier ages he connected his explorations again and again with the Christ image.
Miller argues that Jung incorporated paganism as a fourth, shadowed dimension of Christian psychology rather than directly confronting the monotheism-polytheism conflict.
, The New Polytheism: Rebirth of the Gods and Goddesses, 1974supporting
Conceptually, paganism is a Christian construct in which Christians sometimes identified themselves as a ‘third race.’ … If anything, paganism encompasses phenomena much more varied than either Judaism or Christianity.
King historicizes ‘paganism’ as a polemical Christian invention that obscures the enormous diversity of non-Christian Mediterranean religious practice.
, What Is Gnosticism?, 2003supporting
The contrast between anima/animus and self appears in Aion as a contrast between pagan gods and the imago Dei.
Hillman reads Jung’s Aion as structurally opposing pagan divine figures to the monotheistic Self, revealing paganism as the psychic underside of Christian psychology.
, Archetypal Psychology, 1983supporting
The contrast between anima/animus and self appears in Aion as a contrast between pagan gods and the imago Dei.
Parallel passage identifying the pagan/monotheistic polarity as structurally encoded in Jung’s own typology of psychic figures.
, Archetypal Psychology: A Brief Account, 1983supporting
Judeo-Christian monotheism in its conflict with Greek paganism, however, was tolerant of co-existence … The Conflict between Paganism and Christianity in the Fourth Century.
Hillman’s bibliographic apparatus situates his argument in established historical scholarship on the fourth-century conflict between paganism and Christianity as a key reference point.
, Archetypal Psychology, 1983supporting
Judeo-Christian monotheism in its conflict with Greek paganism, however, was tolerant of co-existence … The Conflict between Paganism and Christianity in the Fourth Century.
Identical bibliographic notation anchoring Hillman’s polycentric argument to historical scholarship on paganism’s fourth-century suppression.
, Archetypal Psychology: A Brief Account, 1983supporting
The collective unconscious tries not so much to overthrow the prevailing conscious form of life as to enlarge it ‘downward’ toward a deeper and more meaningful integration of the pagan substratum.
Von Franz argues that the collective unconscious presses for the Church to integrate its pagan substratum rather than repudiate it, with the problem of absolute evil remaining unresolved.
, Archetypal Patterns in Fairy Tales, 1997supporting
These vain pretences were swept away by the last edict of Theodosius, which inflicted a deadly wound on the superstition of the Pagans.
Campbell documents the legal destruction of pagan practice under Theodosius as a historical watershed, framing paganism’s suppression as imperial as much as theological.
, Occidental Mythology: The Masks of God, Volume III, 1964supporting
Any insistence upon the contrary would amount to blasphemous paganism. Christianity has never been worldly nor has it ever looked with favour on good food and wine.
Jung employs ‘paganism’ as a normative Christian category to mark the transgression of anti-ascetic, body-affirming impulses that Christianity cannot sanction.
, Psychology and Religion: West and East, 1958supporting
As an example of the first or pagan-Oriental type, we may take the once powerful cult, derived from Iran, of the Mysteries of Mithra.
Campbell distinguishes a ‘pagan-Oriental’ type of religion — oriented toward present psychological transformation rather than future reward — using the Mithraic mysteries as the paradigmatic case.
, Occidental Mythology: The Masks of God, Volume III, 1964aside
When the great pagan days were ended she became the leader of the witches’ revels.
Campbell traces how the Celtic goddess of the hunt was displaced by Christianity into the figure of the witch’s sabbath leader, illustrating paganism’s survival in demonized form.
, Primitive Mythology (The Masks of God, Volume I), 1959aside