The polytheistic imagination stands as one of the most generative and contested conceptual axes in depth psychology's post-Jungian development. James Hillman and David L. Miller are its principal architects, each approaching it from a distinct but convergent angle. Hillman, working through archetypal psychology, deploys the polytheistic imagination as a corrective to what he diagnoses as psychology's ingrained monotheistic bias — its compulsion toward unity, hierarchy, and a single sovereign self. For Hillman, the psyche is irreducibly plural; its complexes, images, and gods cannot be legislated into oneness without pathologizing the very multiplicity that constitutes psychological life. Miller, writing as a theologian, grounds the polytheistic imagination in the historical demonstration that Western philosophical and theological thought has always been secretly polytheistic — that the gods never departed but merely assumed abstract conceptual disguises. Thomas Moore extends the argument clinically, showing that a polytheistic psychology suspends normative hierarchies of health and permits a tolerance for non-progressive, non-ordered psychic phenomena that monotheistic models cannot accommodate. Wolfgang Giegerich offers the most pointed counter-pressure, arguing that archetypal psychology's polytheistic imagination seals itself within a 'middle ground' that forecloses genuine encounter with contemporary reality. The central tension, therefore, is whether the polytheistic imagination constitutes a genuine epistemological liberation or a sophisticated aesthetic refuge.
In the library
27 passages
By turning to polytheism we leave behind the riddling conundrums built upon monotheism—either religion or psychology, either one or many, either theology or mythology. We enter a style of consciousness where psychology and religion are not defined against each other
Hillman argues that the polytheistic imagination constitutes a distinct style of consciousness that dissolves the either/or logic imposed by monotheistic frameworks on both psychology and religion.
Polytheistic psychology obliges consciousness to circulate among a field of powers. Each God has his due as each complex deserves its respect in its own right. In this circularity of topoi there seem no preferred positions, no
Miller, citing Hillman, presents the polytheistic imagination as an ethical-psychological obligation to honor each archetypal power without imposing hierarchical preference.
Miller, David L., The New Polytheism: Rebirth of the Gods and Goddesses, 1974thesis
A polytheistic psychology, in which all the gods and all sides of them, are tempered or tuned in, does not appear so insanely wholesome and positive, and in fact it does not impose such a glorious yet demanding morality.
Moore demonstrates that a polytheistic psychology challenges the normative demand for wholesome development by allowing all archetypal dimensions — including shadow and stasis — their rightful place.
Moore, Thomas, The Planets Within: The Astrological Psychology of Marsilio Ficino, 1990thesis
A polytheistic psychology, in which all the gods and all sides of them, are tempered or tuned in, does not appear so insanely wholesome and positive, and in fact it does not impose such a glorious yet demanding morality.
This earlier edition of Moore's text equally establishes the therapeutic implications of a polytheistic psychology as an alternative to moralistic developmental norms.
Moore, Thomas, The Planets Within: The Astrological Psychology of Marsilio Ficino, 1982thesis
The fantasy of polytheism permits no single one to be elevated to The One in a literalistic manner. Zeus posits himself above all others, for the archetypal idea of oneness presents itself as first, superior, progenitor. But Zeus is only one among other equals, a primus inter pares
Hillman uses the mythic figure of Zeus to demonstrate that within the polytheistic imagination even the principle of unity is relativized, preventing any archetype from claiming absolute dominion.
Polytheism is not necessarily half of a philosophical pair, requiring monotheism for its other side. In itself polytheism is a style of consciousness — and this style should not even be called 'polytheistic,' for strictly, historically, when polytheism reigns there is no such word.
Miller argues that the polytheistic imagination is not merely the antithesis of monotheism but an autonomous style of consciousness that precedes the very vocabulary used to name it.
Miller, David L., The New Polytheism: Rebirth of the Gods and Goddesses, 1974thesis
The new polytheism is not only a contemporary sensibility. It is also a way of rethinking the past tradition of thinking, and especially the orthodox tradition of religious thinking.
Miller establishes the polytheistic imagination as simultaneously a modern cultural sensibility and a revisionary hermeneutic that recasts the entire history of Western religious and philosophical thought.
Miller, David L., The New Polytheism: Rebirth of the Gods and Goddesses, 1974thesis
Hillman's work consistently defies the systematic mindset and underscores the polytheistic nature of psychic life. Many Jungians have found this critique untenable; others manage to view the psyche through both monotheistic and polytheistic lenses.
This passage identifies the polytheistic imagination as the defining stance of archetypal psychology and acknowledges the ongoing controversy it generates within Jungian circles.
A polytheistic model of the psyche seems logical and helpful when confronting the many voices and figments that pop up in any single patient, including myself. I can't even imagine how we could ever have got on in therapy without a polytheistic background.
Miller argues from clinical experience that the polytheistic imagination is not merely theoretical but practically indispensable for understanding the irreducible multiplicity of the patient's inner world.
Miller, David L., The New Polytheism: Rebirth of the Gods and Goddesses, 1974thesis
Without a consciously polytheistic psychology are we not more susceptible to an unconscious fragmentation called schizophrenia? Monotheistic psychology counters what it must see as disintegration and breakdown with archetypal images of order (mandalas).
Miller proposes that the absence of a polytheistic imagination leaves the psyche vulnerable to unconscious fragmentation, whereas a conscious polytheism can engage plurality on its own terms rather than through compensatory unity.
Miller, David L., The New Polytheism: Rebirth of the Gods and Goddesses, 1974supporting
The task of psychology, let us stress, is not the reconciliation of monotheism and polytheism. Whether the many are each aspects of the one, or emanations of the one or its hypostases and persons is discussion for theology, not psychology.
Hillman insists that the polytheistic imagination must be understood as a properly psychological — not theological — stance, one that refuses synthetic reconciliation with monotheism.
psychological polytheism is concerned less with worship than with attitudes, with the way we see things and place them. Gods, for psychology, are neither believed in nor addressed directly. They are rather adjectival than substantive
Miller clarifies that psychological polytheism is an epistemological attitude — a mode of perception — rather than a religious practice, positioning the gods as qualitative dimensions of experience rather than metaphysical entities.
Miller, David L., The New Polytheism: Rebirth of the Gods and Goddesses, 1974supporting
to put ourselves in touch once again with the deeper dimensions of ideas and thought, to acknowledge the religious polytheism that we do not possess, but that indeed possesses us.
Miller inverts the relation of subject to archetype: the polytheistic imagination is not a cognitive tool humans wield but a field of divine powers by which consciousness is already inhabited.
Miller, David L., The New Polytheism: Rebirth of the Gods and Goddesses, 1974supporting
the long historical prejudice against images for their association with polytheistic paganism, or in monotheistic language: 'idolatry and demonism.' I urged the clinician to study not only the images of sickness but also this sickness of images.
Hillman situates the suppression of the polytheistic imagination in the historical conflict between pagan and biblical cultures, arguing that the resulting 'sickness of images' is a primary source of psychological pathology.
the long historical prejudice against images for their association with polytheistic paganism, or in monotheistic language: 'idolatry and demonism.' I urged the clinician to study not only the images of sickness but also this sickness of images.
Identical argument across both editions: Hillman traces the cultural suppression of the polytheistic imagination to the Judeo-Christian iconoclastic tradition and calls for its clinical recovery.
Hillman, James, Archetypal Psychology: A Brief Account, 1983supporting
a polytheistic theology which corrects our traditional Western monotheistic theologizing will consider the stories of the Gods, told in concrete images, to be fundamental to the task of theology.
Miller argues that the polytheistic imagination restores concrete mythic narrative — as opposed to abstract doctrinal systematizing — to the center of theological and psychological reflection.
Miller, David L., The New Polytheism: Rebirth of the Gods and Goddesses, 1974supporting
There is no orthodoxy in polytheistic theology. A polytheistic theology will be stories of the Gods (rather than theistic systems) and an aesthetic creation (rather than a logic of life). It will be theopoiesis.
Miller defines the polytheistic imagination as inherently anti-systematic and aesthetic, grounded in narrative and creative act rather than logical orthodoxy.
Miller, David L., The New Polytheism: Rebirth of the Gods and Goddesses, 1974supporting
ancient Greek religious images — Gods, Soul, Fate, Law — are the fundamentals of all later thinking, scientific and mystical, even to this very day. These old images have become our notions of substance, cause and effect, matter
Miller grounds the polytheistic imagination historically by demonstrating that Greek divine images are the concealed substrate of Western philosophical and scientific categories.
Miller, David L., The New Polytheism: Rebirth of the Gods and Goddesses, 1974supporting
the Dionysian apart as a separate structure or experience in its own right. As such it is merely one content of the imagination of a polytheistic psychology, one among many. It can be reflected on, but is never allowed to work on the imagination itself as a form of consciousness.
Giegerich critiques the polytheistic imagination from within, arguing that by containing the Dionysian as one mythic content among others, archetypal psychology prevents it from transforming consciousness at a deeper logical level.
Giegerich, Wolfgang, The Soul’s Logical Life Towards a Rigorous Notion of, 2020supporting
stories were not to be viewed as images of Gods and Goddesses which secured ego's various accounts of how things are. Rather, stories were to be viewed imaginally (as Corbin has properly insisted in the Preface). Like Angels and dreams and ego pathologies, stories are images
Miller clarifies that in a genuinely polytheistic imagination, mythic stories function imaginally rather than narratively — they break the ego's monopoly on meaning rather than confirming it.
Miller, David L., The New Polytheism: Rebirth of the Gods and Goddesses, 1974supporting
a single story, a monovalent logic, a rigid theology, and a confining morality are not adequate to help in understanding the nature of real meaning. Such a situation is not a matter simply for theologians or philosophers; it is a basic tension at the heart of the experience of all men and women.
Miller frames the need for the polytheistic imagination as a universal existential condition, arising from the inadequacy of any single narrative or logic to account for the plurality of lived experience.
Miller, David L., The New Polytheism: Rebirth of the Gods and Goddesses, 1974supporting
the emphasis upon the self of psychological monotheism may help explain the theological interests of contemporary Jungians (as well as the Jungian interest of contemporary ministers) and the peculiar blending of
Miller identifies the Jungian concept of the Self as an expression of psychological monotheism and diagnoses the resulting theological drift as a symptom of resistance to the polytheistic imagination.
Miller, David L., The New Polytheism: Rebirth of the Gods and Goddesses, 1974supporting
the dogmatic crystallization of our religious culture demonized the daimons. As a fundamental component of polytheistic paganism, they had to be negated and denied by Christian theology which projected its repression upon the daimons, calling them the forces of denial and negation.
Hillman traces the historical suppression of polytheistic imagination to Christian theology's demonization of the daimonic realm, which Jung's move into active imagination implicitly sought to rehabilitate.
A pathological view towards many of the psyche's phenomena is inevitable if psychology does not keep alive the individuality and variety of archetypal forms and their different ways of viewing the soul and life.
Miller argues that the foreclosure of polytheistic imagination produces pathologization by forcing diverse archetypal phenomena through a single normative lens.
Miller, David L., The New Polytheism: Rebirth of the Gods and Goddesses, 1974supporting
Xenophanes — the conclusion can hardly be resisted — was at the same time a monotheist, a polytheist, and a pantheist. Voegelin argues that this will be a problem only to those who think of 'the symbolization of divinity,' or theology, as a matter of theoretical system-making.
Miller uses the figure of Xenophanes to demonstrate that the polytheistic imagination is not logically incompatible with other theological orientations when theology is understood as imaginative symbolization rather than systematic doctrine.
Miller, David L., The New Polytheism: Rebirth of the Gods and Goddesses, 1974aside
the abstract notion of becoming was still merged in the concrete image of birth. So where the polytheist speaks of the birth of the Gods in stories like Hesiod's, stories that constitute a cycle of one series of Gods after another, the thinker, already tending toward the monotheism of thought
Miller traces the historical transition from polytheistic mythic concreteness to monotheistic philosophical abstraction, identifying this as the moment at which the polytheistic imagination went underground in Western thought.
Miller, David L., The New Polytheism: Rebirth of the Gods and Goddesses, 1974aside
Unlike the main psychologies of the twentieth century, which have drawn their sources from Northern Europe (the German language and the Protestant-Jewish monotheistic Weltanschauung), archetypal psychology starts in the South.
Hillman geographically situates archetypal psychology's polytheistic imagination against the Protestant-Jewish monotheistic Weltanschauung of Northern European depth psychology, anchoring the polytheistic in Mediterranean cultural soil.