Walter F Otto

we will fall into the error of Walter F. Otto, [1] that great scholar of Greek religion, who in the most brilliant pages he ever wrote describes Hermes as a deity whose idea is obvious to us, and at the same time separates him from primitive aspects of his configuration

Kerényi both honors Otto as a brilliant scholar and critiques his methodological idealism, arguing that Otto’s phenomenological approach illegitimately strips Greek deities of their archaic, primitive dimensions.

Kerényi, Karl, Hermes Guide of Souls, 1944thesis

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A testament of Dionysiac worship by the renowned classical scholar and originator of the existential-archetypal mode of interpretation as participation.

Miller’s Spring Publications catalog positions Otto as the founding voice of what will become archetypal psychology’s mode of participatory engagement with the divine, specifically through his Dionysus study.

Miller, David L., The New Polytheism: Rebirth of the Gods and Goddesses, 1974thesis

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Nietzsche for a short period attempted to break their stranglehold, but Nietzsche had his Wilamowitz. Consequently, the study of Greek religion in the first half of the twentieth century was dominated by two men… as Otto points out in Dionysus, the old rational presuppositions were too firmly entrenched in him

Palmer’s introduction situates Otto as a critic of both rationalist philology and its dominant representatives, positioning the Dionysus study as a continuation of Nietzsche’s challenge to the Greek-religion establishment.

Otto, Walter F, Dionysus Myth and Cult (1965), 1965supporting

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Walter F. Otto DIONYSUS MYTH AND CULT Translated with an Introduction by ROBERT B. PALMER Indiana University Press

The title page of Otto’s primary depth-psychological work establishes its canonical presence in the corpus as the central text through which his interpretive vision of Dionysus is transmitted.

Otto, Walter F, Dionysus Myth and Cult (1965), 1965supporting

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Otto, Rudolf, 5n Otto, Walter F., 231, 317–18

Neumann’s index citation of Otto at two substantive page locations in The Great Mother confirms his presence as a scholarly reference point within the archetypal analysis of goddess religion.

Neumann, Erich, The Great Mother: An Analysis of the Archetype, 1955supporting

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Such gods can only be understood as spiritual ideas; in other words, they can only be known by immediate revelation. They cannot emerge step by step from something quite different.

This passage from the Kerényi-Jung collaborative volume articulates a view of Greek divinity as immediate spiritual revelation that closely parallels Otto’s own phenomenological position, illustrating the intellectual convergence driving Otto’s reception in depth psychology.

Jung, C. G. and Kerényi, C., Essays on a Science of Mythology: The Myth of the Divine Child and the Mysteries of Eleusis, 1949aside

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Manifestations of gods, 6, 167 ff. Marriage of Heaven and Earth, 34 Masculinity of Olympians, 21, 30 f.

The index of The Homeric Gods documents the categorical architecture of Otto’s Greek-religious phenomenology, including his sustained treatment of divine manifestation, which became a touchstone for archetypal psychology’s theology of presence.

Otto, Walter F., The Homeric Gods: The Spiritual Significance of Greek Religion, 1929aside

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