NPPT, Neo-psychopolytheism: Source and Uses: Post # 3

Sula Anne has asked for more information about NPPT.

The term came to me after publishing my first book, when I was asked to fill out a biographical form for a serial dictionary or encyclopedia of America authors.  I had just answered the political affiliation question with a label I lifted from The Education of Henry Adams.  As I recall, Adams said he was a Radical-Conservative, which to my 1970s ears sounded like an oxymoron affirming the man's open-minded pragmatism. 

Next came the survey's religious affilation question.  Having grown up in one protestant denomination and married in a second before next trying out Unitarianism and the Ethical Humanism (is there any other kind?), I wanted a label, since some label was required, that might seem as playful and thoughtful as Adams's political one.  Much the way Adams thought psychology might one day frame politics, I sensed psychology could provide similar assistance in comprehending religions.  I figured that "psycho" might add a descriptive but lighter touch to the polymorphic thing that the world's religions became when seen from an open-minded point of view.  The term came from this light-hearted source.

NPPT morphed from this beginning into a very personal concept that slowly became more and more useful to me.  I learned from E. R. Dodds that psychology offered great help in understanding the functions of the Homeric religion in all the Greek texts I taught.  In fact, for Homer, I gradually realized that the myths were not only the psychology of The Iliad, but also its zoology, botany, and physics.  In short, the myths constituted the science of the 8th century BC.  They provided hypotheses about the motivations of the characters and about the causes of events occurring in the hidden interior of plants, animals, planets, stars, the sun itself. 

Whether 'Homer' viewed these explanations as useful hypotheses or as 'truth' is a difficult debate to settle.  By the time that the Greek mind produced Aeschylus, however, we note that Orestes sees the Furies (the conscience figures) before anyone else can see them.  In short, they are psychological forces before they become dramatically useful personifications visible to other characters and the audience of The Oresteian Trilogy. 

Even more convincing evidence that two of the three great Greek tragedians were early psycho-polytheists comes from Euripides's last and most powerful play, The Bacchae.  In college, we learned that Euripides was the least theistic of the trinity of tragedians.  Even so, his final play employs the god Dionysos to explain why a group of women who do not believe in him can be hypnotized for (or by) their unbelief into crazy dancing, dangerous snake-handling, and ultimately into ripping King Pentheus into pieces.  As a dramatist, Euripides was not only obliged to show respect for the god of tragedy but to recognize the supra-human power of repressed emotions that can grow strong enough to drive people to criminally insane acts.  And, in Dionysos' case, the same god is able to transport those who accept his clearly trans-human powers into an ecstatic joy.  In other words, Euripides 2500 years ago pre-figured and portrayed Freud's notion of repression by using religious figures rather than imagery Freud would borrow from 19th century hydraulic science.  After Euripides, Plato replaced Zeus with the abstraction, Logos, and the deities with archetypes, thus preparing the way for a Greek-educated Paul/Saul and a Greek-using John. 

To apply NPPT to another religious system, Hinduism, I use the essential part of NPPT, its sympathetic imagination (a term applied to Shakespeare), its empathetic vicarious-introspection (Heinz Kohut's term), each time I visit the upper floor of the Asian Art Museum on Larkin street in San Francisco.  There I take photos of the deities with animal attributes, especially the elephant-headed god of good fortune and wisdom, Ganesha, and of his parents, strong Shiva and voluptuous Parvati.  Those Hindus who showed respect for these three were, I speculate, appreciative of the agricultural world around them in which elephants, the iron oxen, and other animals played a vital role.  They must also have been at ease with their bodies, as providers of pleasures and children, to acknowledge the sexuality of the parent deities with such openly erotic art.  From the Hindu rooms I wander back and forth to art devoted to Buddha who with the Eightfold Path directs his followers to destroy the desire that causes sorrow that is life.  I sense that India must have fallen on very difficult times to have embraced a transcending perspective built on such rejection.  I also note that this evolution from many deities parallels the centralizing of control we earlier noted in the West's later movement from polytheism's diversity to an order-focused monotheism. 

Of course there is much more to Hinduism and Buddhism than the empathetic approach of NPPT has uncovered.  But the elements revealed go beyond doctrinal differences that produce true/false, good/evil arguments.  NPPT attempts to put us in the emotions and minds of the believers and understand why they might feel the way they do about major elements of their faiths.

NPPT's imaginative sympathy also prepares us to understand why legends as far from the mainstream as the French Grail, the Black Madonna, Black Sarah, the French career of Mary Magdalena and her daughter could have enough emotional importance to underlie a variety of contemporary books, including Deepest France & Mysterious Days, two eccentric mysteries I plan to publish in next few months.  It also explains why someone educated in the western intellectual and literary traditions, especially American and contemporary fiction plus Darwin, Freud, Sartre, Jung, and Kohut would want to write these non-orthodox novels. 

So, thank you, Sula Anne for asking your question.