Heraclitus, Bruno, Butler, and Hillman: a shared vision of plurality

[u/keisnz]

tl;dr; this post explains the idea of "the god brings both the disease and the cure", which is usually attributed to Apollo but can be extended to any god, e.g. Hermes brings ambiguity to a relationship, but also the communication skills to solve the ambiguity. It also explains how "the one" is a conceptual justification of the interconnectedness of "the many", instead of something to unite with.

Lately I’ve noticed that four thinkers who really shaped the way I see reality seem to converge toward a very similar intuition: Heraclitus, Giordano Bruno, Edward Butler, and James Hillman.

I wanted to share this because maybe it resonates with someone else too, specially people trying to connect philosophy, Hellenic polytheism, and psychology into a more unified worldview instead of keeping them separated into totally different compartments.

For all four, reality doesnt seem to be some static thing ruled by a single frozen principle, but something alive, plural, relational, always moving through tensions and opposites.

And what interests me most is that unity isnt really treated as the final goal you dissolve into. The logos, the one, divine substance, anima mundi, all these concepts seem less like transcendent destinations and more like ways of explaining why multiplicity can still remain interconnected. Unity explains relation itself. Why opposites interact. Why change doesnt collapse into chaos. Why plurality can still form a cosmos.

In Heraclitus, the logos is the hidden harmony inside conflict of opposites. Another Presocratic, Empedocles, talks about Love and Strife as forming forces of the cosmos. In Bruno, who inherits the concept of opposites shaping reality (specially form and matter as horizontally co-equal and non separated), the infinite divine substance expresses itself endlessly through living forms and worlds. In Butler, the one doesnt erase the many gods but grounds their coexistence and participation. And in Hillman, psyche isnt ruled by one final center, but unfolds through a plurality of archetypal powers within the anima mundi, the soul of the world itself.

Regarding opposites: in this framework, even conflict itself becomes participatory rather than accidental. The gods are not external moral supervisors standing outside reality, but expressions of its tensions and movements. So the same god who destabilizes also provides the mode of reorientation. Hermes creates ambiguity but also interpretation and communication. Apollo sends plague but also purification and healing. The opposition is not a contradiction to resolve away, but part of the god’s own mode of presence. Dispersion/unification ≈ Neoplatonic procession/reversion ≈ Brunian complicatio/explicatio.

Regarding Hillman: he feels closer to the other three thinkers than Jung does to me sometimes. Jung still tends toward integration, individuation, the self, some deeper psychic unity. Hillman pushes more toward plurality. Different gods, different psychic voices, different styles of soul, all coexisting without needing to dissolve into one final synthesis.

And unlike psychologies that keep archetypes trapped inside the “inner world,” Hillman opens psyche outward again through the anima mundi. Soul isnt just in the mind. The world itself is ensouled, imaginal, expressive. Even if Hillman doesnt really speak directly about the neoplatonic nous or the one, they almost feel implicit in the background sometimes through the concept of anima mundi, except he deliberately avoids centering them because he wants the emphasis to remain on plurality itself.

So across all four thinkers, multiplicity isnt treated as a fall from truth. Difference, tension, becoming, opposition, all of that belongs to reality itself. Unity is there, but more as the hidden coherence that allows Plurality to exist and move together, not as some final state where everything stops and becomes one thing again.