According to Otto, this reached its greatest expression in the works of Homer, where the Greek gods are portrayed as present in the natural world as particular forms of existence.

[1] He was the main representative of a current in philology that stressed the existential and intuitive in the study of myths, which generated much enthusiasm in German academia in the 1920s and 1930s.

[2] The historian Hubert Mohr [de] said the main sources for his interpretation of Greek theology in The Homeric Gods (1929) and Dionysus (1933) were Nietzsche, Friedrich Wilhelm Joseph Schelling, the Cosmics—a neopagan group involving Alfred Schuler, Stefan George and Ludwig Klages—and Martin Heidegger.

Unlike Yahweh in the Old Testament, the gods in the Iliad and the Odyssey almost never perform miracles, but are present in experiences such as a clever thought, the awakening of enthusiasm and the ignition of courage.

[5] Otto interprets Titans, Erinyes and Gorgons as remnants from an older religion, and contrasts these chthonic and grotesque beings with Homer's more humanlike Olympian gods.

Athena belongs to the immediate present and the clarity of action, where she provides level-headedness, quick-wittedness and boldness for men, and skill in handicraft for women.

His twin sister Artemis is associated with untouched nature, development and femininity; she teaches hunters, leads the way on journeys and presides over childbirth.

The presence of Poseidon, Hephaestus and Dionysus is limited in the epics, because Homer's gods are sublime entities who manifest their particular spirit in the totality of the world; they are not bound to elements, nor do they represent individual virtues or functions.

[10] By being timeless, the gods direct humans away from the personal and towards the essentiality of nature; their temper is always inclined to the general, impersonal and non-sensual.

The gods affirm life, allow human greatness and can intervene against avoidable acts, but they have no power over the unavoidable fate of death, and ultimately they always execute Moira's law.

[13] Weinreich wrote that the "one-sidedness" of Otto's book is both its strength and weakness, and that it brings up aspects that must be considered by everybody who studies ancient Greece.

For classicists and religionists, this book presents a robust, even inspiring, macro-argument for understanding Homeric religion, and an opportunity briefly to glimpse a past when philologists wrote comfortably at the head of the 'theoretical' disciplines.