Talk:Numinous

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

I was actually planning on petitioning to have this article undeleted, after reading Otto's book, but looks like someone went ahead and remade it. The numinous as a concept, really isn't dicdef, though the people who have been making articles on it write them so. There is really quite a bit more to say about the numinous than a simple definition. Unfortunately I haven't got around to reading the book, yet, so I'm not sure my understanding for the term is complete. --Tydaj 12:38, 15 November 2005 (UTC)

There is a good deal on the subject in the Religious experience article.. even a sub-header for it. Also, the band thing needs to be fixed.. and this page should be made a disambig, with a link to a band entry and a link to the religious experience one. Not to be lazy, but I'm tired, and furthermore, I'm not so sure I care about either topic -- so someone else who cares about either topic can fix this up. Happy trails. drumguy⁸⁸⁰⁰ - speak? 06:34, 26 January 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Jung on the numinous

An anonymous user just added this to the article: "This term is used by Carl Jung in his transpersonal writings to describe that ineffable feeling of grace and gratitude that accomapnies any peak experience, any profound meeting with the divine."

From my recollection this is not what Jung meant by the numinous. He simply meant anything that was experienced as having a superhuman origin. This would certainly include something experienced as being favored by a benevolent diety (ie. a feeling of "grace"). But it would also include a nightmare or hallucination in which one feels one has encounters a demon. In this case the experience may be very frightening and not include a feeling of "grace" or "gratitude" of any sort.

It need not be a peak experience either, since it need not be accompanied by any sort of sense of unity, harmony, or the like. Indeed, it could be quite unpleasant, alienating, and disconcerting, as noted above.

The experience would, as the anonymous user indicated, be experienced as profound. The feelings that accompany it are usually ones of awe and/or profound otherness. But it need not be a "meeting with the divine" for two reasons. First, as with the example of the demon nightmare above, the experience need only concern itself with the superhuman, which need not necessarily be divine. Second, what matters is that the experience be experienced as if it had a superhuman origin. Jung was very careful to make clear that he was exploring "psychic phenomena" (my own paraphrase) and that he did not want to make any statements that would imply that such an experience either was or was not an encounter with something superhuman. So his use of the term "numinous" only described what the experience seemed like to the person having the experience.

All in all I think Jung's use of the term was very much like if not identical to Rudolf Otto's original meaning. In light of this, I'm going to remove the current misleading characterization of Jung's view, but leav a mention that Jung used this term. Someone with more knowledge of exactly how Jung's usage of the term differed from Otto's usage of the term is welcome to elaborate. noosphere 05:09, 23 February 2006 (UTC)

In a number of places Jung uses the term to describe archetypes of a spiritual nature. And in Psychology and Religion (par. 6-9) he described Otto's word numinosum as "a dynamic agency or effect not caused by an arbitrary act of will", so that the experiencer is "victim rather than creator." Then "the numinosum is either a quality belonging to the visible object or the influence of an invisible presence that causes a peculiar alteration of consciousness." However, he admits that many ritualistic practices are done with the purpose of producing a numinosum effect. He then goes on to define religion as "the attitude peculiar to a consciousness which has been changed by experience of the numinosum." --Blainster 23:31, 23 February 2006 (UTC)