The term 'Holy' occupies a foundational yet contested position within the depth-psychology corpus, where it functions simultaneously as a phenomenological category, a theological attribute, and a psychological object of inquiry. Rudolf Otto's 1917 treatise remains the conceptual lodestar: his analysis of the holy as a sui generis category—irreducible to rational or ethical predicates, expressing instead the 'numinous' as an inexpressible quality that elicits creature-feeling, awe, and self-abasement—supplies the vocabulary that Jung and his successors would repeatedly engage. Otto's 'mysterium tremendum et fascinans' structures the emotional encounter with the sacred as something prior to, and generative of, doctrinal elaboration. Jung and Edinger transpose this phenomenological category into psychological idiom, treating the Holy Spirit as the dynamic, transformative third person of the Trinity whose indwelling in 'creaturely man' signals an epochal shift in the God-image. Von Franz extends this into alchemical territory, reading the Holy Ghost movements of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries as precursors of depth-psychological individuation. Benveniste's linguistic archaeology of hierós traces the semantic evolution from 'strong' through 'filled with divine influence' to 'sacred,' grounding Otto's phenomenology in philological evidence. The Orthodox corpus—John of Damascus, the Philokalia, Bulgakov—preserves the liturgical and theological register in which holiness is commanded imitation of divine perfection. The central tension runs between holiness as external, commanding otherness and holiness as an immanent, transformative interior process.
In the library
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'HOLINESS'—'the holy'—is a category of interpretation and valuation peculiar to the sphere of religion... it contains a quite specific element or 'moment', which sets it apart from 'the Rational'... and which remains inexpressible—an ἄρρητον or ineffabile—in the sense that it completely eludes apprehension in terms of concepts.
Otto establishes 'the holy' as a non-rational, irreducible category of religious experience that cannot be derived from ethical or conceptual frameworks, making it the foundational phenomenological claim of his entire inquiry.
Otto, Rudolf, The Idea of the Holy: An Inquiry into the Non-Rational Factor in the Idea of the Divine and Its Relation to the Rational, 1917thesis
The 'shudder' reappears in a form ennobled beyond measure where the soul, held speechless, trembles inwardly to the furthest fibre of its being. It invades the mind mightily in Christian worship with the words: 'Holy, holy, holy'; it breaks forth from the hymn of Tersteegen.
Otto demonstrates that the numinous shudder, the affective hallmark of the holy, persists even at the highest levels of monotheistic worship, transmuted into mystical awe and creature-feeling rather than eliminated.
Otto, Rudolf, The Idea of the Holy: An Inquiry into the Non-Rational Factor in the Idea of the Divine and Its Relation to the Rational, 1917thesis
THE HOLY AS A CATEGORY OF VALUE Sin and Atonement WE have already met that strange and profound mental reaction to the numinous which we proposed to call 'creature-feeling' or creature-consciousness, with its concomitant feelings of abasement and prostration and of the diminution of the self into nothingness.
Otto links the holy as a value-category directly to the psychological experience of creature-feeling, positioning sin and atonement as derivative responses to the disvaluation of the self before the numinous.
Otto, Rudolf, The Idea of the Holy: An Inquiry into the Non-Rational Factor in the Idea of the Divine and Its Relation to the Rational, 1917thesis
The sending of the Paraclete has still another aspect. This Spirit of Truth and Wisdom is the Holy Ghost by whom Christ was begotten. He is the spirit of physical and spiritual procreation who from now on shall make his abode in creaturely man.
Edinger, following Jung, reads the indwelling of the Holy Ghost in humanity as signifying a radical elevation of human status to that of mediator between God and creation, marking a transformation in the Western God-image.
Edinger, Edward F., Transformation of the God-Image: An Elucidation of Jung's Answer to Job, 1992thesis
Jung is talking to a Protestant pastor who has a largely conventional religious viewpoint... Jung will emphasize the negative and dangerous aspects of the Holy Spirit to correct Lachat's one-sided, innocent, positive view about the theological Holy Spirit.
Edinger reveals Jung's compensatory strategy of foregrounding the shadow-dimension of the Holy Spirit, correcting theological idealization by restoring its ambivalent, potentially destructive character.
Edinger, Edward F., The New God-Image: A Study of Jung's Key Letters Concerning the Evolution of the Western God-Image, 1996thesis
The Holy Spirit is One, his prototype is the Ruach Elohim, an emanation, an active principle, which proceeds (as quintessence) from the Father and the Son a Patre Filioque.
Edinger maps the Trinitarian development of the Holy Spirit across Old and New Testament dispensations, using the Filioque controversy as evidence for the evolving psychological differentiation of the God-image.
Edinger, Edward F., The New God-Image: A Study of Jung's Key Letters Concerning the Evolution of the Western God-Image, 1996supporting
We may regard the followers of the Holy Ghost movements, and also these alchemists, as forerunners of our modern psychology of the unconscious in that they went beyond mere belief in the contents of religion and sought to obtain individual experience of them.
Von Franz positions the medieval Holy Ghost movements as historical precursors of depth psychology, both traditions sharing a drive toward individual, experiential rather than merely doctrinal encounter with the sacred.
von Franz, Marie-Louise, Aurora Consurgens: A Document Attributed to Thomas Aquinas on the Problem of Opposites in Alchemy, 1966supporting
The conception of the Holy Spirit in Aurora comes close to these ideas of an anima mundi immanent in matter. To the Holy Spirit is attributed Goodness, through whom earthly things become heavenly.
Von Franz identifies the alchemical Holy Spirit with the anima mundi, treating the Spirit's attributed goodness as an upward-transforming force that spiritualizes matter—a psycho-alchemical reading of sanctification.
von Franz, Marie-Louise, Aurora Consurgens: A Document Attributed to Thomas Aquinas on the Problem of Opposites in Alchemy, 1966supporting
Alchemical Trinity: Winged Mercurius, spirit of the unconscious (= Holy Ghost), seated between king and his son... suddenly the Holy Ghost became the occupation and concern of people.
Von Franz equates the alchemical Mercurius with the Holy Ghost as the spirit of the unconscious, documenting how the twelfth-century pneumatic movements expressed an eruption of the numinous into collective consciousness.
von Franz, Marie-Louise, Alchemy: An Introduction to the Symbolism and the Psychology, 1980supporting
As the point of departure the sense of 'strong' is posited, then 'filled with strength by some divine influence' and then, secondarily, 'holy, sacred.'
Benveniste's philological analysis of hierós traces the semantic path from raw power through divine infusion to sanctity, providing Indo-European linguistic grounding for the numinous power at the root of the concept of the holy.
Benveniste, Émile, Indo European Language and Society, 1973supporting
we hold the words 'Holy God' to refer to the Father, without limiting the title of divinity to Him alone... 'Holy and Mighty' we ascribe to the Son... 'Holy and Immortal' we attribute to the Holy Spirit, without depriving the Father and the Son of immortality.
John of Damascus articulates the Trisagion's Trinitarian distribution of holiness across all three persons, defending against the interpolation that would introduce a fourth figure and collapse the integrity of the divine unity.
John of Damascus, An Exact Exposition of the Orthodox Faith, 2021supporting
There is one Person of the Father, another of the Son, another of the Holy Ghost. But the Godhead of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Ghost is all one; the glory equal, the majesty co-eternal.
Jung's citation of the Athanasian Creed situates the holy within the formal Trinitarian structure, providing the doctrinal datum against which his own psychological rereading of the Trinity is constructed.
Jung, Carl Gustav, Psychology and Religion: West and East, 1958supporting
The Holy Spirit is still less, and dwells within the saints alone. So that in this way the power of the Father is greater than that of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and in turn the power of the Holy Spirit exceeds that of every other holy being.
Jung's citation of Origen's subordinationist hierarchy reveals the early theological gradation of holiness, a ranked distribution of divine power that Jung later reads as anticipating the psychological differentiation of the God-image.
Jung, Carl Gustav, Psychology and Religion: West and East, 1958supporting
The Holy Spirit is the hypostatic love of the Father for the Son, and of the Son for the Father... The revelation of the Holy Spir[it]...
Bulgakov identifies the Holy Spirit as the hypostatic love within the divine dyad, locating holiness at the relational nexus of Trinitarian life rather than as an attribute attached to a single person.
Bulgakov, Sergei, Sophia, the Wisdom of God: An Outline of Sophiology, 1937supporting
in relation to the Holy Ghost she is the Spirit-bearer, the glory of the world. In this sense she is the heart of the Church, its center and its personal embodiment.
Bulgakov's sophiology assigns Mary the role of Spirit-bearer in relation to the Holy Ghost, making her the creaturely locus in which the divine holiness is received and incarnated within the world.
Bulgakov, Sergei, Sophia, the Wisdom of God: An Outline of Sophiology, 1937supporting
gird up the loins of thy mind, obedient to the Holy One that hath called thee, and be thou thyself holy in all manner of conversation: for, 'Be ye holy: for I am holy,' saith the Lord.
John of Damascus transmits the scriptural imperative of imitative holiness, in which human sanctification is grounded in the ontological holiness of God as its commanding archetype.
John of Damascus, Saint John of Damascus Collection, 2016supporting
when we say 'hallowed be your name' to Him what we are really saying is 'Father, make us such as to deserve knowledge and understanding of how holy you are, or at least let your holiness shine forth in the spiritual lives we lead.'
Cassian interprets the petition 'hallowed be thy name' not as a declaration about God but as a prayer for human transformation, so that holiness becomes legible through the sanctified life of the believer.
what all the gods love is pious and holy, and the opposite which they all hate, impious... Ought we to enquire into the truth of this, Euthyphro, or simply to accept the mere statement on our own authority?
Plato's Socrates interrogates the divine-command definition of holiness, raising the foundational philosophical question of whether the holy is constituted by divine approval or possesses an independent essence.
the religious 'feeling' properly involves a unique kind of apprehension, sui generis, not to be reduced to ordinary intellectual or rational 'knowing'... and yet—and this is the paradox of the matter—itself a genuine 'knowing', the growing awareness of an object.
Otto's introduction frames the holy as paradoxically a form of genuine cognitive apprehension that nonetheless exceeds conceptual rationality, establishing the epistemological stakes of the entire phenomenological project.
Otto, Rudolf, The Idea of the Holy: An Inquiry into the Non-Rational Factor in the Idea of the Divine and Its Relation to the Rational, 1917supporting
The Universal Church in which the Spirit of Truth dwells [remember that I've already spoken of how the Church has taken over the Holy Ghost as its own].
Edinger notes the institutional Church's appropriation of the Holy Ghost, a move he contextualizes critically within Jung's broader argument that the Spirit must be reclaimed from ecclesiastical containment into individual psychic experience.
Edinger, Edward F., Transformation of the God-Image: An Elucidation of Jung's Answer to Job, 1992aside
This noble maxim represents the binding sentiment of the holy society—that is to say, the church militant, suffering, and triumphant—of those who do not wish to remain alone.
Campbell uses 'holy society' to describe the collective-plant-world ethos that subordinates individual spontaneity to communal continuity, implicitly contrasting it with the solitary mystical encounter with the sacred.
Campbell, Joseph, Primitive Mythology (The Masks of God, Volume I), 1959aside
the Holy Spirit descended in bodily form as a dove, indicating the firstfruits of our baptism and honouring the body: since even this, that is the body, was God by the deification.
John of Damascus reads the Spirit's descent as a dove at baptism as a theological affirmation of bodily deification, connecting the holy's pneumatic dimension to the sacramental sanctification of matter.
John of Damascus, An Exact Exposition of the Orthodox Faith, 2021aside