Numinous

‘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 arreton or ineffabile—in the sense that it completely eludes apprehension in terms of concepts.

Otto introduces ‘numinous’ as the irreducibly non-rational, ineffable core of the holy, establishing the foundational definition upon which all subsequent depth-psychological usage depends.

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

Dig deeper with Sebastian →

this its dual character, as at once an object of boundless awe and boundless wonder, quelling and yet entrancing the soul, constitutes the proper positive content of the ‘mysterium’ as it manifests itself in conscious feeling.

Otto articulates the mysterium tremendum et fascinans as the numinous’s defining bipolarity — simultaneously annihilating and magnetically compelling — which becomes the template for depth psychology’s treatment of archetypal encounter.

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

Dig deeper with Sebastian →

Jung says, the ‘approach to the numinous’ is the real therapy (not the numinous itself), and we have tried to indicate that this approach is, for the traumatized patient, a two-stage process in which the negative, daimonic side of the numinous is experienced first (as bewitchment) and that only later… can the positive numinous dimension of life enter a relationship with the ego.

Kalsched refines Jung’s therapeutic formula by distinguishing the daimonic-destructive from the life-giving face of the numinous, arguing that trauma forces a sequential rather than simultaneous encounter with both poles.

Kalsched, Donald, The Inner World of Trauma: Archetypal Defences of the Personal Spirit, 1996thesis

Dig deeper with Sebastian →

emotional energy that manifests itself in all numinous phenomena does not cease to exist when it disappears from consciousness… Our consciousness has deprived itself of the organs by which the auxiliary contributions of the instincts and the unconscious could be assimilated. These organs were the numinous symbols, held holy by common consent.

Jung frames numinous symbols as the psychic organs through which instinctual energy is metabolised by consciousness; their loss precipitates collective pathology rather than mere cultural poverty.

Jung, C.G., The Undiscovered Self: With Symbols and the Interpretation of Dreams, 1957thesis

Dig deeper with Sebastian →

for the patient ‘the approach to the numinous is the real therapy’ (1973a, p. 377) and that to assist with this, the therapist ‘must abandon all preconceived notions and, for better or worse, go with him in search of the religious and philosophical ideas

Sedgwick presents Jung’s own formulation that numinous-archetypal experience is constitutive of depth psychotherapy, not supplementary to it, requiring the therapist to relinquish the position of detached expert.

Sedgwick, David, An Introduction to Jungian Psychotherapy: The Therapeutic Relationship, 2001thesis

Dig deeper with Sebastian →

Jung (1940/1969) referred to spirituality, he uses the words ‘religion’ and the ‘numinous,’ clarifying the numinous as a ‘dynamic agency or effect not caused by an arbitrary act of will … [causing] a peculiar alteration of consciousness’

Dennett transmits Jung’s operational definition of the numinous as an autonomous dynamic event altering consciousness — distinguishing it from volitional religious practice and grounding it in the involuntary domain of the Self.

Dennett, Stella, Individuation in Addiction Recovery: An Archetypal Astrological Perspective, 2025supporting

Dig deeper with Sebastian →

The ‘shudder’ reappears in a form ennobled beyond measure where the soul, held speechless, trembles inwardly to the furthest fibre of its being… It has become a mystical awe, and sets free as its accompaniment, reflected in self-consciousness, that ‘creature-feeling’

Otto traces the historical refinement of numinous dread from primitive ‘uncanny’ fear into mystical awe, thereby charting the developmental arc of the numinous as religious consciousness matures.

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

Dig deeper with Sebastian →

I grew to understand the numinous and its difference from the rational in Luther’s De Servo Arbitrio long before I identified it in the ‘qadosh’ of the Old Testament.

Otto locates his phenomenological discovery of the numinous in close reading of Luther, establishing a Protestant theological genealogy and demonstrating the concept’s cross-textual recognisability.

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

Dig deeper with Sebastian →

both Otto’s ideas and James’s studies influenced the work of Jung, who integrated the concept of the numinous as a critical element in his own psychology and philosophy of religious experience, which emerged during this same alignment.

Tarnas situates the numinous within an intellectual genealogy linking Otto, James, and Jung, and offers a synchronistic-astrological account of why this conceptual formation emerged when it did.

Richard Tarnas, Cosmos and Psyche: Intimations of a New World View, 2006supporting

Dig deeper with Sebastian →

[Symbols are the] catalysts of the numinous—and therein lies the secret of their force. However, the traits of symbols and elements of myths tend to acquire a power of their own through association, by which access of the numinous itself may become blocked.

Campbell, cited by Peterson, argues that religious symbols function as catalysts for the numinous but become obstacles to it when literalised — a warning against the reification of symbolic material that directly parallels Jung’s critique of dead dogma.

Peterson, Cody, The Shadow of a Figure of Light, 2024supporting

Dig deeper with Sebastian →

this approach completely misses the central intention of these marvelously numinous and imaginative works. The intention is similarly missed when an Aegean prototype of the female godhead is said to be ‘reduced’ to the region of the eyes, and ‘schematized.’

Neumann applies the concept of the numinous to prehistoric art, arguing that scholarly formalist reduction destroys the living numinosity that constitutes the primary meaning of sacred images.

Neumann, Erich, The Great Mother: An Analysis of the Archetype, 1955supporting

Dig deeper with Sebastian →

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 elaborates the subjective corollary of numinous encounter as ‘creature-feeling’ — the radical self-diminishment before an overwhelming otherness — which Jung later maps onto the ego’s relationship to the Self.

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

Dig deeper with Sebastian →

that religious moment which would appear to have been in every case the first to be aroused in the human mind, viz. daemonic dread… it necessarily and naturally looks more like the opposite of religion than religion itself.

Otto identifies daemonic dread as the phylogenetically and phenomenologically primitive form of the numinous, establishing the dark face of sacred encounter as foundational rather than aberrant.

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

Dig deeper with Sebastian →

Psyche initially has trouble making the choice that would rupture her ‘oneness’ with the fantasy world of Eros and the potential ‘divinity’ of her child. She too prefers the endless possibilities of numinous fantasy, until finally she chooses mortality with its knowledge of evil as well as good.

Kalsched uses the Eros-Psyche myth to illustrate how the seductive pull of numinous fantasy can prevent incarnation in mortal life, linking the pathology of trauma avoidance to an unconscious identification with archetypal luminosity.

Kalsched, Donald, The Inner World of Trauma: Archetypal Defences of the Personal Spirit, 1996supporting

Dig deeper with Sebastian →

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 insists that numinous experience constitutes a genuine mode of cognition irreducible to rational categories, a paradox that anchors subsequent depth-psychological arguments for the epistemological validity of religious and archetypal experience.

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

Dig deeper with Sebastian →

The emphasis on direct religious experience is not only, as one might expect, a prioritising of the psychological dimension. It also reflects the emphasis on a personal orientation towards the transcendent within the religious tradition of Jung’s upbringing

Papadopoulos contextualises Jung’s elevation of experiential encounter with the numinous within his Swiss Reformed Protestant formation, suggesting that the concept carries an unstated confessional bias toward immediate personal contact with the sacred over institutional mediation.

Papadopoulos, Renos K., The Handbook of Jungian Psychology: Theory, Practice and Applications, 2006supporting

Dig deeper with Sebastian →

the numinous is not restricted to place, and change is without substance… The numinous as such is something not to be plumbed in terms of yin and yang, and change as such is something that one can only keep up with in terms of change.

Wang Bi’s commentary employs a cognate concept of the numinous (shen) in the I Ching tradition to designate the unfixable, non-substantial ground of transformation — a parallel that depth psychologists draw upon when mapping the numinous onto Eastern metaphysics.

Wang Bi, Richard John Lynn, The Classic of Changes: A New Translation of the I Ching as Interpreted by Wang Bi, 1994aside

Dig deeper with Sebastian →

As it takes the complete lack of conscious thought to view things from the point of view of the mysterious, we call this the numinous. One who takes the Dao as resource and so achieves union with it derives his power to do so from the numinous.

Wang Bi defines the numinous as the mode of awareness that transcends deliberate cognition and achieves alignment with the Dao, offering a non-Western parallel to Otto’s ineffabile that enriches comparative discussion in the depth-psychological corpus.

Wang Bi, Richard John Lynn, The Classic of Changes: A New Translation of the I Ching as Interpreted by Wang Bi, 1994aside

Dig deeper with Sebastian →

it is the numinous alone that thus allows one to make quick progress without hurrying and reach goals without forcing one’s way.

In the I Ching commentary tradition the numinous designates effortless efficacy aligned with the spontaneous movement of change, a functional analogue to the depth-psychological notion of the transcendent function operating beyond ego-effort.

Wang Bi, Richard John Lynn, The Classic of Changes: A New Translation of the I Ching as Interpreted by Wang Bi, 1994aside

Dig deeper with Sebastian →

The fundamental scripture of the Lingbao (Numinous Treasure) school is the Lingbao chishu wupian zhenwen (Perfect Text of Numinous Treasure in Five Tablets, Written in Red)

The Daoist Lingbao school’s very name encodes the numinous as the defining property of its most sacred textual treasures, providing comparative evidence for the concept’s cross-cultural reach that depth-psychological scholars cite in discussions of the universal sacred.

Kohn, Livia, Daoism Handbook, 2000aside

Dig deeper with Sebastian →