The Holy occupies a foundational yet contested position within the depth-psychology corpus. Rudolf Otto's 1917 monograph furnishes the conceptual anchor: the holy is treated as a sui generis category of interpretation and valuation — irreducible to rational or ethical derivation — whose core is the numinous, that ineffable quality that simultaneously fascinates and terrifies the encountering consciousness. Otto's phenomenology of creature-feeling, awe, and the mysterium tremendum shapes every subsequent psychological engagement with the term. Jung, Edinger, and von Franz inherit and psychologize Otto's framework, relocating the holy from pure phenomenological description into the dynamics of the God-image, the Trinity, and the individuation process. Von Franz in particular traces how medieval alchemical movements and Holy Ghost sects represent early attempts to give individual, experiential — rather than credal — access to the holy. Edinger reads the Holy Spirit as the vehicle by which the divine becomes immanent in creaturely humanity, investing the term with developmental-psychological significance. The Philokalic and Orthodox theological voices (John of Damascus, Bulgakov) approach the holy through liturgical and dogmatic categories — the Trisagion, Sophiology, Trinitarian procession — while Plato's Euthyphro supplies the genealogical root question of whether piety is holy because the gods love it or vice versa. The corpus thus spans phenomenology, analytical psychology, speculative theology, and classical philosophy, with the central tension running between the holy as an irreducible experiential datum and the holy as a psychologically transformable symbol.
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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 arrêton or ineffabile—in the sense that it completely eludes apprehension in terms of concepts.
Otto establishes the holy as a wholly distinctive, non-rational and conceptually inexpressible category that is irreducible to ethics or reason, forming the foundational definition for the entire depth-psychology engagement with the term.
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... 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 argues that encounter with the holy as a category of value produces the definitive psychological response of creature-feeling — a radical self-disvaluation before the numinous presence.
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'.
Otto traces the phenomenological persistence of the numinous shudder from primitive dread to refined mystical awe, demonstrated paradigmatically in the liturgical acclamation of the holy.
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 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... deity.
Otto resolves the subjectivism charge by arguing that the feeling-response to the holy constitutes a genuine, if non-conceptual, cognitive apprehension of a real transcendent object.
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, reading Jung's Answer to Job, interprets the sending of the Holy Ghost as the theological symbol of God's self-begetting within the human creature, marking a decisive transformation of the God-image.
Edinger, Edward F., Transformation of the God-Image: An Elucidation of Jung's Answer to Job, 1992supporting
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 documents Jung's insistence that the Holy Spirit carries shadow as well as light, correcting a sanitized theological reading and restoring the ambivalent, potentially overwhelming character of the holy.
Edinger, Edward F., The New God-Image: A Study of Jung's Key Letters Concerning the Evolution of the Western God-Image, 1996supporting
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 traces Jung's developmental schema of Trinitarian history, in which the Holy Spirit represents the third and culminating age wherein the divine principle becomes actively present in individuated humanity.
Edinger, Edward F., The New God-Image: A Study of Jung's Key Letters Concerning the Evolution of the Western God-Image, 1996supporting
suddenly the Holy Ghost became the occupation and concern of people. There was much theological discussion and there were many movements... and all confessed that they were specially devoted to the adoration and following of the Holy Ghost.
Von Franz identifies the 12th–13th century proliferation of Holy Ghost movements as a psychohistorical eruption of the holy into lay and alchemical consciousness, prefiguring modern depth psychology's concern with the unconscious.
von Franz, Marie-Louise, Alchemy: An Introduction to the Symbolism and the Psychology, 1980supporting
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 argues that both the Holy Ghost sectarians and the alchemists represent proto-psychological attempts to transform the holy from received doctrine into living, individual inner experience.
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 demonstrates that the Aurora Consurgens equates the Holy Spirit with an anima mundi immanent in matter, so that the holy becomes the transformative principle by which physical reality is spiritualized.
von Franz, Marie-Louise, Aurora Consurgens: A Document Attributed to Thomas Aquinas on the Problem of Opposites in Alchemy, 1966supporting
in the Holy Spirit (is) the bond of eternity and equality... and these three are One, [which the Philosopher would have to be] body, spirit, and soul, for all perfection consisteth in the number three.
Von Franz traces the alchemical recoding of the Trinitarian holy — Father, Son, Holy Spirit — onto the philosophical triad of body, spirit, and soul, linking sacred and material transformation.
von Franz, Marie-Louise, Aurora Consurgens: A Document Attributed to Thomas Aquinas on the Problem of Opposites in Alchemy, 1966supporting
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 exposes the definitional circularity at the origin of Western discourse on the holy: whether holiness is constituted by divine approval or whether it possesses independent ontological standing.
we declare that the addition which the vain-minded Peter the Fuller made to the Trisagium or 'Thrice Holy' Hymn is blasphemous; for it introduces a fourth person into the Trinity.
John of Damascus defends the liturgical integrity of the Trisagion — the thrice-holy acclamation — as the precise doctrinal boundary at which Trinitarian theology and the holy as worship intersect.
John of Damascus, An Exact Exposition of the Orthodox Faith, 2021supporting
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 Spirit is the divine Thought-Word, the Logos of God concerning himself.
Bulgakov's Sophiology positions the Holy Spirit as the hypostatic principle of mutual love within the Godhead, grounding the holy in interpersonal divine eros rather than in isolated transcendence.
Bulgakov, Sergei, Sophia, the Wisdom of God: An Outline of Sophiology, 1937supporting
finally, the tradition becomes holy and inspires reverence; and thus the morality of pious regard for the old is certainly a much more ancient morality than that which demands unegoistic actions.
Nietzsche genealogically deflates the holy by reducing it to the veneration accumulated around archaic tradition, opposing Otto's sui generis claim by locating holiness within the history of moral psychology.
Nietzsche, Friedrich, On the Genealogy of Morals, 1887supporting
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 invokes the holy society as the collective institutional form through which the numinous is socially contained, contrasting it with the solitary individual's direct encounter with the Great Mystery.
Campbell, Joseph, Primitive Mythology (The Masks of God, Volume I), 1959aside
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 reinterprets the liturgical petition for the hallowing of the divine name as a prayer for the moral and spiritual transformation that would allow creaturely life to become a vessel for the manifestation of the holy.
Be thou thyself holy in all manner of conversation: for, 'Be ye holy: for I am holy,' saith the Lord.
John of Damascus grounds the ethical imperative of personal holiness in its direct imitation of and participation in the divine holiness, closing the distance between phenomenological encounter and moral formation.
John of Damascus, Saint John of Damascus Collection, 2016aside