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Numinous () means "arousing spiritual or religious emotion; mysterious or awe-inspiring";Collins English Dictionary - 7th ed. - 2005 also "supernatural" or "appealing to the aesthetic sensibility." The term was given its present sense by the German theologian and philosopher Rudolf Otto in his influential 1917 German book The Idea of the Holy. He also used the phrase mysterium tremendum as another description for the phenomenon. Otto's concept of the numinous influenced thinkers including Carl Jung, Mircea Eliade, and C. S. Lewis. It has been applied to theology, psychology, religious studies, literary analysis, and descriptions of psychedelic experiences.
Otto writes that while the concept of "the holy" is often used to convey moral perfection—and does entail this—it contains another distinct element, beyond the ethical sphere, for which he uses the term numinous. He explains "numinous" as a "non-rational, non-sensory experience or feeling whose primary and immediate object is outside the self." This mental state "presents itself as ganz Andere,Otto, Rudolf (1996). p. 30. wholly other, a condition absolutely sui generis and incomparable whereby the human being finds himself utterly abashed." P. 169. Cited in:
Otto argues that because the numinous is irreducible and sui generis it cannot be defined in terms of other concepts or experiences, and that the reader must therefore be "guided and led on by consideration and discussion of the matter through the ways of his own mind, until he reaches the point at which 'the numinous' in him perforce begins to stir... In other words, our X cannot, strictly speaking, be taught, it can only be evoked, awakened in the mind." Chapters 4 to 6 are devoted to attempting to evoke the numinous and its various aspects.
Using Latin, he describes it as a mystery () that is at once terrifying ( ) and fascinating ().Otto, Rudolf (1996). Mysterium tremendum et fascinans. He writes:
Jung applied the concept of the numinous to psychology and psychotherapy, arguing it was therapeutic and brought greater self-understanding, and stating that to him religion was about a "careful and scrupulous observation... of the numinosum".; Jungian psychoanalyst and philosopher John R. White both reviews Jung's and Otto's use of the numinous and partly criticizes their understanding of the numinous in “Jung, the numinous and the philosophers. On immanence and transcendence in religious experience,” in Jung and Philosophy, Jon Mills, ed., New York: Routledge, 2019. The notion of the numinous and the wholly Other were also central to the religious studies of ethnologist Mircea Eliade. Mysterium tremendum, another phrase coined by Otto to describe the numinous, is presented by Aldous Huxley in The Doors of Perception in this way:
In a book-length scholarly treatment of the subject in fantasy literature, Chris Brawley devotes chapters to the concept in "The Rime of the Ancient Mariner" by Samuel Taylor Coleridge, in Phantastes by George Macdonald, in the Chronicles of Narnia by C. S. Lewis, and The Lord of the Rings by J. R. R. Tolkien; and in work by Algernon Blackwood and Ursula Le Guin (e.g., The Centaur and Buffalo Gals, Won't You Come Out Tonight, respectively).Brawley, Chris (2014). Nature and the Numinous in Mythopoeic Fantasy Literature, e.g., p. ix and passim, Vol. 46, Critical Explorations in Science Fiction and Fantasy (Palumbo, D.E. & Sullivan III, C.W.), Jefferson, NC, USA: McFarland, .
Neuroscientist Christof Koch has described awe from experiences such as entering a cathedral, saying he gets "a feeling of luminosity out of the numinous," though he does not hold the Catholic religious beliefs with which he was raised.
In a 2010 article titled "James Cameron's Cathedral: Avatar Revives the Religious Spectacle" published in the Journal of Religion and Film, academic Craig Detweiler describes how the global blockbuster movie Avatar "traffics in Rudolph Otto’s notion of the numinous, the wholly other that operates beyond reason. ... As spectacle, Avatar remains virtually critic proof, a trip to Otto’s mysterium tremendum et fascinans." Cameron himself mentioned this in a 2022 interview with BBC Radio 1 when trying to explain the first movie's success, saying "There was that element that I call—borrowing from Carl Sagan—the numinous." Sagan specifically explored the numinous concept in his 1985 novel Contact.
Psychologist Susan Blackmore describes both mystical experiences and psychedelic experiences as numinous. (2025). 9780198794738, Oxford University Press. ISBN 9780198794738 In 2009, Czech psychiatrist Stanislav Grof re-released his 1975 book Realms of the Human Unconscious under the title LSD: Doorway to the Numinous: The Groundbreaking Psychedelic Research into Realms of the Human Unconscious. (2025). 9781594779930, Park Street Press. ISBN 9781594779930 In his 2018 book How to Change Your Mind, journalist Michael Pollan describes his experience trying the powerful psychedelic substance 5-MeO-DMT, including the following reflection on his experience of ego dissolution:
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