What is the numinous?
The numinous is the unalterable source from which the unconscious draws its images.
« The numinous is a consciousness without words or subject.
Life finally given back to itself and to Everything. »
– Comte-Sponville
According to the eminent theologian and philosopher Rudolf Otto, the numinous it is that which, coming "from elsewhere", grasps the individual and gives him the feeling of being in the presence of an "entirely Other". It is a feeling of absolute presence, a presence often described as divine.
The awakening of the numinous is the awakening of the God within, the one who takes command and substitutes his will for ours. Bathed in its light, we can feel all the purity and strength of our essential Being. His infinite energy and his eternal wisdom allow us to assume ourselves as cosmic beings, humble repositories of the sacred power to do good.
The concept of "numinous" appears for the first time at Rudolf Otto in his book The Sacred , published in 1917. The numinous experience is for him the affective experience of the sacred.
Otto has been creating this new concept since Latin "numen", The active power of the Living.
Carl Jung, as part of his analytical psychology, relates the numinous to archetypes, innate symbolic forms and constitutive of the collective unconscious. the numinous would be the unalterable source from which the unconscious draws its images. The force which attracts us in a precise way towards "something that is beyond the world."
The numinous is this force which attracts us in a precise way towards "something that is beyond the world. "
Jung is interested in the interaction of the unconscious and the conscious in individuals suffering from a psychic disorder, which could be solved by accessing the numinous: “What interests me above all in my work is not treat neuroses but get closer to numinous. Access to numinous is the only real therapy."
Rudolf Otto proposed the term "numinous" to designate the sphere beyond the ethical and the rational, and which presents itself under the double aspect of a frightening and fascinating mystery. Mana and the sacred, religion and magic would flow from this initial principle.
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