The following post comes from mythandmore.com which is the blog written by Margo Meck. I’m not going to comment on it at this time. I leave it at your doorstep to mull over. See my comments next post.
Posted September 14, 2013 in Musings & Mythologues
The word “numinous” was coined by Rudolf Otto from the Latin numen, meaning a god, cognate with the verb nuere, to nod or beckon, indicating divine approval. This word, or its noun, the “numinosum,” refers to any phenomenon experienced as a manifestation of tremendous power felt to be objective and outside the self. It is a crucial element of religious experience. For Otto, the numinosum is non-rational and irreducible; it cannot be defined, only evoked and experienced.
According to Lionel Corbett, the numinous grips or stirs the soul. The numinous produces a kind of holy terror, awe or dread which Otto describes as a feeling of the ‘mysterium tremendum.’ It can also erupt in the modern person as the experience of the uncanny or the supernatural. Such awe may be overwhelming or it may be gentle as the still small voice. The uncanny is not a function of intensity but rather of a specific quality. [see The Religious Function of the Psyche by Lionel Corbett for a detailed discussion on this.]
I experience the redwoods of northern California as a portal into the numinous. The magnificence of these sentinels “stirs my soul.” I stand in awe of their grandeur. There is something “uncanny” about them. For me, these expressions of nature, I experience as supernatural. There is something larger at work here; something that cannot be defined; only experienced.
According to Richard Tarnas in Cosmos and Psyche the numinous is also defined as something that suddenly confronts human awareness with an unexpected dimension of reality, something that is experienced as “Wholly Other” than the mundane sphere, that utterly transcends and subverts the everyday world of conventional experience, and that disrupts the very ground of one’s being as it was previously construed. Jung’s notion of synchronicity can be recognized as the inexplicable coincidence that carries a numinous charge.
For me, myths are not necessarily numinous in and of themselves; just as the menu is not the meal, the map is not the landscape, and the road sign is not the way, etc. What myths do is to alert us to the possibility of the numinous. They help us recognize when we are in the grips of the mysterium tremendum. The numinous can be beatific like Dante’s vision of Beatrice. It can also hold a terror as when a demon visits us in a dream and we awaken breathing heavily in a cold sweat. And, the numinous can also be experienced gently as the still small voice. Regardless of the form, the soul is deeply stirred.
My attraction to myth is many layered. One of these layers is simply because myths are great stories. Also, they typically contain pearls of wisdom. They are mirrors reflecting the human condition. And, I could go on. However, for the purposes of this commentary, let me say that I am attracted to myths because they are metaphors for life that cannot really be explained directly.
Myths are keys opening the door beyond which lies the numinous.
Margo Meck is a mythologist, writer, story consultant, and speaker. She received her Ph.D. in Mythological Studies from Pacifica Graduate Institute, Santa Barbara, CA. in 2007. She has lectured on various myth related subjects such as Personal Mythology and the Hero’s Journey.
Joseph Campbell says: “It would not be too much to say that myth is the secret opening through which the inexhaustible energies of the cosmos pour into human cultural manifestation.”
What implications do you think this has for underlying themes in human culture?
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