Is the Numinous Holy? - Elizabeth Roy

Is the Numinous Holy?
Non-assigned reading blog
Elizabeth Roy
4/23

According to Otto, the numinous is the sense of mysterium tremendum, that which is aweful and fascinating. The numinous is often seen as inseparable from the holy or spiritual; in fact it is often seen as a close experience with the divine, or as close as mankind can come. However, is the numinous necessarily religious? According to the “Four Horsemen,” a group of atheist scholars, no. In a fascinating interview, Richard Dawkins, Daniel Dennett, Sam Harris and Christopher Hitchens, all intellectuals, discuss the fact that the numinous is a separate experience from that of the supernatural. According to them, when we have an experience of the numinous, it damages it to assume it is supernatural. By assuming that the numinous must have a supernatural component, we lessen our personal experience with the numinous. To an extent, I agree with this point of view. The numinous is not necessarily holy – only wholly other, something that touches on that which is outside our realm of experience. This can be divinity, but it doesn’t have to be. For example, C.S. Lewis consistently used the example of the tiger versus the ghost. If we are told there is a dangerous animal in the next room waiting for us, we feel fear. If we are told there is a ghost in the next room, we also feel fear, but of a different sort, and that indefinable quality is a look at the numinous. This example shows that people can feel the numinous without the stimulus being associated with the sacred. The numinous and sacred often occur together simply because the sacred is wholly other, which provokes the numinous – but other things have qualities of mysterium tremendum as well.