Numen

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Numen (Latin numen "Wink, Geheiß, Wille, divine will") is a technical term in religious studies that was introduced by Rudolf Otto . It denotes the presence of a "shapeless divine". In the historical Roman religion , numen means primarily the action of a deity and secondarily the divine essence acting in this way.

Roman cult

In the older Roman religion, numen denotes more the work and will of a deity than the god itself. This numen could be inherent in natural phenomena such as a river, a tree or a stone (see also animism ). There were no personified deities in this original Roman religion. It was not until the imperial era that the word could also be used synonymously for “god”. In the Roman imperial cult , the numen Augusti was worshiped, which was not the person of the reigning emperor, but the inherent work of the gods in the emperor .

Modern terminology

Religious studies

Rudolf Otto (1869–1937) borrowed the term numen or numinous from Latin to describe the divine, the miracle of being , detached from all associations that come from words in “natural” language. For him the numen is outside of human reality and stands for the sphere of the sacred. It can therefore neither be proven nor refuted. It can only be perceived through its experience, either as a mysterium tremendum (shudder, fear) or mysterium fascinans (attraction).

In religious studies, numen denotes a power that affects nature and humans, such as fate, fertility, growth, power, death. If this power is personalized, one speaks of a deity, a demon or some other spirit being. However, these are not identical with the force, but only its representatives, carriers or rulers and, in part, are themselves subject to them. While man is at the mercy of the numinous forces, he is able to gain an indirect influence on the numinous forces by worshiping those more or less personalized beings.

Ethnology and Folklore

Numen is used similarly in ethnology . Here it describes the magical power that should sit in an object, animal or person. This concept corresponds, among other things, to the Polynesian Mana , the Orenda of the Iroquois or the Manitu of the Algonquin peoples.

In folklore narrative research , the term is preferably used in connection with legends, as well as in the phenomenology of fairy tales .

psychology

In depth psychology , the term was introduced into analytical psychology by Carl Gustav Jung , since, according to Jung, archetypes appear to consciousness as numinous. Independently of this, the term is also used by the neo-psychoanalyst Erik H. Erikson , who uses the term in connection with early childhood ritualism .

literature

Web links

Wiktionary: Numinosum  - explanations of meanings, word origins, synonyms, translations

Remarks

  1. Michael Grant: Myths of the Greeks and Romans , 1962/2004, p. 441 f.
  2. Duncan Fishwick: Numen Augusti . In: Britannia 20 (1989), pp. 231-234.
  3. LÜTHI, Max (1974) The European folk tales. UTB 321 Francke