I’m sure we’re all aware of it, a feeling that certain places are somehow special, or sacred, or magical in some strange, indefinable way, in other words numinous. These are not obvious places either, but could be almost anywhere. A particular group of trees or area of the woods, or corner of a park, but usually, it has to be said, outdoors. I’ve never had such a feeling in a church, for example, which usually leave me cold and spiritually dead. I do sometimes get it at places our pre-Christian ancestors held sacred, such as stone circles and other monuments, though not at the most famous of them all, Stonehenge, but that, admittedly, could be because of the crowds of people, fences and car parks. Most of the time, however, there is no discernable reason why a particular place has this numinous atmosphere, not even some special, personal memory of something that happened there, because most of the time there isn’t one.
IMH/SO, it is just the sense of relevance to the degree of reverence. That sense of relevance can be formed unconsciously (almost always is) and is often related to childhood impressions, thus deeper obscure memories that create greater affectance (hence a sensation of relevance).
But most of the time they are places without personal or childhood memories, often I’ve never even been to them before.
If they are triggering feelings, something about them is familiar. Shapes, smells, general ambiance, and such things trigger deep memories from early childhood that probably could not be detailed out enough to consciously identify. You were possibly merely a few months old and saw something, had no name to call it, and never identified it. Or a smell, or sound.
I discovered that I had an odd and surprising deeply moving fetish for very old roadside motels; the appearance, the smallness, the smell. My parents used to go road rallying when I was a baby. But anything of that general nature triggers that feeling. It doesn’t have to be the same motel or even a motel at all.
There could be something in that, but if so, one would expect indoor places to trigger equally buried memories. Also, childhood memories are not quite so buried as we sometimes think. The seaside, including the smell of the salty air and fish and chips, the sound of the sea and seagulls, and all the rest, evoke, warm, childhood memories. But this is not the same feeling as the numinous feeling I was referring to.
The more unique something is when it impresses you, the longer and stronger the memory will affect you.
Inside environments become obfuscated and identified, leaving fewer opportunities of an awesome, wondrous, and unique experience.
I remember one scene from a film that struck me very deeply and I never found out exactly why nor could I ever find that film despite having searched. It was a scene of two young children play-dancing surrounded by a wall of huge trees outlining the grassy clearing. Still today, any huge solid wall of trees impresses me greatly. But the more I see such sights (not all that often so far), the less they stir such deep sensations.
Early childhood musical tones have similar effects (Enya, Tchaikovsky, Canon,…).
Those types of experiences are generally associated with things that evoke feelings of reverence, awe, insignificance, or interconnectedness for me. I personally don’t like the term ‘spiritual’ as I think feelings and experiences can just about always be better described in simpler terms. Spirituality and numina are ambiguous terms for things that superstitious people have trouble describing.
And remember, anything can be negatively stained as well. Get raped out on the beach some time and find out how a “fresh ocean breeze” affects you 10 years alter. In psychology, it is referred to as a gestalt or trauma when the experience is negative and often leads to turrets syndrome and malevolent feelings, possibly violence. If it is perceived as positive, it creates a reaction of overwhelming awe.
I think that the feeling is attached to the imagination. Numinous feelings are an expression of the imagination. A different feeling, yet, I think, connected, would be the feeling of disgust, of being soiled. Someone hands you a pen that was used by the late Albert Einsteing and you get this feeling…quite different from the feeling you would get if you were handed the sweater of Jeffrey Dahmer.
I don’t think childhood memories, or feelings of association of any sort, good or bad, are the same as what I’m referring to. Numinous feelings are not about memory, but of present power. That they are not about memory is shown by the fact that other people feel the same in the same places. Our ancestors chose to build their stone circles at weird, innaccessible spots because they felt this numinous power too, we must assume.
I’d have thought that numinous feelings were more to do with unfamiliar experiences.
The word you’d use for a (relatively) buried childhood memory that returns to you along with a strange feeling is nostalgia. Though that’s not to say that nostalgia and the numious are mutually exclusive - if anything, nostalgia could be counted as a type of numinous feeling.
But what numinous feelings have in common is their relative rarity - you don’t get them all the time. If somehow you managed to perpetuate the same numinous feeling using the same trigger, I would think that the feeling would die out. Part of the definition of numinous feeling is mystery, which isn’t going to perpetuate once triggers become familiar (provided the cause of such mystery was solvable and tangible). Nostalgia seems to dissipate with increased familiarity too, despite the necessary minimal level of familiarity for something to be nostalgic. But it must be minimal, and distant.
When I get mysterious feelings, it’s usually to do with a certain rare feel in the air, accompanied by a sense of far-spread quiet and a pleasant solitude - even if people are around. But it’s not the quiet and solitude by themselves as I get them all the time - it’s the rare and therefore special aspect of the feeling that seems akin to awe, and there’s a certain mild but significant tension involved too.
Beauty is often conflated with awe, which takes one aback and puts one off guard - leaving one open and vulnerable, and thus more receptive. Feeling awe in this way is very closely associated with humility - it leaves one feeling somewhat under the control of that which causes the numinous feeling. A knowledge that any others around are humbled (or would be humbled if they wre there) can also be infectious. Though even a lack of knowledge of why something ought to be numinous can increase numinous feeling. A “lack of being able to put your finger on it” is very much an element of it, which is a lot of what makes the question so intriguing.
I would say exposure to a rare, mysterious beauty causes numinous feelings.
Rudolph Otto devoted an interesting book to this question entitled “The Idea of the Holy” (1917). He described the numinous as a holy place or thing that must be mysterious in a way that evokes a sense of terror and fascination at the same time.
Yes, that’s a lot more like it. Nostalgia is very personal, but whatever else numinous feelings are, they are not personal. Perhaps the exact opposite. In most cases anyway.
I’m not sure I’d use the word “terror”, perhaps “awe” might be better. But the concepts are certainly linked though, since we have the words “awesome” and “awful”, which, in origin, mean pretty much the same thing.
…Or lack of power by the perceiving mind in relation to the object of its perception.
The mind of an adult is more impressionable when it is semi-conscious, or weakened.
Perhaps. It’s not so much a sense of powerlessness I feel at numinous places, though, as of being part of a much bigger whole.
I knew a man who was molested in the showers (by a woman) when he was a very young child. As a mature adult, there was no greater torment to the sensation of water against his skin. There were no "special"places for him that I knew of… but he enjoyed talking in public places. This produced numinous feelings for him.
I think the numinous is an experience felt in the presence of fear (of the unknown), curiosity, and beauty. All three attributes must be present and are also the result of our conditioning (prior experiences). Next time you feel it … stop… and observe what the body is doing. You will have slight chill and yet will be strangely attracted to it. Stay there for three months and it will become part of the familiar furniture we clutter our lives with.
I get this feeling with the smell of old books in an old library but only when an old librarian present.
Well Otto used the Latin phrase “mysterium tremendum et fascinans”. He described the numinous in terms of awfulness, terror, dread, awe, and absolute unapproachability and otherness. One senses one’s own nothingness in contrast to numinous power. He claimed that to the degree Christianity had stripped the Holy of it’s terrible power, it had lessened it’s ability to evoke numinous feelings.
Did he try to determine which things in a particular place or environment give rise to these feelings? It seems almost random, except that , for me at least, it’s always outdoors.
An encounter with ultimate reality. Pretty much any person, place or thing can be imbued with numinosity.