Carl Jung on “Numinous” – Anthology

Since he is psychologically an archetype of the Self, his divinity only confirms that the Self is numinous, a sort of god, or having some share in the divine nature ~Carl Jung, CW 5, Para 612

This ritual serves to remind us of the original numinosity of fire-making, but apart from that it has no practical significance. The anamnesis of fire-making is on a level with the recollection of the ancestors among primitives and of the gods at a more civilized stage ~Carl Jung, CW 5, Para 250

Since he is psychologically an archetype of the Self, his divinity only confirms that the Self is numinous, a sort of god, or having some share in the divine nature ~Carl Jung, CW 5, Para 612

The projection of the mother-imago upon water endows the water with a number of numinous or magical qualities peculiar to the mother. A good example of this is the baptismal water symbolism in the Church ~Carl Jung, CW 5, Para 320

The archetypes are the numinous, structural elements of the psyche and possess a certain autonomy and specific energy which enables them to attract, out of the conscious mind, those contents which are best suited to themselves ~Carl Jung, CW 5, Para 344

What is drawn up is a numinous, previously unconscious content which would remain dark were it not interpreted by the voice from above as the birth of a god. This type of experience recurs in the baptism [Christ’s] in the Jordan (Matthew 3: 17) ~Carl Jung, CW 5, Para 349

Since he [Marduk] is psychologically an archetype of the Self, his divinity only confirms that the Self is numinous, a sort of god, or having some share in the divine nature ~Carl Jung, CW 5, Para 612

It not infrequently happens that the archetype appears in the form of a spirit in dreams or fantasy products, or even comports itself like a ghost. There is a mystical aura about its numinosity, and it has a corresponding effect upon the emotions. . .. Often it drives with unexampled passion and remorseless logic towards its goal and draws the subject under its spell, from which despite the most desperate resistance he is unable, and finally no longer even willing, to break free, because the experience brings with it a depth and fullness of meaning that was unthinkable before. ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Para 405

Numinosity, however, is wholly outside conscious volition, for it transports the subject into the state of rapture, which is a state of will-less surrender. ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Para 383.

… number and synchronicity… were… always brought into connection with one another,… both possess numinosity and mystery as their common characteristics. Number has invariably been used to characterize some numinous object, and all numbers from 1 to 9 are ‘sacred,’ just as 10, 12, 13, 14, 28, 32, and 40 have a special significance. ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Para 870.

[For the alchemists] they were seeds of light broadcast in the chaos…the seed plot of a world to come…One would have to conclude from these alchemical visions that the archetypes have about them a certain effulgence or quasi-consciousness, and that numinosity entails luminosity ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Para 388.

Everything the anima touches becomes numinous – unconditional, dangerous, taboo, magical … She affords the most convincing reasons for not prying into the unconscious, an occupation that would break down our moral inhibitions and unleash forces that had better been left unconscious and undisturbed. ~Carl Jung, CW 9i, Para 59

Everything the anima touches becomes numinous – unconditional, dangerous, taboo, magical. ~Carl Jung, CW 9i, Para 59

Usually the mandalas express religious, i.e., numinous, thoughts and ideas, or, in their stead, philosophical ones ~Carl Jung, CW 9i, Para 645.

The shadow, for instance, usually has a decidedly negative feeling-value, while the anima, like the animus, has more of a positive one. Whereas the shadow is accompanied by more or less definite and describable feeling-tones, the anima and animus exhibit feeling qualities that are harder to define. Mostly they are felt to be fascinating or numinous. Often they are surrounded by an atmosphere of sensitivity, touchy reserve, secretiveness, painful intimacy, and even absoluteness. The relative autonomy of the anima- and animus-figures expresses itself in these qualities ~Carl Jung, CW 9ii, Para 53.

The centering of the image on hell, which at the same time is God, is grounded on the experience that highest and lowest both come from the depths of the soul, and either bring the frail vessel of consciousness to shipwreck or carry it safely to port, with little or no assistance from us. The experience of this “centre” is therefore a numinous one in its own right ~Carl Jung, CW 9ii, Para 209.

Since the archetypes usually have a certain numinosity, they can arouse just that fascination which is accompanied by synchronistic phenomena ~Carl Jung, CW 9ii, Para 287.

Psychologically, however, the idea of God’s[unknownness], or of the [inconceivable god or god without conception], is of the utmost importance, because it identifies the Deity with the numinosity of the unconscious. The atman / purusha philosophy of the East and, as we have seen, Meister Eckhart in the West both bear witness to this ~Carl Jung, CW 9ii, Para 303.

Assertions of this kind are manifestations of the psyche which belong to our human nature, and there is no psychic wholeness without them, even though one can grant them no more than subjective validity. Thus the vox Dei hypothesis is another subjective exclamation, whose purpose it is to underline the numinous character of the moral reaction. Conscience is a manifestation of mana, of the “extraordinarily powerful,” a quality which is the especial peculiarity of archetypal ideas. For, in so far as the moral reaction is only apparently identical with the suggestive effect of the moral code, it falls within the sphere of the collective unconscious, exemplifying an archetypal pattern of behaviour reaching down into the animal psyche. ~Carl Jung, CW 10, Para 846

Anything that comes upon me with this intensity I experience as numinous, no matter whether I call it divine or devilish or just “fate.” ~Carl Jung, CW 10, Para 871

If we could look into the psyche of the yucca moth, for instance, we would find in it a pattern of ideas, of a numinous or fascinating character, which not only compels the moth to carry out its fertilizing activity on the yucca plant but helps it to “recognize” the total situation ~Carl Jung, CW 10, Para 547

But the real [secrets] come to him [man] out of the depths of the unconscious, and then he may reveal things which he ought really to have kept secret. Here again we see the numinous character of the reality in the background. It is not we who have secrets, it is the real secrets that have us ~Carl Jung, CW 10, Para 886

Wherever we find it, the archetype has a compelling force which it derives from the unconscious, and whenever its effect becomes conscious it has a distinctly numinous quality. There is never any conscious invention or cogitation, though speculations about the Trinity have often been accused of this. But collective and, above all, manifestly archetypal ideas can never be derived from the personal sphere. If Communism, for instance, refers to Engels, Marx, Lenin, and so on as the “fathers” of the movement, it does not know that it is reviving an archetypal order of society that existed even in primitive times, thereby explaining, incidentally, the “religious” and “numinous” (i.e., fanatical) character of Communism. Neither did the Church Fathers know that their Trinity had a prehistory dating back several thousand years ~Carl Jung, CW 11, Para 222

Thus the history of the Trinity presents itself as the gradual crystallization of an archetype that moulds the anthropomorphic conceptions of father and son, of life, and of different persons into an archetypal and numinous figure, the “Most Holy Three-in-One.” The contemporary witnesses of these events apprehended it as something that modern psychology would call a psychic presence outside consciousness. If there is a consensus of opinion in respect of an idea, as there is here and always has been, then we are entitled to speak of a collective presence. Similar “presences” today are the Fascist and Communist ideologies, the one emphasizing the power of the chief, and the other communal ownership of goods in a primitive society ~Carl Jung, CW 11, Para 224

The numinous experience of the individuation process is, on the archaic level, the prerogative of shamans and medicine men; later, of the physician, prophet, and priest; and finally, at the civilized stage, of philosophy and religion …. The shaman’s experience of sickness, torture, death, and regeneration implies, at a higher level, the idea of being made whole through sacrifice, of being changed by transubstantiation and exalted into a pneumatic man in a word, of apotheosis. ~Carl Jung, CW 11, Para 448.

Since an archetype always possesses a certain numinosity, the integration of the numen generally produces an inflation of the subject. It is therefore entirely in accord with psychological expectations that Goethe should dub his Faust a Superman. In recent times this type has extended beyond Nietzsche into the field of political psychology, and its incarnation in man has had all the consequences that might have been expected to follow from such a misappropriation of power ~Carl Jung, CW 11, Para 472

In Milton’s time these ideas were very much in the air, forming part of the general stock of culture, and there were not a few Masters who realized that their philosophical stone was none other than the “total man.” The Satan-Prometheus parallel shows clearly enough that Milton’s devil stands for the essence of human individuation and thus comes within the scope of psychology. This close proximity, as we know, proved a danger not only to the metaphysical status of Satan, but to that of other numinous figures as well. ~Carl Jung, CW 11 Para 471

He [A Patient] simply could not “quench the fire” and finally he had to admit the incomprehensibly numinous character of his experience. He had to confess that the unquenchable fire was “holy.” This was the sine qua non of his cure. ~Carl Jung, CW 11, Para 74

It [the cross] is, in fact, one of the prime symbols of order, as I have shown elsewhere. In the domain of psychological processes it functions as an organizing center, and in states of psychic disorder caused by an invasion of unconscious contents it appears as a mandala divided into four. No doubt this was a frequent phenomenon in early Christian times, and not only in Gnostic circles. Gnostic introspection could hardly fail, therefore, to perceive the numinosity of this archetype and be duly impressed by it. For the Gnostics the cross had exactly the same function that the atman or Self has always had for the East. This realization is one of the central experiences of Gnosticism. ~Carl Jung, CW 11, Para 433

In Milton’s time these ideas were very much in the air, forming part of the general stock of culture, and there were not a few Masters who realized that their philosophical stone was none other than the “total man.” The Satan-Prometheus parallel shows clearly enough that Milton’s devil stands for the essence of human individuation and thus comes within the scope of psychology. This close proximity, as we know, proved a danger not only to the metaphysical status of Satan, but to that of other numinous figures as well. ~Carl Jung, CW 11, Para 471

The numinosum is either a quality belonging to a visible object or the influence of an invisible presence that causes a peculiar alteration of consciousness. ~Carl Jung, CW 11, Para 6

We might say, then, that the term “religion” designates the attitude peculiar to a consciousness which has been changed by experience of the numinosum.  ~Carl Jung, CW 11, Para 9

There is religious sentimentality instead of the numinosum of divine experience. This is the well-known characteristic of a religion that has lost its living mystery.  ~Carl Jung, CW 11, Para 52

The psychological equivalent of this theme is the projection of a highly fascinating unconscious content which, like all such contents, exhibits a numinous “divine” or “sacred” quality. Alchemy set itself the task of acquiring this “treasure hard to attain” and of producing it in visible form, as the physical gold or the panacea or the transforming tincture in so far as the art still busied itself in the laboratory. ~Carl Jung, CW 12 Para 448

The psychological equivalent of this theme is the projection of a highly fascinating unconscious content which, like all such contents, exhibits a numinous “divine” or “sacred” quality. Alchemy set itself the task of acquiring this “treasure hard to attain” and of producing it in visible form, as the physical gold or the panacea or the transforming tincture in so far as the art still busied itself in the laboratory ~Carl Jung, CW 12, Para 448

We do not devalue statements that originally were intended to be metaphysical when we demonstrate their psychic nature; on the contrary, we confirm their factual character. But, by treating them as psychic phenomena, we remove them from the inaccessible realm of metaphysics, about which nothing verifiable can be said, and these disposes of the impossible question as to whether they are “true” or not. We take our stand simply and solely on the facts, recognizing that the archetypal structure of the unconscious will produce, over and over again and irrespective of tradition, those figures which reappear in the history of all epochs and all peoples, and will endow them with the same significance and numinosity that have been theirs from the beginning. ~Carl Jung, CW 14, Para 558

As the dreamer himself remarked, the dream had a numinous quality, and this is quite understandable in view of its meaning: it repeats the miracle of the phoenix, of transformation and rebirth (the transformation of the nigredo into the albedo, of unconsciousness into “illumination”) as described in the verses from the Rosarium philosophorum: ~Carl Jung, CW 14, Para 82

Since energy never vanishes, the emotional energy that manifests itself in all numinous phenomena does not cease to exist when it disappears from consciousness. . .. It reappears in unconscious manifestations, in symbolic happenings that compensate the disturbance of the conscious psyche. ~Carl Jung, CW 18, Para 583

Our psyche is profoundly disturbed by the loss o moral and spiritual values that have hitherto kept our lie in order…Our consciousness has deprived itself of the organs by which the auxiliary contributions of the instincts and the unconscious could be assimilated. These organs were the numinous symbols, held holy by common consent. ~Carl Jung, CW 18, Para 583

We have stripped all things of their mystery and numinosity nothing is holy any longer. ~Carl Jung, CW 18, Para 94

I merely hold that metaphysics cannot be an object of science, which does not mean that numinous experiences do not happen frequently, particularly in the course of an analysis or in the life of a truly religious individual. ~Carl Jung, CW 18, Para 1591

I am well satisfied with the fact that I know experiences which I cannot avoid calling numinous or divine. ~Carl Jung, CW 18, Para 1589

“Cultural” symbols, on the other hand, are those that have expressed “eternal truths” or are still in use in many religions. They have gone through many transformations and even a process of more or less conscious elaboration, and in this way have become the représentations collectives of civilized societies. Nevertheless, they have retained much of their original numinosity, and they function as positive or negative “prejudices” with which the psychologist has to reckon very seriously ~Carl Jung, CW 18, Para 579

 

Nobody can dismiss these numinous factors on merely rational grounds. They are important constituents of our mental make-up and vital forces in the building up of human society, and they cannot be eradicated without serious loss. When they are repressed or neglected, their specific energy disappears into the unconscious with unpredictable consequences. The energy that appears to have been lost revives and intensifies whatever is uppermost in the unconscious tendencies, perhaps, that have hitherto had no chance to express themselves, or have not been allowed an uninhibited existence in our consciousness. They form an ever-present destructive “shadow.” Even tendencies that might be able to exert a beneficial influence turn into veritable demons when they are repressed. This is why many well-meaning people are understandably afraid of the unconscious, and incidentally of psychology ~Carl Jung, CW 18, Para 580

 

If, for instance, one has to deal with a dream in which the number 13 occurs, the question is: Does the dreamer habitually believe in the unfavourable nature of the number, or does the dream merely allude to people who still indulge in such superstitions? The answer will make a great difference to the interpretation. In the former case, the dreamer is still under the spell of the unlucky 13, and therefore will feel most uncomfortable in room no. 13 or sitting at a table with thirteen people. In the latter case, 13 may not be more than a chiding or disparaging remark. In one case it is a still numinous representation; in the other it is stripped of its original emotionality and has assumed the innocuous character of a mere piece of indifferent information ~Carl Jung, CW 18, Para 588

 

This illustrates the way in which archetypes appear in practical experience. In the first case they appear in their original form they are images and at the same time emotions. One can speak of an archetype only when these two aspects coincide. When there is only an image, it is merely a word-picture, like a corpuscle with no electric charge. It is then of little consequence, just a word and nothing more. But if the image is charged with numinosity, that is, with psychic energy, then it becomes dynamic and will produce consequences ~Carl Jung, CW 18, 589

The mere use of words is futile if you do not know what they stand for. This is particularly true in psychology, where we speak of archetypes like the anima and animus, the wise old man, the great mother, and so on. You can know about all the saints, sages, prophets, and other godly men, and all the great mothers of the world, but if they are mere images whose numinosity you have never experienced, it will be as if you were talking in a dream, for you do not know what you are talking about. The words you use are empty and valueless, and they gain life and meaning only when you try to learn about their numinosity, their relationship to the living individual. Then only do you begin to understand that the names mean very little, but that the way they are related to you is all-important ~Carl Jung, CW 18, Para 590

In infantile amnesia, one finds strange admixtures of mythological fragments that also often appear in later psychoses. Images of this kind are highly numinous and therefore very important. If such recollections reappear in adult life, they may in some cases cause profound psychological disturbances, while in other people they can produce astonishing cures or religious conversions. Often they bring back a piece of life, missing for a long time, that enriches the life of an individual ~Carl Jung, CW 18, Para 594

Not only is the existence of archetypes denied, but even those people who do admit their existence usually treat them as if they were mere images and forget that they are living entities that make up a great part of the human psyche. As soon as the interpreter strips them of their numinosity, they lose their life and become mere words. It is then easy enough to link them together with other mythological representations, and so the process of limitless substitution begins; one glides from archetype to archetype, everything means everything, and one has reduced the whole process to absurdity. All the corpses in the world are chemically identical, but living individuals are not ~Carl Jung, CW 18, Para 596

It is true that the forms of archetypes are to a considerable extent interchangeable, but their numinosity is and remains a fact. It represents the value of an archetypal event. This emotional value must be kept in mind and allowed for throughout the whole intellectual process of interpretation. The risk of losing it is great, because thinking and feeling are so diametrically opposed that thinking abolishes feeling-values and vice versa. Psychology is the only science that has to take the factor of value (feeling) into account, since it forms the link between psychic events on the one hand, and meaning and life on the other ~Carl Jung, CW 18, Para 596

It is unnecessary to continue this long list of phenomena of assimilation which follow without interruption, so to speak, from the remotest times to our own day. This proves irrefutably that Elijah is a living archetype. In psychology, we call it a constellated archetype, that is to say one that is more or less generally active, giving birth to new forms of assimilation. One of these phenomena was the choice of Carmel for the foundation of the first convent in the twelfth century. The mountain had long been a numinous place as the seat of the Canaanite deities Baal and Astarte. (Cf. the duality of Elijah, the transformation into a hetaira.) YHWH supplants them as inhabitant of the sacred place (Eli-yah like Khadir a kind of personification of YHWH or Allah. Cf. the temperament and the fire of the prophet!). The numinous inhabitant of Carmel is chosen as the patron of the order. The choice is curious and unprecedented ~Carl Jung, CW 18, Para 1529

We fear our serpent,” he said, ”as we also fear the numinosum – so we run from it. Will we have to give the world and God is ourselves as we are. But this is the hardest of all tasks. Most of us want others to do it for us, to carry us along. ~Carl Jung, C. G. Jung, Emma Jung and Toni Wolff – A Collection of Remembrances., Page 178.

The “Bear-skinned” comes into the category of unorthodox beings, more specifically that of werewolves, “doctor animals,” leopard men, and “Beriserkr.” The man charged with mana, or numinous man, has theriomorphic attributes, since he surpasses the ordinary man not only upwards but downwards. Heroes have snake’s eyes (Nordic: ormr i auga), are half man half serpent (Kekrops, Erechtheus), have snake-souls and snake’s skin; the medicine-man can change into all sorts of animals. Among the American Indians, certain animals appear to the primitive medical candidate; there is an echo of this in the dove of the Holy Ghost at the unearthly baptismal birth (when the Christ came to Jesus). Another echo is the “Brother Wolf” of St. Francis. Characteristic of the Germanic mentality of Brother Klaus is the figure of the pilgrim reminiscent of Wotan, for whom “die Wütenden” [the raging ones], the Bear-skinned, are an excellent match. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. I, Page 364

You are quite right; the main interest of my work is not concerned with the treatment of neurosis but rather with the approach to the numinous. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. I, Page 377.

My modus procedendi is naturally empirical: how to give a satisfactory description of the phenomenon “Christ” from the standpoint of psychological experience? The existing statements about Christ are, in part, about an empirical man, but for the other and greater part about a mythological God-man. Out of these different statements you can reconstruct a personality who, as an empirical man, was identical with the traditional Son of Man type, as presented in the then widely read Book of Enoch.  Wherever such identities occur, characteristic archetypal effects appear, that is, numinosity and synchronistic phenomena, hence tales of miracles are inseparable from the Christ figure. The former explains the irresistible suggestive power of his personality, for only the one who is “gripped” has a “gripping” effect on others; the latter occur chiefly in the field of force of an archetype and, because of their aspatial and atemporal character, are acausal, i.e., “miracles” …. The (Ethiopic) Book of Enoch, 2nd1st cent. B.C., the most important of the apocryphal or pseudo-apocryphal Biblical writings. (There is also a Slavonic Book of Enoch and a Book of the Secrets of Enoch.) In Charles, The Apocrypha and Pseudepigrapha of the Old Testament in English, II (1913). ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 21

What I mean by this is that every epoch of our biological life has a numinous character: birth, puberty, marriage, illness, death, etc. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 208-209.

Rites give satisfaction to the collective and numinous aspects of the moment, beyond their purely personal significance. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 209.

Although I have never taken the drug [Mescalin] myself nor given it to another individual, I have at least devoted 40 years of my life to the study of that psychic sphere which is disclosed by the said drug; that is the sphere of numinous experiences. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 222.

What is more, medical experience shows that it is advisable to take numinous experiences seriously, as they have a great deal to do with the fate of the individual. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 250.

For me “God” is on the one hand a mystery that cannot be unveiled, and to which I must attribute only one quality: that it exists in the form of a particular psychic event which I feel to be numinous and cannot trace back to any sufficient cause lying within my field of experience. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 255.

“God” in this sense is a biological, instinctual and elemental “model,” an archetypal “arrangement” of individual, contemporary and historical contents, which, despite its numinosity, is and must be exposed to intellectual and moral criticism, just like the image of the “evolving” God or of Yahweh or the Summum Bonum or the Trinity. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 255.

Mythology as a vital psychic phenomenon is as necessary as it is unavoidable. In this discussion, it seems to me, the gnostic danger of ousting the unknowable and incomprehensible and unutterable God by philosophems and mythologems must be clearly recognized, so that nothing is shoved in between human consciousness and the primordial numinous experience. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 256.

The reason why mythic statements invariably lead to word-magic is that the archetype possesses a numinous autonomy and has a psychic life of its own. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 264.

By “religion,” then, I mean a kind of attitude which takes careful and conscientious account of certain numinous feelings, ideas, and events and reflects upon them; and by “belief” or “creed” I mean an organized community which collectively professes a specific belief or a specific ethos and mode of behaviour. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 484.

Only numinous experiences retain their original simplicity or oneness which still gives us intimations of the Unus Mundus. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 509.

According to my view, one should rather say that the term “God” should only be applied in case of numinous inconceivability. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 512.

“God” therefore is in the first place a mental image equipped with instinctual “numinosity,” i.e., an emotional value bestowing the characteristic autonomy of the affect on the image. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 522.

Jung pointed out that no alchemist ever laid claim to having gone beyond the second stage, but he emphasized that how far the alchemist succeeded in his endeavors is really much less important than the fact that he was gripped by the numinous archetype behind his effort, so that he went on trying without interruption throughout his whole life. ~Barbara Hannah, Jung: His Life and His Work, Page 227

Modern man does not understand how much his “rationalism” (which has destroyed his capacity to respond to numinous symbols and ideas) has put him at the mercy of the psychic “underworld.” He has freed himself from “superstition” (or so he believes), but in the process, he has lost his spiritual values to a positively dangerous degree. His moral and spiritual tradition has disintegrated, and he is now paying for this break-up in world-wide disorientation and dissociation. ~Carl Jung, Man and His Symbols, Page 94

The universal hero myth always refers to a powerful man or god-man who vanquishes evil in the form of dragons, serpents, monsters, demons, and so on, and who liberates his people from destruction and death. The narration or ritual repetition of sacred texts and ceremonies, and the worship of such a figure with dances, music, hymns, prayers, and sacrifices, grip the audience with numinous emotions and exalt the individual to an identification with the hero. ~Carl Jung; Man and His Symbols; Page 68.

It is important to have a secret, a premonition of things unknown. It fills life with something impersonal, a numinosum. A man who has never experienced that has missed something important. He must sense that he lives in a world in which in some respects is mysterious; that things happen and can be experienced which remain inexplicable; that not everything which happens can be anticipated. The unexpected and the incredible belong in this world. Only then is life whole. For me the world has from the beginning been infinite and ungraspable. – Jung, Memories, Dreams, Reflections, p. 356

Certainly the ego and its will have a great part to play in life; but what the ego wills is subject in the highest degree to the interference, in ways of which the ego is usually unaware, of the autonomy and numinosity of archetypal processes. ~Carl Jung, MDR, Page 353

Archetypal statements are based upon instinctive preconditions and have nothing to do with reason; they are neither rationally grounded nor can they be banished by rational arguments. They have always been part of the world scene representations collectives, as Levy-Bruhl rightly called them. Certainly the ego and its will have a great part to play in life; but what the ego wills is subject in the highest degree to the interference, in ways of which the ego is usually unaware, of the autonomy and numinosity of archetypal processes. Practical consideration of these processes is the essence of religion, insofar as religion can be approached from a psychological point of view. ~Carl Jung MDR; Page 353

I had a strong intuition that for him [Freud] sexuality was a sort of numinosum. ~Carl Jung, Memories, Dreams and Reflections, Page 150

Although, for Freud, sexuality was undoubtedly a numinosum, his terminology and theory seemed to define it exclusively as a biological function. ~Carl Jung, Memories, Dreams and Reflections, Page 152

Certainly the ego and its will have a great part to play in life; but what the ego wills is subject in the highest degree to the interference, in ways of which the ego is usually unaware, of the autonomy and numinosity of archetypal processes. ~Carl Jung, MDR, Page 353

Religious experience is numinous, as Rudolf Otto calls it, and for me, as a psychologist, this experience differs from all others in the way it transcends the ordinary categories of time, space and causality. ~Carl Jung, C.G. Jung Speaking, Page 230.

What so much distinguishes him, besides his enormous scholarship, is his ability to let the ucs. speak and his respect for the numinosity of the ucs. ~James Kirsch, Jung-Kirsch Letters, Page 211

The archetypes are complementary and equivalents of the “outside” world and therefore possess “cosmic” character. Thins explains their numinosity and godlikeness. ~Carl Jung, CW 9, Page 196.

At this numinous instant the men would hurry out of their huts, spit into their hands, and hold their palms up to the sun with great emotion. Why they did this they could not say. For them it was enough to perform the rite of worship. The act of worship evidently no longer required any theological explanation. And just as the rising dawn represented the divine presence, so too did the first, equally golden, shimmering crescent of the new moon. Jung translated the wordless prayer thus: “I offer to God my living soul.” ~Carl Jung, “Jung” by Gerhard Wehr, Page 239-40

… my main concern has been to investigate, over and above [ the personal significance and biological function [ which Freud attributed to sexuality], its spiritual aspect and its numinous meaning, and thus to explain what Freud was so fascinated by but was unable to grasp. ~ Carl Jung, “Jung” by Gerhard Wehr, Page 159.

One longs for the Red Book to be published in facsimile. It is Jung’s first and most immediate testament, and infinitely evocative. When I first saw it, my eyes were stung by its beauty. I thought there was something numinous about it. A kind of Merlinesque gift seemed to have determined the deep colour and grave proportions.  ~Laurens van der Post; Jung and the Story of our Time, Page 180

You are quite right: the main interest of my work is not concerned with the treatment of neurosis, but rather with the approach to the numinous. But the fact is that the approach to the numinous is the real therapy, and inasmuch as you attain to the numinous experience, you are released from the curse of pathology. Even the very disease takes on a numinous character. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. I, Aug. 31, 1945

… at the source of the great confessional religions as well as of many smaller mystical movements we find individual historical personalities whose lives were distinguished by numinous experiences. ~Carl Jung, C.G. Jung: His Myth in Our Time, Page 11

By the early 1950s Jung agreed with Pauli that numbers undoubtedly were archetypes and added that they could “amplify themselves immediately and freely through mythological statements,” such as the one attributed to Maria Prophetissa. The common ground between physics and psychology was not to do with parallel concepts “but rather in that ancient spiritual ‘dynamis’ of numbers…. The archetypal numinosity of number expresses itself on the one hand in Pythagorean, Gnostic, and Kabbalistic (Gematria!) speculation, and the other hand in the arithmetical method of the mantic [divinatory] procedures in the I Ching, in geomancy and horoscopy.” This Jung wrote to Pauli in 1955.  ~Arthur Miller, Praise of 137: Jung and Pauli a Scientific Obsession, Page 167

In the first half of the interview, von Franz destroyed my image of Pauli as a serious, spiritual seeker. According to her, he had always avoided an encounter with the numinous. ~ David Eldred, Homage to MLVF, Page 236

The first was from a letter of August 8, 1945, in which Jung replies, “You are quite right, the main interest of my work is not concern with the treatment of neurosis but rather with the approach to the numinous.”  ~Tom Laughlin, Homage to MLVF, Page 322

“But the fact is,” Jung went on, “that the approach to the numinous is the real therapy, and inasmuch as you would attain to the numinous experiences, you are released from the curse of pathology. Even the very disease takes on a numinous character.” ~Tom Laughlin, Homage to MLVF, Page 322

Modern man’s outlook has withdrawn from a heaven that no longer casts light on him and has returned to earth and to himself, and precisely because of this light that shines from below out of darkness and depth is becoming more and more valuable and significant to him. If we now consider the emerging, numinous images with the appropriate religious care, this light is a female light from the earth, a light of Sophia. But this light of Sophia is identical with a newly emerging “Spirit of the Earth”.  ~Erich Neumann, Life and Work of Erich Neumann, Page 171

The spontaneity of the nonego, which manifests itself in the creative process and is by nature numinous. The encounter with the numinous constitutes the “other side” of the development of consciousness and is by nature “mystical”.  ~Erich Neumann, Life and Work of Erich Neumann, Page 182

I fear I am not a good Jew, although I am not quite certain, but on my path through life I have learned to experience and to venerate the divine as something formless and creative. This path in life has perhaps brought me closer to an understanding of the self-revelations of YHWH, in whose sign the Exodus from Egypt took place and every exodus from Egypt takes place, namely the strange divine name Ehyeh asher ehyeh: I am who I am. Since every human being can speak only of his own experience when the question of meaning arises, I, too, can speak only of my personal experience and say what this Ehyeh means to me. …. But I am convinced that the point of consciousness with which I as an ego am endowed springs directly from this Ehyeh asher ehyeh, I am who I am, which is the name of God. This numinous I-point of consciousness which has me, which engenders me in every moment as an ego, is the actual self-ego-structure of my imperishable being. ~Erich Neumann, Life and Work of Erich Neumann, Page 188

In the Psyche, which Rascher will send you as soon as it comes out (which should happen any day), a similar process of an archetypal nature seems to me to exist. But taking place in the feminine and at the edge of antiquity. But I have only been able to hint at it and for sure it is a problem of apparently smaller numinosity. But who knows, even the divine daughter is not without deep significance. The rebirth of Sophia in ecstasy is still quite puzzling to me, but there is something about it.  ~Carl Jung, Life and Work of Erich Neumann, Page 235

It is no accident that we speak of the “soul” of man as well as woman … This psyche as the whole of the personality must be characterized in man as well as in woman as feminine, because it experiences that which transcends the psychic as numinous, as “outside” and “totally different” … Where this psyche undergoes experience, the symbolically masculine structure of the ego and of consciousness seems, both in man and woman, to be so relativized and reduced that the feminine character of psychic is predominant. Thus the mystical birth of the godhead in the man does not take place as birth of the anima, i.e., of a partial structure of psychic life, but as the birth of totality, i.e., of the psyche.  ~Erich Neumann, Life and Work of Erich Neumann, Page 242

But whereas the mythological figures appear as pale phantoms and relics of a long past age which has become strange to us, the religious statement represents an immediate ‘numinous’ experience. It is a living mythologem.one making a serious attempt to understand dreams. ~Carl Jung, God and the Unconscious, Page 14

This is a crucial point for the real magic of the Tibetan: the imagination of magic projectiles. They are conjured up for the purpose of this numinous emanation. It is granted, apart from all these forms, that one can also create magical entities through yoga, projectiles that are taken as vajra, which can be imaginally produced so as to harm certain people or even kill them. ~Carl Jung, Psychology of Yoga and Meditation, Page 120