NEXT, and beneath the auspices of Otto’s expert guidance, we must turn to the three means by which the numinous deigns to express itself.

Firstly, and by far the more obvious method, is that of direct means. The numinous is not imparted in the way that a radio transmitter might send out a signal to a receiver, as it creates an awakening within the subject that defies rational explanation. It cannot be taught, for example, as a religious teacher might pass on the tenets of the faith:

This is least of all possible by mere verbal phrase or external symbol; rather we must have recourse to the way all other moods and feelings are transmitted, to a penetrative imaginative sympathy with what passes in the other person’s mind. More of the experience lives in reverent attitude and gesture, in tone and voice and demeanour, expressing its momentousness, and in the solemn devotional assembly of a congregation at prayer, than in all the phrases and negative nomenclature which we have found to designate it. (p.60)

Otto cites the example of Luther, who was convinced that no amount of “preaching, singing, telling” is capable of communicating that which can only be felt. Providing the worshipper is in possession of the “spirit of the heart,” Otto claims, his mystical capabilities need only require the slightest prod in the direction of the numinous. He or she who is familiar with religious sentiment, and who digests it in the spirit in which it is offered, is clearly more susceptible to its realisation through non-rational means.

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The second modus operandi by which the numinous expresses itself is through indirect means.

Otto devotes a considerable amount of space to this particular method and it involves the utilisation of those feelings of attachment that we associate with the “natural,” or earthly sphere. Interestingly, as we have seen with regard to the more non-rational character of the mysterium tremendum, these include those things which evoke in us a sense of dread. It may seem ironic that feelings of attachment are aroused by that which repels us, be it in a primitive or modern context, but this is undoubtedly the case:

The hard, stern, and somewhat grim pictures of the Madonna in ancient Byzantine art attract the worship of many Catholics more than the tender charm of the Madonnas of Raphael. This trait is most signally evident in the case of certain figures of gods in the Indian pantheon. Durga, the ‘great Mother’ of Bengal, whose worship can appear steeped in an atmosphere of profoundest devotional awe, is represented in the orthodox tradition with the visage of a fiend. And this same blending of appalling frightfulness and most exalted holiness can perhaps be even more clearly studied in the eleventh book of the Bhagavad-Gita, in which Vishnu—who is yet to his votaries the very principle of goodness—displays himself to Aryuna in the true height of his divinity. (p.62)

Fear and repugnance, of course, are somewhat tempered in the presence of the numinous and overtaken by more appropriate feelings of awe. This, as we have seen, relates to the effect of the tremendum. As for the mysterium, on the other hand, this comes into play through the indirect methodology that is performed by the miracle. Although the tremendum clearly appears in many of these supernatural occurrences, it is the power of mystery that assumes the role of the “wholly other” and aligns our rational consciousness with the non-rational numinous. In ancient times, miracles almost came to be expected and thus dwelt just beneath the surface of everyday human experience. The fact that the world once seemed alive with mystery, possibly tells us just how far most of us have lost touch with the true reality of the spirit.

Another example of the indirect method is the way language transcends the textual or spoken boundaries of the mundane and allows certain words and phrases to function like an ideogram:

Instances of this are—the ancient traditional expressions, still retained despite their obscurity, in our Bible and hymnals; the special emotional virtue attaching to words like ‘Hallelujah’, Kyrie eleison, ‘Selah’, just because they arc ‘wholly other’ and convey no clear meaning; the Latin in the service of the Mass, felt by the Catholic to be, not a necessary evil, but something especially holy; the Sanskrit in the Buddhist Mass of China and Japan; the ‘language of the gods’ in the ritual of sacrifice in Homer; and many similar cases. (p.65)

The power of suggestion, resonating throughout the course of many centuries, serves as a psychological stimulus that propels the individual towards God.

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Thirdly, one must not underestimate the power of the numinous as it is expressed through art. Otto has already elaborated on the sublimity at work in the aesthetic realm, something that resembles one’s rendezvous with the divine, and this is no more apparent than in the field of architecture:

One can hardly escape the idea that this feeling for expression must have begun to awaken far back in the remote Megalithic Age. The motive underlying the erection of those gigantic blocks of rock, hewn or unworked, single monoliths or titanic rings of stone, as at Stonehenge, may have well been originally to localize and preserve and, as it were, to store up the numen in solid presence by magic; but the change to the motive of expression must have been from the outset far too vividly stimulated not to occur at a very early date. (p.66)

From the pyramids of Ancient Egypt to the Gothic cathedrals of the West, man’s preoccupation with expressing religiosity through monumental art has been ceaseless.

When Otto speaks of magic, he is not talking about esoteric theory as it appears in the occult grimoires and stone tablets, even less as it is practiced among witches and magicians, but of its representational value as an ideogrammatic expression of the numinous. Great art, he suggests, has the ability to illustrate the divine in all its purity without recourse to the mnemonic at all. To say that something is “magical,” is simply to announce that it is “numinous”.

The use of darkness in religious buildings is also considered sublime in the sense that it accentuates the light. This seems rather similar to the “absence of good” that one finds in Thomas Aquinas (1225-1274), whereby evil is precluded from becoming an entity in its own right. Darkness, like the intense silence that separates two pieces of music, is merely an intermediary that points to something higher. Oriental art, too, as Otto correctly notes, makes use of empty spaces and distance:

Empty distance, remote vacancy, is, as it were, the sublime in the horizontal. The wide-stretching desert, the boundless uniformity of the steppe, have real sublimity, and even in us Westerners they set vibrating chords of the numinous along with the note of the sublime, according to the principle of the association of feelings. Chinese architecture, which is essentially an art in the laying out and grouping of buildings, makes a wise and very striking use of this fact. (p.69)

This returns us once again to the similarities between Otto’s “idea of the holy” and the śūnyatā of the Buddhist “void”.

Our discussion of the numinous and its means of expression complete, we now turn to its appearance in a more hermeneutical context.