THE fact that Otto adheres to the idea that religion has undergone a gradual process of evolution means that he is always prepared to discuss the numinous as it appears in what many Christians would reduce to a comparatively “pagan” context, particularly in light of his travels around the world and great familiarity with a multitude of different spiritual practices.

At the same time, the earliest forms of religion strike him as very primitive in character:

It must be admitted that when religious evolution first begins sundry curious phenomena confront us, preliminary to religion proper and deeply affecting its subsequent course. Such are the notions of ‘clean’ and ‘unclean’, belief in and worship of the dead, belief in and worship of ‘souls’ or ‘spirits’, magic, fairy tale, and myth, homage to natural objects, whether frightful or extraordinary, noxious or advantageous, the strange idea of ‘power’ (orenda or mana), fetishism and totemism, worship of animal and plant, daemonism and polydaemonism. Different as these things are, they are all haunted by a common—and that a numinous—element, which is easily identifiable. (p.117)

This is not to suggest that such manifestations arose out of the numinous directly, of course, only that the non-rational element is clearly apparent in such cases and that Otto regards this as a preliminary stage on the path to religious development.

Beginning with magic, he explains that it often has a purely natural source that is based on a “universal animism.” What Otto means by this is that when an individual or community perceives the entirety of nature as something moving and alive there is an inevitable identification with it. He thoroughly discounts the idea that this is a “supernatural” phenomenon, however, for – according to him – connecting events with the laws of nature is merely an abstraction and thus he separates magic from what is considered to be a more tangible belief in either spirits or the soul. As Otto himself notes, this

quality can be indicated solely through the ‘daemonic’, a character ascribed to certain definite operations of force, be they strong or weak, extraordinary or quite trivial, the work of a soul or a ‘non-soul’. The quality can be only suggested through that unique element of feeling, the feeling of ‘uncanniness’, of which we have already spoken, whose positive content cannot be defined conceptually, and can only be indicated by that mental response to it which we called ‘shuddering’. (pp.118-9)

Similarly, in those cases which involve the worship of the dead the factor of tremendum remains in terms of a corpse evoking both a distaste for putrefaction and an accompanying fear to preserve one’s own existence. Otto makes the point that animals respond in the same fashion, indicating that the elevation of the deceased is a natural reaction. Despite this universal phenomenon, the philosopher is more than prepared to entertain the idea that the numinous also appears in such a context and that “folk psychology” is such that there have been people who have developed the ability to converse with the dead and inspire a sense of “awe” in others.

As for souls and spirits, things that Otto might be expected to view as a positive step away from the animism of the primitive, he is of the opinion that their more supernatural character does not stem from their more ethereal nature but as a result of inspiring that same sense of “dread” and “awe” that we have already encountered in the mysterium tremendum. Not that souls and spirits can be entirely separated from nature, however, given that they can still be the product of a human mind. Nonetheless, the presence of the numinous is still evident.

Otto also mentions the idea of power as it manifests among both the Pacific Islanders and North American Indians, something which is often centred around taking possession of an object by consuming it. However, whilst the intention is for the individual

to eat the heart or liver of an animal or a man in order to make his power and strength one’s own—this is not religion but science. Our science of medicine follows a similar prescription. If the ‘power’ of a calf’s glands is good for goitre and imbecility, we do not know what virtue we may not hope to find in frogs’ brains or Jews’ livers. (p.121)

Despite the fact that Otto’s latter sentence contains a semblance of humour, he insists that power cannot have any impact on the evolution of religion if it can be explained in purely non-magical terms. Healthy eating, regardless of the circumstances, hardly relies on numinosity.

Otto also believes that fairy stories can be divided into two specific categories: those which arise out of a purely natural tendency to weave fantastic narratives, on the one hand, and the more developed tales infused with a sense of “wonder” about miraculous events involving the numinous. This theory is applied to mythology in general, but the sudden development which Otto credits with being responsible for heralding this subtle shift in emphasis involves the arrival of what he calls the “daemon”:

The most authentic form of the ‘daemon’ may be seen in those strange deities of ancient Arabia, which are properly nothing but wandering demonstrative pronouns, neither ‘given shape and feature by means of myth’, for there is in the main no mythology attached to them at all, nor ‘evolved out of nature-deities’, nor grown out of ‘souls’ or ‘spirits’, but none the less felt as deities of mighty efficacy, who are the objects of very living veneration. They are pure products of the religious consciousness itself. (p.122)

It seems rather curious that this phenomenon did not arise from the folk-consciousness of the community, but its roots are to be found in the remarkable intuition possessed by the great mystics. The most notable example being the famous Meccan prophet, Muhammad ibn Abdullah (570-632).

Otto believes that the advent of this “daemonic” quality represents the most potent expression of the numinous within the earliest forms of spirituality and that it is the result of the strong emotional content being retained. Unlike with the animistic religions of prehistory, once the “daemon” had been unleashed the sense of terror that had formerly been attributed to natural objects was transformed into a feeling of “awe” in the presence of the divine:

Indeed the clutching force and violence of the emotion so far exceeds any impressiveness contributed by the circumstances of time and place that one can often scarcely speak of an ‘impression’ at all, but at most of an encounter, serving as cue or occasion for the felt experience. This experience of eerie shuddering and awe breaks out rather from depths of the soul which the circumstantial, external impression cannot sound, and the force with which it breaks out is so disproportionate to the mere external stimulation that the eruption may be termed, if not entirely, at least very nearly, spontaneous. (pp.125-6)

One useful way to distinguish between a natural and supernatural emotion is to consider the effect that something like a haunted house has on those unfortunate enough to experience its horrors. It is not the house itself which evokes such fear among those who encounter it, but the actual presence of whatever it is that dwells there. Indeed, it is that which one perceives as “eerie” and “uncanny” which transforms a purely natural setting into something otherworldly. Needless to say, this example is somewhat profane compared to the more authentic encounters with places that are actually possessed by the numinous.

Otto makes the interesting point that when Christian missionaries attempt to preach their message to “primitive” communities they have more success with some than with others. In those examples where the religion is more readily accepted, however, it is often the case that a community finds some form of common ground between the Christian God and one of its existing deities. This is said to separate the more developed forms of “primitive” religion from those with no real understanding of the numinous at all:

And converts often come to admit that, though they had not honoured God, they had had knowledge of Him. It is, of course, true that this sort of fact can sometimes be explained as due to traditional influences, protracted from an earlier time, when the tribe in question was in contact with a higher theistic religion: the very names given to these higher beings sometimes prove as much. But even in this form the phenomenon is a very singular one. Why should ‘savages’, set in other respects in an utterly alien milieu or barbaric superstition, accept and, what is more, retain these notions, unless their own savage minds were so predisposed to them that, so far from being able to let them go, they were obliged to take at least an interest in them as a tradition and very frequently to acknowledge their authority by the felt witness of their own consciences? (p.130)

In addition, the fact that a tribe can possess such a startling foreknowledge of certain divine attributes provides further support for the a priori view of philosophy.

One thing that strikes the present writer in relation to Otto’s thoughts on the earliest appearance of the numinous is not that it became manifest on its own terms, but merely as we humans first perceived it. This, of course, is surely why he tends to attribute so many aspects of ancient religion to “natural” rather than supernatural causes. It is only later, once the non-rational has been counter-balanced by the rational, that the numinous appears in a form that Otto himself finds more palatable.