DESPITE my closing remarks in the previous section of this series, the reader should not assume that Otto is unprepared to accept that a truly spiritual dimension was present in the earliest manifestations of religion. He does, however, consider these less-developed examples to have been significantly “cruder” in nature.

It is the character of the numinous to reveal itself in gradual stages, he tells us, although

where any whole is as yet incompletely presented its earlier and partial constituent moments or elements, aroused in isolation, have naturally something bizarre, unintelligible, and even grotesque about them. This is especially true of that religious moment which would appear to have been in every case the first to be aroused in the human mind, viz. daemonic dread. (p.132)

It is difficult for Otto to imagine that barbaric elements of this kind can be equated with religion to any significant degree, or that what he refers to as a devilish and “psychological nightmare” of the tribal mind could ever form the basis of spiritual worship. At the same time, it is important to consider that the enormously varied practices of ancient societies cannot be grouped together in a single category and that they are merely “constituent elements” operating at different stages of development.

Otto believes that what we regard as animism, or “nature worship,” does not simply develop into something more refined of its own accord but that divine emotion is driving the entire process:

Only gradually, under pressure from the numinous feeling itself, are such connexions subsequently ‘spiritualized’ or ultimately altogether rejected, and not till then does the obscure content of the feeling, with its reference to absolute transcendent reality, come to light in all its integrity and self-subsistence. (p.133)

Other examples cited by Otto with regard to allegedly “cruder” forms of spirituality include many of those previously discussed: i.e. the tendency to confuse the natural with the supernatural; the “wild fanaticism” so often interpreted as religious mania; fear presented as the sublime “awe” of the numinous encounter; and the rationalising morality that misrepresents the supernatural experience:

These considerations account for the primitive and savage character of the numinous consciousness at its outset. But it must be repeated that in its content even the first stirring of ‘daemonic dread’ is a purely a priori element. In this respect it may be compared from first to last with the aesthetic judgement and the category of the beautiful. Utterly different as my mental experiences are when I recognize an object as ‘beautiful’ or as ‘horrible’, yet both cases agree in this, that I ascribe to the object an attribute that professes to interpret it, which I do not and cannot get from sense-experience, but which I rather ascribe to it by a spontaneous judgement of my own. (p.134)

This means, of course, that by ascribing a particular quality to an object that was not merely assessed by way of the senses is a form of intuitive spontaneity that simply cannot be accounted for in any experiential or objective fashion.

It is this which reshapes the mystical experience into something which, ironically, is both incomprehensible and comprehensible at the same time:

Something may be profoundly and intimately known in feeling for the bliss it brings or the agitation it produces, and yet the understanding may find no concept for it. To know and to understand conceptually are two different things, are often even mutually exclusive and contrasted. The mysterious obscurity of the numen is by no means tantamount to unknowableness. (p.135)

Perhaps, by way of conclusion, it is worth recalling the vivid symbolism of Francisco de Goya’s appropriately titled painting, The Sleep of Reason Produces Monsters (1797-99). The central figure, a man slumbering at his desk, is surrounded by a swirling cornucopia of demonic creatures that seems to reinforce Otto’s own thoughts on the importance of maintaining harmony between the rational and the non-rational.