“The Idea of the Holy” by Rudolf Otto – Chapter 9

Chapter 9 of “The Idea of the Holy” by Rudolf Otto is named ‘Means of Expression of the Numinous.’ Here is our summary.

CHAPTER 9

Means of Expression of the Numinous
Pages 62 to 73

1. Direct Means

How does the numinous express itself outwardly? How does the numinous spread from one person to another? It cannot be “taught” as if it is a set of concepts. Rather, it must be awakened. It can only be induced, incited, and aroused. [Page 62]

The best means are actual Holy situations. It is experiential. Little of it can usually be noticed in theory and dogma, or even in exhortation. The inborn capacity to receive and understand is the essential thing. If you are in the Spirit, when you read the written word, you live in the numinous. [Page 63]

2. Indirect Means

Our experiences of the fearful and dreadful provoke feelings within us. Those feelings are closely analogous to that of the tremendum. In expressing those feelings, we may indirectly express numinous awe. Similarly, horrible and dreadful images of gods can arouse feelings of authentic religious awe. [Page 64]

Our experiences of the grand or the sublime are found at higher levels. Dread is gradually overcome. We connect the sublime to the Holy. [Page 65]

The above two examples are based on the tremendum. Next Otto moves to the mysterium. Specifically, miracles. They directly speak of the ineffable, unutterable mystery at the core of the religious consciousness. [Page 65]

In the natural world, we encounter things that give us terror or wonder or astonishment. Those feelings are like the numinous. We come to see them as portents and marvels. They give rise to the notion of miracles. [Page 66]

Conversely, an experience of the numinous is mysterious. The mysterious became an untiring impulse, prompting endless invention in folk-tale and myth, saga and legend, ritual and forms of worship. Eventually those lead to the notion of the miraculous. [Page 66]

Later, people gradually dismiss the notion of the miraculous. The supernatural gets purged from religion. What is left is devotion and worship. They are made to parallel our experience of the mysterious. For example, many religions use a language which their members are fluent in. This causes a sense of mystery. [Page 67]

3. Means by which the Numinous is expressed in Art

In the arts nearly everywhere the most effective means of representing the numinous is with the sublime. Since the Stone Age, from Stonehenge to Giza and beyond, humans have been making structures that, as it were, stored up the numen in solid form. Music is crafted to make a downright magical impression. [Page 68]

Artwork bestows upon us a sense of the magical. This is especially seen in the religious artwork of China and Japan and Tibet. The magical is a suppressed and blurred form of the numinous. Great artwork takes us directly to the numinous. [Page 69]

To Otto, the Gothic is the most numinous of all art. It is sublime; it draws upon primitive magic. Otto cites the tower of the Cathedral of Ulm as a structure that is more than magical. It is numinous. Yet even more powerful are darkness and silence. [Page 70]

Silence is a spontaneous reaction to the feeling of the numenous presence. Asian art adds emptiness and empty distances. See, for example, Chinese architecture and Chinese painting. [Page 71]

In Chinese painting, almost nothing is painted. They make the strongest impression with the fewest strokes. The void itself is the main subject of the picture. For its part, Music does not have a positive way to express the holy. It must sink into stillness at the most numinous moments. An example of this is seen in Bach’s Mass in B Minor. [Page 72]

Others exemplify it. See, for example, Mendelssohn in his musical setting of Psalm 2. [Page 73]

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