Rudolf Otto’s described the numinous, from the Latin numen (“god,” “spirit,” or “divine”), as a particular category of human thought connected to an objective but ineffable reality of the holy (das heilige). Otto deems the experience of the holy to be sui generis (self-created), a human capacity that is not reducible to any other category of human thought. The numinous, according to Otto, is also wholly other and ineffable, beyond rationality and language.
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