Ritual and mystery …

… “Most of the time I am alone with my ritual…” | Religion and Other Curiosities. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)

Rudolf Otto, one of the great religion scholars of the twentieth century, has explicated this insight in his classical work of 1917, Das Heilige (misleadingly titled as The Idea of the Holy in the English translation—misleading because one of Otto’s key points is that the holy is not an idea but an experience). He took the Roman term for religious objects, numen, and coined the new word “numinous” in German or English. The word denotes a reality that is terrifying (mysterium tremendum), that is totally other (totaliter aliter) than ordinary life, that can destroy human beings that inadvertently touch it (like the ancient Israelites who, with no ill intent, stumbled over the Ark of the Covenant). The high point of Otto’s description of the numinous is his comparison of two of the most awesome encounters with the divine in religious scriptures—the throne vision in the Book of Isaiah and the vision of Krishna’s universal form in the Bhagavad Gita. This cross-cultural quality of religion is aptly illustrated by the first words frequently spoken by a divine being in addressing a human being—“do not be afraid” …