numen

• “For it was an attempt to supersede the ancient religious life of that State by _externa superstitio, prava religio_ -- _prava_, because _deorum numen praetenditur sceleribus_; and hence, as Livy expresses it in the admirable speech put into the mouth of the consul, the Roman gods themselves felt their _numen_ to be contaminated. [”

  The Religious Experience of the Roman People From the Earliest Times to the Age of Augustus

• “They supposed an art, a power, or a wisdom, which they called numen, in creatures the most destitute of understanding.”

  The Existence of God

• ““numinous” from the Latin word numen, which denoted a supernatural nonpersonalized being.”

  ORIGINS OF RELIGION

• “Where events carry modalities of conviction or disposition — “must/must-not happen” or “should/should-not happen” — it may be more useful to treat this a strong/weak distinction, and take the flavour of the quirk as a product of its positive or negative loading: that which we revere may be termed a numen; that which we abhor may be termed a monstrum.”

  Archive 2009-06-01

• “The translation has often given cause for dispute, as 'numen' is a word that may be translated as vague-sounding Providence, as a rather non-commital Deity or as the strict and fierce monotheistic God.”

  WordPress.com Top Blogs

• “Where tremulum and staccatum are most applicable when it comes to character motivation, it should be noted, numen and monstrum may well be constructed entirely from the reader's disposition/conviction.”

  Archive 2010-01-01

• “Ruptura numen: In The Bacchae by Euripedes, we have the monstrum dicta of Pentheus the tyrant, King of Tears, who has denied the god Dionysus his due.”

  Notes Toward a Theory of Narrative Modality

• ““It begins with the awful …” — i.e. with the monstrum — “and then finds comfort” — i.e. in the numen.”

  Bukiet on Brooklyn Books

• “The new ruptura monstrum, the new miasma that stains Orestes, renders him subject to the vengeance of the Furies, is set against our sympathy, against the affective warp that cries out for a numen, the solution that “should happen”.”

  Notes Toward a Theory of Narrative Modality

• “Rather than just dewarping an alethic quirk -- a giant robot, for example -- by finding an answer to the "How could this happen?" question, the reader might more commonly be responding to it as a numen, parsing it as something that should happen -- cause giant robots are cooooool!”

  Archive 2010-01-01

Show 10 more examples...