Numen
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Numen, pl. numina, ("an influence perceptible by mind but not by senses,"[citation needed]) is a Latin term for a potential,[clarification needed] guiding the course of events in a particular place or in the whole world, used in Roman philosophical and religious thought. The many names for Italic gods may obscure this sense of a numinous presence in all the seemingly mundane actions of the natural world.[1]
The word was also used in the imperial cult of ancient Rome, to refer to the guardian-spirit,[citation needed] 'godhead' or divine power of a living emperor—in other words, a means of worshiping a living emperor without literally calling him a god.
The word numen is also used by sociologists to refer to the idea of magical power residing in an object, particularly when writing about ideas in the western tradition. When used in this sense, numen is nearly synonymous with mana. However, some authors reserve use of mana for ideas about magic from Polynesia and southeast Asia.
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Significance [edit]
Ancient Roman cult [edit]
According to Georges Dumézil:
The literal meaning is simply "a nod", or more accurately, for it is a passive formation, "that which is produced by nodding", just as flamen is "that which is produced by blowing", i.e., a gust of wind. It came to mean "the product or expression of power" — not, be it noted, power itself.[2]
Thus, numen (divinity) is not personified (although it can be a personal attribute) and should be distinguished from deus (god).[3]
Imperial cult [edit]
The cult of Augustus was promoted by Tiberius, who dedicated the Ara Numinis Augusti.[4] In this context, a distinction can be made between the terms numen and genius.[5]
Christian religion [edit]
The phrase "numen eris caeloque redux mirabere regna" appears on line 129 of the poem Metrum in Genesin,[6] attributed to Hilary of Arles.[7]
Usage [edit]
Cicero uses the term to signify the "active power" of a Roman god.[8] Virgil uses the plural form of numen in the Aeneid: magna numina precari,[9] translated as "prayed to the great gods."[10] By simulacra numinum the historian Tacitus refers to the "statues of the active powers."[11] Pliny the younger speaks of the numen historiae to mean the divine power of history.[12] Lucretius uses the expression numen mentis,[13] or "bidding of the mind."[14]
The expression Numen inest appears in Ovid's Fasti (III, 296) and has been translated as 'There is a spirit here'.[15] Its interpretation, and in particular the exact sense of numen has been discussed extensively in the literature.[16]
In modern times, the term (referring to the Christian God) has been used in various expressions:
- Innocue vivito, numen adest (Live blameless; God is here.) was the motto of Linnaeus,[17] taken from Ovid's Ars Amatoria (I, 640).
- Nil sine numine is the state motto of Colorado. Its origin could be the phrase "...non haec sine numine devum eveniunt" (...these things do not come to pass without the will of Heaven) from Virgil's Aeneid (II, 777).
- Numen lumen (God is the light) is the motto of the University of Wisconsin–Madison.[18]
- More recently, the term numen appears three times (142.23, 162.13, 282.21) in Joyce's Finnegans Wake.[19]
Analogies to numina in other societies [edit]
- ashe in Yoruba mythology
- Kami in Japanese Shinto
- mana in Polynesian mythology
- maban in Australian Aboriginal mythology
- manetuwak in Lenape mythology
- shekhinah in Semitic mythology
- sila, inua in Inuit mythology
- teotl in Aztec mythology
- wod in Anglo-Saxon mythology
- väki in Baltic-Finnic mythology
See also [edit]
- Animism
- Lares
- Numen, an academic journal on the history of religions.
- Penates
- Sacred (comparative religion)
Notes [edit]
- ^ The animistic aspect of Roman religion is generally noted in all surveys, though as a phase characterising the earliest, most fundamental layers in a pseudo-evolutionary model of Italic religion it is criticised as "mostly a scholarly fiction" by Kevin McGeough, The Romans: new perspectives 2004:179 "Numinous Forces and Other scholarly Inventions"; "Scholars may have to content themselves with nodes of meanings for the Italic gods rather than hard-and-fast definitions," observes Charles Robert Phillips III, in "A Note on Vergil's Aeneid 5, 744," Hermes 104.2 (1976:247–249) p. 248, with recent bibliography; Gerhard Radke's classification of the forms and significances of these multifarious names in Die Götter Altitaliens (Münster, 1965) was criticized as "unwarranted precision" in the review by A. Drummond in The Classical Review, New Series, 21.2 (June 1971:239–241); the coupling and uncoupling of Latin and Italic cognomina of the gods, creating the appearance of a multitude of deities, were classically dissected in Jesse Benedictus Carter, De Deorum Romanorum Cognominibus: Quaestiones Selectae (Leipzig, 1898).
- ^ Dumézil, Georges (1996). Archaic Roman religion: with an appendix on the religion of the Etruscans. Johns Hopkins University Press.
- ^ Bailey, Cyril (1907). The Religion of Ancient Rome. Archibald Constable & Co Ltd., freely available from Project Gutenberg
- ^ Fishwick, Duncan (July 1969). "Genius and Numen". Harvard Theological Review 62 (3): 356–367. Reprinted in Fishwick, D. (1990).
- ^ Fishwick, Duncan (May 1970). "'Numina Augustorum". The Classical Quarterly (New Series) 20 (1): 191–197. Reprinted in Fishwick, D. (1990).
- ^ Gottfried Kreuz; Pseudo-Hilary (2006). Pseudo-Hilarius Metrum in Genesin, Carmen de Evangelio: Einleitung, Text und Kommentar. Verlag der Österreichischen Akademie der Wissenschaften. ISBN 978-3-7001-3790-0. Retrieved 9 April 2012.
- ^ Pavlovskis, Zoja (December 1989). "The Pastoral World of Hilarius' "in Genesin"". The Classical Journal 85 (2): 121–132.
- ^ M. Tullius Cicero, De divinatione, 1,120.
- ^ P. Vergilius Maro, Æneis, 3, 634.
- ^ Virgil. Eclogues, Georgics, Aeneid. Translated by Fairclough, H R. Loeb Classical Library Volumes 63 & 64. Cambridge, MA. Harvard University Press. 1916.
- ^ C. Cornelius Tacitus, Annales, 1, 10.
- ^ C. Plinius Cæcilius Secundus, Epistulae, 9, 27, 1.
- ^ T. Lucretius Carus, De Natura rerum, 3, 144.
- ^ Lucretius, On the Nature of Things. Translated by R. Allison. Arthur Humphries, London, 1919.
- ^ Ovid. Fasti. Translated by Frazer, James George. Loeb Classical Library Volume. Cambridge, MA, Harvard University Press; London, William Heinemann Ltd. 1931.
- ^ Rose, Herbert Jennings (October 1935). "Nvmen inest: 'Animism' in Greek and Roman Religion". Harvard Theological Review 28 (4): 237–257.
- ^ Benjamin Daydon Jackson; Theodor Magnus Fries (22 December 2011). Linnaeus. Cambridge University Press. ISBN 978-1-108-03723-5. Retrieved 9 April 2012.
- ^ http://kb.wisc.edu/page.php?id=11472
- ^ Clive Hart; James Joyce (1974). A concordance to Finnegans wake. P. P. Appel. Retrieved 9 April 2012.
References [edit]
- Fishwick, Duncan (1990). The Imperial Cult in the Latin West. Brill.
- Rudolf Otto (October 2004). The Idea of the Holy: An Inquiry Into the Non Rational Factor in the Idea of the Divine 1926. Kessinger Publishing. ISBN 978-1-4179-7875-5. Retrieved 9 April 2012.
External links [edit]
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