From the numinous to the sacred.
The Journal of analytical psychology April 1, 2009 Christopher MacKenna
Carl Jung adopted Rudolf Otto's concept of the 'numinous' from his book 'The Idea of the Holy' and made it central to his understanding of religion. However, Lucy Huskinson argues this involves a misreading of Otto: one must look beyond the numinous (the non-rational factor) toward the 'holy,' which, like a symbol, holds rational and non-rational aspects of religious experience together in a personally transformative way. Case material from intensive analytical psychotherapy supports this: a numinous experience was only the first step in a process that, through mourning, led to the patient's capacity to symbolize. The author suggests the sacred resides in a quality of symbolic relatedness to self and other, which may or may not involve numinous experience.