Talk:Numen

message: Does the part about "noddings" make sense?
: --Wetman 06:13, 25 August 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: Added etymological discussion. AnonMoos 19:56, 14 February 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Comments

message: The following might prove hard to source: "The followers of Numina in Rome were held to strict rituals. Not wanting to offend any of the multiple deities they would follow the same routine every time. Eventually when the words became uncomprehensible they still said them not wanting to offend the gods." --Wetman 05:03, 26 October 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: It's even harder to source once Wikipedia mirror sites start copying those sentences. When that happens, Wikipedia bots begin identifying the sentences as "copyrighted". It's best to either remove unreferenced statements, or, if you're unsure but skeptical, add the  tag. Fuzzform (talk) 05:43, 13 April 2008 (UTC)
thread_title: Unsourced

message: This article has had a merge tag for over a year, and yet there has been no discussion about it here (or on talk page of the numinous article). I'm in favor of the merge, unless there is something intrinsically different about the usages (it doesn't seem that there is). Fuzzform (talk) 01:07, 13 April 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: A "numinous presence"? Isn't that a bit redundant? It's like saying "present presence", or "presentous presence" (to use a non-existent word). Fuzzform (talk) 05:38, 13 April 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: I thought Wikipedia deprecated articles with adjectives as titles. A numinous presence is the eery and supernatural sense of an otherworldly presence, even godhead. But we all have presence, though some of us are more self-assertive, and others lack charisma. --Wetman (talk) 05:45, 13 April 2008 (UTC)

text: I agree, the two concepts as related by our articles are different enough to be separated.  And since there hasn't been much movement on this talkpage in a couple months, I'm going to go ahead and remove the merge tag.  Ford MF (talk) 19:43, 9 June 2008 (UTC)
thread_title:  Merger? 

message: What does this sentence mean?
"The many names for Italic gods may obscure this sense of a numinous presence in all the seemingly mundane actions of the natural world."
First of all, the statement is unsourced. Not to mention that it makes no sense. Why does the multiplicity of names necessarily obscure the presence of the numen? Do they not perhaps manifest and elaborate it under varied aspects? What does 'seemingly mundane' mean here? What kind of "actions" are mundane, or are they in fact not? Cynwolfe (talk) 19:26, 19 February 2010 (UTC)
thread_title:  Meaning what? 

message: The only source claimed for the article is Rudolf Otto's The Idea of the Holy, first published in 1917, seemingly still in print and popular. Otto was not, as far as I can tell, a religious historian but a comparative theologian who seeks the idea of the Holy in the past (QED). "Numen" is a historic Roman religious term - surely its article should be based on recent specialised works by historians of Roman religion. There's no shortage. Haploidavey (talk) 01:26, 20 February 2010 (UTC)
thread_title: Single source article

message: The "Ancient Roman cult" section under the "Significance" heading contains a slight misinterpretation. The lines quoted there from Dumézil's Archaic Roman Religion (vol. 1) were actually written by the scholar H. J. Rose with whom Dumézil is arguing and—at that particular point in Archaic Roman Religion—quoting. It comes from Rose's Primitive Culture in Italy (1926) pp. 44-45. Dumézil has his own interpretation of numen (p.29 of ACC) that admits the accuracy of Rose's but shows how it is historically off-base to read numen as "the product or expression of power" before the era of the Augustan writers, which Rose does frequently (hence Dumézil's extensive critique in Chapter 3 of ACC).
Didn't want to make any changes that are that involved without an explanation.  — Preceding unsigned comment added by 99.72.110.104 (talk) 23:13, 18 January 2014 (UTC)
thread_title:  Quoting Dumézil 

message: Not too well organized. Lots of contributors, no unifying hand. References are good too, but referencing what? For rexample, the etymology is given twice. There are a number of definitions, some contradictory. Imperial Rome is treated differently from the rest of Rome. The whole thing is treated as cult. Not a cult, a belief. There were a lot of cults along those lines. It isn't sociologists per se that are interested in the topic. Sociology is science - you know, statistical data and experiments, theories of society, etc. This is not that. This is history of religion. I worked on this a long time ago, and met with all kinds of flak. No one could agree. There is now, however, a lot of source material here. I propose to reorganize it, get it all together. I get the point, no one is interested in any personal definitions, so I will try to make sure most everything is quoted. The topic in general has this organization: 1) An initial meaning and usage in ancient Rome 2) An expansion of the concept to other cultures. I will stick by that. Also there are certain errors of neglect, which are understandable, but WP is a little larger nowdays. "Numen" is being used to translate religious concepts from the Far East, so it isn't just western. But, as a phase of religious belief it is pretty much universal. So, Phase 1 would be ancient Rome, Phase 2 would be a generalization of the concept, Phase 3 would be instances in other cultures. I don't plan to look back to see what I said before. It was not adequate, I am sure. I do plan to bring in other sources if I have to. This will take a while. Ciao.Botteville (talk) 21:15, 6 February 2015 (UTC)
thread_title: Needs organization