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Numenism > Paganism
Mar. 2nd, 2021 12:32 pmNumenism? What in the heck is that? Have I finally lost it?
So yeah, I just conjured a neologism out of thin air. Well, it's more like I made it up many months ago and have been sloshing the term around in my head as a potential label for my own particular religious belief and practice.
Now a casual observer might simply call me a 'pagan' after learning the basic gist of what my spiritual worldview is. I believe in multiple gods and most certainly posit a pluralistic way of recognizing and conceptualizing the world's many religious traditions. But really, I hate the term 'pagan'; I despise it for a plethora of reasons. I won't go into the quite lengthily details on that here, as many of my older posts illustrate that position quite clearly, if I may say so. (Just click the 'paganism' tag and see so for yourself, if you are so inclined)
Recently I started thinking deeply on a religious concept that was a key component of the early Roman religion, before it became almost completely Hellenized. The central concept is 'Numen' which is a very general term for any spiritual force or influence often identified with a natural object, phenomenon, or place. In other words, the word Numen can denote a god or goddess (usually a localized manifestation of), a spirit, a demigod, the general energy or 'vibe' of a particular place, the vital energy of living beings and objects, ect. As some examples, think of an all-encompassing term like "Kami" in Shinto, the indigenous Japanese religious tradition, and also the "Teotl" of the indigenous Mesoamerican religion. On that, the plural of Numen is Numina. The term carries both animistic, polytheistic, and spiritualitic undertones, yet it's flexible and vague enough not to get pigeonholed into any one reductionistic category (modern-era pseudo-intellectuals do this to a fault).
So I figure a very old word shall be new again. Anyone familiar enough with linguistic memetics might know that a label or piece of terminology carries a lot of memetic content. And the more a term has been used over and over in recent times, the more memetic baggage it has attached to it, and often very unhelpful and misleading baggage. The more baggage, the increased likelihood of the average person associating the terminology-in-question with things you might not have in mind.
Numen? Numina? Numenism? Yeah, very few people have heard of this. So mentioning this term will likely draw a blank stare from some random person I mention it to. And this is a good thing, for the purpose of what I'm getting at. No baggage! Fresh start! How about that?
Now, how does one become a Numenist? It's pretty simple. All one needs to have is a basic belief or recognition of the existence of Numina. That's all. Beyond that there's a mathematically grand set of possibilities one could explore to craft their own personal/unique variety of Numenism. As of right now, the Numenist umbrella is a religion-of-one, i.e. my own religion. And I'd be perfectly happy if it never went beyond one. At the same time, I wouldn't mind of other people adopted this fresh label and did something interesting, or even spiritually-fulfilling with it.
In a series of follow-up posts I'll be elaborating on my own 'school' (if we could call it that) of Numenism. But for now Numenism is just a word, and a rather vague one at that.
So yeah, I just conjured a neologism out of thin air. Well, it's more like I made it up many months ago and have been sloshing the term around in my head as a potential label for my own particular religious belief and practice.
Now a casual observer might simply call me a 'pagan' after learning the basic gist of what my spiritual worldview is. I believe in multiple gods and most certainly posit a pluralistic way of recognizing and conceptualizing the world's many religious traditions. But really, I hate the term 'pagan'; I despise it for a plethora of reasons. I won't go into the quite lengthily details on that here, as many of my older posts illustrate that position quite clearly, if I may say so. (Just click the 'paganism' tag and see so for yourself, if you are so inclined)
Recently I started thinking deeply on a religious concept that was a key component of the early Roman religion, before it became almost completely Hellenized. The central concept is 'Numen' which is a very general term for any spiritual force or influence often identified with a natural object, phenomenon, or place. In other words, the word Numen can denote a god or goddess (usually a localized manifestation of), a spirit, a demigod, the general energy or 'vibe' of a particular place, the vital energy of living beings and objects, ect. As some examples, think of an all-encompassing term like "Kami" in Shinto, the indigenous Japanese religious tradition, and also the "Teotl" of the indigenous Mesoamerican religion. On that, the plural of Numen is Numina. The term carries both animistic, polytheistic, and spiritualitic undertones, yet it's flexible and vague enough not to get pigeonholed into any one reductionistic category (modern-era pseudo-intellectuals do this to a fault).
So I figure a very old word shall be new again. Anyone familiar enough with linguistic memetics might know that a label or piece of terminology carries a lot of memetic content. And the more a term has been used over and over in recent times, the more memetic baggage it has attached to it, and often very unhelpful and misleading baggage. The more baggage, the increased likelihood of the average person associating the terminology-in-question with things you might not have in mind.
Numen? Numina? Numenism? Yeah, very few people have heard of this. So mentioning this term will likely draw a blank stare from some random person I mention it to. And this is a good thing, for the purpose of what I'm getting at. No baggage! Fresh start! How about that?
Now, how does one become a Numenist? It's pretty simple. All one needs to have is a basic belief or recognition of the existence of Numina. That's all. Beyond that there's a mathematically grand set of possibilities one could explore to craft their own personal/unique variety of Numenism. As of right now, the Numenist umbrella is a religion-of-one, i.e. my own religion. And I'd be perfectly happy if it never went beyond one. At the same time, I wouldn't mind of other people adopted this fresh label and did something interesting, or even spiritually-fulfilling with it.
In a series of follow-up posts I'll be elaborating on my own 'school' (if we could call it that) of Numenism. But for now Numenism is just a word, and a rather vague one at that.
