面对远大于自己之物时，那阵又惧又迷的颤栗——大教堂、星空、深山巨木底下的那种安静。 Filled with the presence of something far greater than yourself — dread and fascination in one shiver.
Filled with the presence of something far greater than yourself — dread and fascination in one shiver. 面对远大于自己之物时，那阵又惧又迷的颤栗——大教堂、星空、深山巨木底下的那种安静。
词源etymology
拉丁语 numen（神意——本义是神「点头」的那一下）→ numinous。 1917 年，德国神学家鲁道夫·奥托在《论神圣》（Das Heilige）里铸出这个词， 用来指宗教经验里先于教义、无法言说的那个核。
Latin numen (divine will — literally the god’s nod) → numinous. The German theologian Rudolf Otto struck the term in Das Heilige (The Idea of the Holy, 1917), for the wordless core of religious experience that comes before any doctrine.
背景the story
奥托给它配了一个著名的拉丁公式：mysterium tremendum et fascinans—— 既令人战栗、又令人着迷的奥秘。要害在「又惧又迷」同时发生： 腿在软，脚却不肯退。
一个为神学定制的学术造词，一百年间进了各大词典， 如今连描写星空、荒野、深海的世俗文章也借它用——教堂空了，颤栗还在。 它与 Sehnsucht 是德语思想史上的近邻：一个是渴望，一个是临在。
Otto fitted it with a famous Latin formula: mysterium tremendum et fascinans — the mystery that makes you tremble and holds you fast. The crux is the simultaneity: knees going soft, feet refusing to back away.
An academic coinage built for theology, it entered the major dictionaries within the century, and secular prose now borrows it for night skies, wilderness, deep water — the church empties, the shiver remains. It is Sehnsucht’s neighbor in German intellectual history: one is the longing, the other the presence.
中文里的邻居neighbors in chinese
中文把这阵颤栗拆成了两半：「敬畏」拿走了惧，「神往」拿走了迷。 「肃然起敬」有现场感，却太端正——numinous 的要害是不端正： 它在你摆好姿势之前就到了。《论语》「祭神如神在」的那个「如在」，也许最接近。
Chinese split the shiver in two: 敬畏 took the dread, 神往 took the fascination. 肃然起敬 has the on-site feel but stands too straight — the point of numinous is that it arrives before you can compose yourself. The 如在 of the Analects — “sacrifice as if the spirits were present” — may come closest.
The redwood grove went numinous at dusk; everyone lowered their voice without agreeing to. 自拟例句 our own example, not a quotation It wasn't fear of the storm exactly — it was numinous, the sky suddenly senior to everything. 自拟例句 our own example, not a quotation 词典词（MW／OED），正式写作可用；宗教学里是术语，散文里是重炮—— 留给真正镇得住的场面，别用来形容灯光好看的餐厅。
A dictionary word (MW/OED), safe in formal writing; a term of art in religious studies, heavy artillery in prose — save it for scenes that can bear it, not for restaurants with good lighting.