Pentecost of the Body

Perhaps the visitation of the numen is most often understood as a descent of the Spirit to humankind, a transpersonal visitation from "above" that floods the body and mind with its presence. An event in which this is celebrated for example is Pentecost, a commemoration of the descent of God the Holy Spirit to the Twelve Apostles granting them the sudden and miraculous gift of tongues.



In contradistinction - not opposition - to this view, I would like to propose that the numen is contained by and released from the flesh itself, that the numen is a presence within and as the material body. The flesh, the body, is not only the receiving vessel of the numen but, by the very nature of matter itself, the body is also the generator for what Jung has referred to as the numinosum. By addressing the body, through the body, we have the opportunity to experience an alteration of consciousness that is available to us when we are grounded in somatic experience and informed by the numen of the flesh. We have the opportunity to free ourselves from what Jung refers to as the "curse of pathology" and to further our course of individuation...through the consciousness of the body.

(An excerpt from a longer paper just recently written in September of this year, The Numen of the Flesh.)