The Galactic Intimate

Anything can be the object of numinous ex periencing, although certain objects have a particular propensity for it. As the experience as such is a withdrawal from the familiar, because of its nature as the "completely other,’ it shows a preference for objects outside the range of daily events. On the other hand, certain things have a heightened ability to evoke numinous attraction and feeling because of their particular constitution: … the pulse and breathing of some one asleep; shadows in the midday sun, at dusk, at night; … dream images and names; the metallic body of lizards and snakes, the primordial eye of cattle; nocturnal animals like owls and bats, the whole animal realm more than the human, death more than life. Then there are the disc or crescent of the moon with its uncanny light; phosphorescent tree-trunks, will-o'-the-wisps haunting the swamps, and many sounds and noises, especially the crackling or rustling of branches or twigs … drums, cymbals, and fifes . . . ; in short, everything is suitable for numinous experience … even the most common place items: my door-step on which I always tread, familiar from long use with no other apparent import than as a path-leveler at my threshold. Then one day in the noon-day sun something mysterious begins to stir within it; it glistens at me in a strange, half-covert, precarious and enticing way. I am seized by awe and shudder, and run away in fear perhaps, hair on end . But if the very opposite, a vital attraction, triumphs in me, drawing me back although not completely dispelling my misgivings, I take the object to me, knowing that I hold something precious replete with wondrous powers in which I, as its possessor, share to the fullest."