The Desert Fosters an Experience of "The Holy"

"The religious significance of the desert was its ability to generate contemplation of the numinous, awe of the divine. In his seminal work, "The Idea of the Holy" (1917), the German Lutheran theologian Rudolf Otto defined the numinous as a mystery that is both terrifying and fascinating. Three of the predominant responses to the desert - awe at its immensity, terror at it starkness and fascination at its wildness - parallel these characteristics of mysterium, tremendum and fascinans. Spacious distance - infinity in the horizontal plane - represents the Sublime transposed to the spatial. Such overwhelming extension in space evokes a corresponding sense of infinity in time - eternity - and many find the experience of this spatial-temporal combination intense, vision-producing, almost literally mind-blowing, since it transcends the rational."

Roslynn D. Haynes, "Desert: Nature and Culture"

Photos: Needles District, Canyonlands National Park, UT, November 28-29, 2014