numen

Etymology

Definitions

1. 1

   A divinity, especially a local or presiding god.

   • Where were Secretaries James and Foster and Senator Joseph, those dear daft numina who’d mothered over Oedipa’s so temperate youth?
   • It was the solid and immovable tabernacle of the living numen whose son he had known, though but briefly and not intimately, in the flesh, and whose message he accepted with all his heart.
2. 2

   An influence or phenomenon at once mystical and transcendent.

   • […]but never did the places or the persons turn into idols for my irrational worship. It was only the numen in them that I loved, who, as I passed by abstracted, whispered some immortal word in my ear.

The neighborhood

• neighbornuminous
• neighbornuminal