The numinous
Rudolf Otto's word for the feeling of the sacred as something wholly other, both awe-inspiring and fascinating.
Also: numen, mysterium tremendum
The German theologian Rudolf Otto coined the numinous in Das Heilige (The Idea of the Holy, 1917), from the Latin numen, a divine presence. He described an experience of a mystery that is at once frightening and compelling, which he thought lay at the root of religion and was not reducible to ethics or reason. Others, from Carl Jung to the historian Mircea Eliade, took up the idea. Critics say Otto's account leans on a Christian model and may not fit every tradition. The word is still used in religious studies and by writers on ritual, for the sense that a place or act is charged beyond the ordinary.