Definition of "numen"

The Egyptians were doubtless the most singular of all the Pagans, and the most oddly discrepant from the rest in their manner of worship; yet nevertheless, that these also agreed with the rest in those fundamentals of worshipping one supreme and universal Numen […]

1671, Ralph Cudworth, chapter 4, in The True Intellectual System of the Universe

Where were Secretaries James and Foster and Senator Joseph, those dear daft numina who’d mothered over Oedipa’s so temperate youth?

1966, Thomas Pynchon, chapter 5, in The Crying of Lot 49, New York: Bantam Books, published 1976, page 76

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.

1985, Anthony Burgess, Kingdom of the Wicked

[…] 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.

1952 May, George Santayana, “I Like to Be a Stranger”, in The Atlantic‎