Since the early 20th century, numen has sometimes been treated in the history of religion as a pre-animistic phase. This is a belief system that comes from an earlier time. Sociologists also use the term "Numen" to refer to the idea of magical power coming from an object, particularly when writing about ideas in the western tradition. When used in this sense, "numen" means almost the same thing as "mana". However, some authors only use the word "mana" for ideas about magic from Polynesia and Southeast Asia.