Salve Garrule
Yes, they are two exclusive abd contradictory perceptions. You can read more of what I have to say on it in the article I wrote for Collegium Religionis
http://www.societasviaromana.org/Colleg ... minism.php
Numenism, posing numina as anamistic proto-deities, was an idea promoted mostly by the English linguist Rose. It was a perspective that saw all non-Christian religions as inferior and primitive, and held that the Romans had not concept of gods before the Greeks introduce the idea. It posed that the Italians only had superstitious fears of ambiguous supernatural powers, like mana of the South Pacific, and Rose looked through Latin for a term that could be posed to support this idea. He came upon numen. But in the 1960's the error of this perspective was being shown by many historians on Rome and the other Italic tribes, and then Georges Dumezil definitively disproved Rose's theories. Dumezil's own ideas about the religio Romana, replacing what the Romans said of their own tradition with his own model of a socio-political scheme that he held for Indo-Europeans, was itself later shown to be an error, mainly by Momigliano in the 1960-80's. But bad ideas seem to be contiued on in popular views, and so you will find Rose's numenism and Dumezil's IE theories still permeating the internet. You won't find their ideas accepted today in most history or archaeology departments, some linguists still refer to Dumezil's ideas.
The very term numen appears rather late during the Late Republic and took on more significance later in the imperial eras. Horace and Silius Italicus refer to numina as "footsteps" of the Gods. A numen is an imprint, a presence, or a power that has been emitted by a God or Goddess into a place or thing. Think of it like the body warmth of a person left on a chair after they have left. A numen is not a God or a proto-deity. It has no existence of its own but is a power emitted from a deity. An indigitamentum in an aspect of a deity, a facet of a divine personality, that wields a particular numen. For example, in the invocation of Ceres, spoken by the flamen Cerealis, She is called by naming twelve indigitamenta, aspects of Herself, who are each in turn involved with a different phase of the growth of grain. From seed to ripened and harvested wheat, Ceres watches over grain, using Her powers, or numina, to enhance each stage of its development. Whenever something is devoted to a God as a sacrifice, He receives it by making a spiritual connection with the offering, imparting a numen into the sacrifice. Therefore it can be said that a numen, or presence of the God, is left behind in the altar, and for however often that altar would be used for the particular God, the strength of His presence builds up over time. Thus you find Horace say that "we worship Your numen" in this altar, as the numen, emitted by the God, remains connected with the God, and thus serves as a channel connecting the God with His worshippers. When a vow was made before the Gods, a Roman would touch the altar with his hand, as Aeneas does in Virgil's
Aeneid, making a physical connection that also joined him spiritually in the spiritual powers (numina) of the Gods he swore by. The same was true of images devoted to a God, the dedication received by the deity imparting a numen into the image, and thus you find Romans performing an
adoratio by placing their hand on the feet of a statue, that physical touching also spiritually connecting the person with the God. An idol is not a God. The numen placed in the idol by a God is not the God Himself, but it is a presence emitted by a God and thus links back to the God. Only by misrepresenting Roman beliefs could it be thought otherwise.
Vale optime