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What is Mysticism?
by Mark Havenner
Okay, let’s clear the table. Put aside anything you may have heard with
regards to Mysticism. Shut religious tomes until later, turn off
Hollywood for a moment and chuck the burning sage and tie-dyed shirts .
. . well, until the next time the Allman Brothers come to town. There
should be a clean table now. Just you and your computer and no movie
trailers, marijuana magazines or TV evangelists anywhere near you.
Mysticism is the pursuit of divinity.
That’s
it. That’s all it is. No unicorns, no devilworshiping and no misty
forest lakes. Mysticism is a word to describe the complex nature of
discovering the world one lives in, but not limiting the tools of
discovery to only the physical senses. That means that when the eyes,
fingers, nose and ears fail to explain something then one uses other
tools in order to figure it out. Those tools may be one’s mind or
imagination, but it could also just be stuff that one can’t see, taste,
touch or hear (even with radio telescopes and mathematical deviations).
Now let’s bring in some of the lumber one piece at a time and
attempt to dispel nasty rumors, clarify miscalculations and tidy up the
popular notion of the word.
In the modern world Mysticism
means something quite different than its original definition. It is
often used to loosely describe something that has a mysterious quality
or perhaps something that does not seem to relate to science at all. In
the modern sense this is not necessarily anything with a religious
connotation, but rather can describe the way majestic scenery looks or
a situation that seemed out of the ordinary.
Beyond the causal
expression, there is a more formal definition of the word. It tends to
describe the New Age movement. If you are standing in line at your
local natural food store and a guy with vegan sandals says to the
cashier as he buys the latest copy of New Witch Magazine,
“Yeah, I study Mysticism”. Then nothing more needs to be said. Even if
this young sensible fellow does not subscribe to New Age philosophy he
was certainly at that moment prejudged to.
These brings me to my first piece of lumber:
Mysticism is not New Age.
It
is in fact, much older than that and New Age borrows a great deal from
Mysticism. But that fellow in the vegan sandals chose the word
“mysticism” for a reason – to differentiate himself from those that
study only New Age.
The New Age movement arguably started
sometime in the 1960s (although had routes as early as the 1800s) and
had something to do with the revival of Eastern Mysticism in India. The
British finally let India become its own country and so the old ways
flourished and British tourists learned a great deal about discovering
knowledge. Some very famous Brits did, in fact, and helped to bring the
ideas to the New World where the counter-culture showed up in droves to
adopt it. A lot of this was new to us Americans. . . well not all
Americans. There were Western Mystics solidly in place since the time
of Queen Victoria and indeed during the American Revolution, but it was
new to us mainstream Americans.
We didn’t know (or care) that
our founding fathers were members of mystical organizations, nor did it
enter into our daily lives that Masons and Rosicrucians kept thousand
year old rituals as they went to work in the White House or on Wall
Street. And suddenly we started seeing things like Tarot cards,
incense, books on miracles, crystals and feng shui mirrors. As
Americans many of us didn’t really bother to find out the tradition
behind these things and sort of adopted them ad hoc under the umbrella
of New Age and accented it with songs by the 5th Dimension and colorful
beaded scarves.
The New Age movement did wonderful things for
America (and I would argue that disco was separate and apart from New
Age so should not be included as a fault). It gave us quirky music,
yoga exercises, garden Buddhas, and vegan cuisine. But it did something
more paramount: it gave us a new non-religious spirituality. Further it
introduced into the mainstream ancient mystical concepts and teachings
about as old as civilization itself. Another thing New Age did was
adopt everything spiritual-but-notreligious as the same stuff and put
into the same mental warehouse yoga, tarot, spiritualism, geomancy,
psychic abilities, ghosts, faeries, dragons, magic, witchcraft, UFOs,
pantheism . . . and the list goes ever, ever on. While all of these
studies certainly deserve attention, many are not O To really
understand Mysticism Perhaps we should look at what Mysticism is not 7
Mysticism is a word to describe the complex nature of discovering the
world one lives in, but not limiting the tools of discovery to only the
physical senses. What? exactly compatible with one another and
certainly do not all fall under the same tradition.
Because of
this jambalaya of things spiritual-but-not-religious many concepts
entered into New Age that were not at all with mystical background and
lineage - or New Age, for that matter. Some things were just completely
outrageous and did not have the thousand-year tradition behind it. It
could be said that it was this kind of thing that made New Age lose its
profound reputation in the mainstream.
Of course, this wasn’t
the first time Americans did this. Back in the 19th century there were
other bad apples that did the same exact thing. Which brings me to my
next piece of lumber:
Mysticism is not the occult.
Like
New Age, the occult draws heavily from Mysticism, but it is an
altogether different approach. The occult focuses mostly on the
supernatural. Indeed that does come up in Mysticism because at some
point a mystic has to study the nature of things unseen. But in the
Victorian years, it became an obsession.
There was an earlier
revival of Mysticism in America before the 1960s and this occurred
mostly in the intellectual elite in the later part of the 19th century.
The revival was spawned perhaps by European interest in mystical
societies, particularly in England (those Brits at it again). America
already had a long tradition with the Masons, but it was pretty far
removed from those groups that focused on the “unknown”. The
Rosicrucians, for example, took the study of ritual and higher
consciousness very seriously. Their step-cousin the Golden Dawn focused
on magical ritual. The Theosophical Society incorporated Eastern
Mysticism into these same traditions.
The intellectual elite
(and financial ones) shared ideas, debated, wrote long-winded letters
to one another and generally created a cross-pond clique. It was only
natural that other less fortunate folks, would want to jump on the
bandwagon. Not to their fault. Look at what Madonna did for Kabbalah! I
mean, I’d wager only people who’d stuck with the Golden Dawn through
the 1940s knew what the heck a Tree of Life was and now people are
naming their children after sephirot. Well, it wasn’t too different in
the 19th century.
In order to be privy to what the elite was
doing, people started making things up. They would stage dramatic
ghostly visits from the world beyond, make phony psychic predictions
and take photographs of faeries. Many of the so-called \"spiritualists\"
were proven to be fraudulent and so it bled into the mainstream that
people who practiced mysticism were liars and thieves.
It
didn’t help matters that the intellectual elite bickered with one
another like a bunch of high school kids in a lunch period. They would
argue about how many dimensions the human soul had and what the true
definition of universal consciousness was and how one should be
initiated to the Illuminati grade and what was considered the right
symbol to draw on the north wall and blah blah blah blah blah. As it
turns out many of these groups dissolved and split into smaller groups
and not without a lot of political play, fingerpointing and nasty
rumors.
This was also the Victorian era. So those with strict
religious sensibilities could only assume that all this hub-bub was
because of Satan. They weren’t summoning spirits of the afterlife –
they were summoning demons! And they weren’t communing with the divine,
but with Satan! And they weren’t drawing ritualistic symbols on walls,
they were sketching Satan!
So by the time the 1940s came
around if you were a mystic you were considered a kitten-killing,
satanic crazy person who committed fraud. The reign of Aleister Crowley
during the first part of the 20th century actually did a great deal to
prove that impression absolutely correct. This is my bias creeping in,
but I wouldn’t put it past him to sacrifice a few kittens to make a
point.
The occult, which was really an esoteric approach to
mysticism, meaning it was a learned and rational approach rather than a
spiritual one, ended up with a very bad name. Fortunately for
Mysticism, it was a chapter in the story and not the whole book. But
this discussion reminds of another thing Mysticism isn’t . . .
Mysticism is not Satanic.
And
that is actually an absurdity given the true nature of it. As a matter
of fact, much of Western Mysticism was derived from Christianity. But
that isn’t really the counterpoint as much as the notion that Satanism
doesn’t even apply to Mysticism at all. It’d be like saying blueberry
muffins make terrible cheesecakes.
Allow me to explain.
Firstly, Satanism is a direct function of the religion of Christianity.
For one to worship Satan one must first believe in Satan and to believe
in Satan, one must be Christian. Non Christians do not believe in
Satan, therefore they would not worship Satan. Secondly, Mysticism is
not a religion at all, but a way of life and perhaps a series of
philosophies. One does not ‘worship’ in Mysticism. One may learn and
take advice from or follow the example of others but worshipping is not
involved at all. That’s the whole point, in fact. Mystics are not
trying to hail to a higher being they are trying to reach a higher
consciousness by learning how to do so. So the idea that mystics
worship Satan is completely off the mark.
And it is also off
the mark that Mysticism is evil. That is yet another concept that does
not quite fit the mold. For something to be evil it must have a
predefined notion of what is good. Mysticism does not judge morality,
it simply strives to learn. Calling it evil would be like calling the
works of Plato evil. Can they be used for undesirable purposes? Sure,
but that’s true with anything.
The fear behind what mystics
have done throughout time is generally a result of the religious either
not understanding mysticism with the scope of the religion or by
preventing others to become mystics and therefore leave the influence
of the religion.
And that reminds me. . .
Mysticism is not a religion.
If
anything it is a philosophy, but more to the point, it is a process in
which to understand the world we live in. A religion is an explanation
of the world we live in, it is also an organized system of what one
should believe and also what one should not believe. The basis of
religion is a spiritual explanation for the world and consequently a
set of guidelines that one must follow as a result of that spiritual
explanation.
Now the line gets fuzzy, because there are
religious components to mysticism. Mysticism can have spiritual
explanations and can have guidelines to live by. However the important
distinction as that mysticism is not subscribing to a set of beliefs,
but rather exploring beliefs in order to find an answer. Religion is a
passive approach to understanding wherein teachings or guidance advise
a follower on what to do, whereas Mysticism is an active approach
wherein one discovers what to do by finding knowledge. In plainer
words, the religious worship, but the mystic learns.
A
Christian will worship Jesus Christ, but a Mystic will learn from Jesus
Christ. The religious pray for results, but a mystic searches for
results. The religious leave their fate to a higher power and the
Mystic creates their own fate. The religious seek help from the divine
and the Mystic seeks to reach the divine.
So what is Mysticism?
There
can be complicated definitions on the true meaning of the word, but to
wrap this discourse up, it is blanket term to describe various
organizations who throughout history attempted to discover the true
nature of the universe using all tools available to them including the
five senses and more. Western Mysticism generally follows the external
quest for knowledge through study, ritual and experimentation whereas
Eastern Mysticism generally follows the internal quest for knowledge
through meditation and reflection. Both work to obtain the truth of
existence and express this intent in a variety of ways.
Originally published in the Spring 2008 issue of Coffee Shop Mystic.
This work by Mark Havenner is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 United States License.
Photo courtesy of henribergius at flickr.com.
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