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Mystery!
by Mark Havenner
If you are sitting in a coffee shop or bookstore and you see some guy
in the corner that deserves the adjective “mysterious” then what does
that guy look like? Is he well-postured, confident and secure? Is he
quiet, brooding and ill-mannered? Is he stoic, solemn and scholarly? Is
he just creepy? Swarthy? Smarmy? Pretentious? Does he look like a
serial killer? Maybe a little bit of all those things? Truly,
mysterious is not a very good adjective. There are far too many
meanings. Poking around at a few sources I found no less than five
distinct definitions: everything ranging from “cryptic” to “wondrous”.
Even old Webster wasn’t entirely sure of the meaning and in the same
breath said the word both meant unidentifiable and surprising. It is
always difficult using a word as an adjective when there are half a
dozen other adjectives needed to clarify the meaning.
To
some of us the word mystery doesn’t mean any of those things I just
described. It, instead, brings up images of a bunch of caricatures
locked up in a house trying to find out who murdered the party’s host.
Or it conjures up a proper lad in a funny hat with a pipe dictating the
precise events of a crime to a frumpy sidekick. In that context,
mystery may mean the “unknown” but not in an unidentifiable way, rather
in the way that the solution to a mathematical problem is unknown. It
is unknown, but with the right skill or information can soon be
“known”.
I’m not a linguist but it is interesting how this
word bulldozed its way through our language and took with it such a
variety of meanings along the way. Like many words in English, mystery
was the culmination of several roots. It appeared way back in the 1300s
from Anglo/French as the word misterie. It was an entirely theological
reference and meant “divine truth”. That word was derived from the
Latin mysterium which, in turn came from the Greek word for “secret
rite or doctrine” mysterion (mysteria plural). And that word came from
the root mystes for one that has been initiated, derived from myein
meaning “closed” (Etymonline, 2001).
Okay, so the true
meaning of the word could be said to be “things that are closed/
secret”. Now we are getting somewhere. When you look at that guy in the
coffee shop or bookstore and call him “mysterious” than that means he
looks like he is hiding something. And that meaning also works quite
well for a very pertinent topic to modern mystics: the Mysteries (note
the capitalization).
The Mysteries are also called “Mystery
Schools” and “Mystery Cults” depending upon which team you root for.
Critics call them cults and supporters call them schools. Probably best
just to call them “Mysteries” so you can attempt to remain objective by
a topic that has become quite volatile over the years. Well . . . the
centuries, really. Because, see they go way back.
The first
Mysteries appeared as far back as Ancient Greece, Egypt and the Middle-
East. And India. China. Well . . . it goes back to the beginning of
civilization as it seems. As long as there were people wondering about
divinity, there were Mysteries. And it could be said that as long as
there was civilization, people were wondering about divinity. The
Mysteries in all cases, were secretive groups within religions that
taught initiates material they would not teach the rest of the people.
They would determine who was worthy to receive higher knowledge and
then initiate them into their group wherein they would secretly teach
them things the rest of the population wasn’t allowed to know. They
were separate from the religions of the day (and remember there was
often no distinction between religion and government) in that they were
intended to supplement the religion and in many ways operate separate
and above the mainstream.
This is pertinent to Mysticism,
because most mystical movements lay claim to one or more of these
Mysteries and still, to this day, operate with the same methodology.
Many Mystics claim to be using the same enlightened information that
was being used and passed down in the ancient world.
There
were about as many Mysteries as there were gods and goddesses in the
old world, however many of them were consistent and lasted far longer
than the original religions. There were Isis Mysteries all the way into
the Middle Ages and later, long after the Greeks or Romans were even
around. Thoth Mysteries popped up as late as the 20th Century. Many
were also combined after Alexander the Great took over and
Greek/Egyptian gods and goddesses were consolidated along with the
Mysteries. Today the Rosicrucian, Golden Dawn, Freemasons, Knights
Templar and pretty much every mystical organization claims roots in the
Mysteries.
It is clear than that Mysticism is strongly
influenced by the Ancient Mysteries and may perhaps have a direct
connection. Truly mystical principles are in synch with much of what
was preserved from the Mysteries and many of the initiation rites are
exactly as they were done three thousand years ago. Whether or not
there is a direct lineage to the Mysteries and modern mysticism remains
. . . well, mysterious, however that aside it is clear that the intent
is the same. For modern Mystics, the purpose is altogether different.
There is no need for the Mysteries or, indeed Mysticism, to be
mysterious. In this new world of freedom and openness no one has the
need to withhold knowledge from another. We hope that mystics in this
new age will learn from the secretive past of these founding movements
and evolve it to the next level of understanding. Because after all,
who wants to go and talk to a guy in the coffee shop or bookstore who
is mysterious?
This work by Mark Havenner is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 United States License.
Photo courtesy of dougww at flickr.com
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