noun
definition
A number of secret societies or cults
noun
definition
Something secret or unexplainable; an unknown.
example
The truth behind the events remains a mystery.
definition
Someone or something with an obscure or puzzling nature.
example
That man is a mystery.
definition
A secret or mystical meaning.
definition
A religious truth not understandable by the application of human reason alone (without divine aid).
definition
(obsolete outside Eastern Orthodoxy) A sacrament.
definition
(chiefly in plural) A secret religious celebration, admission to which was usually through initiation.
example
the Eleusinian mysteries
definition
A particular event or series of events in the life of Christ.
example
The second decade of the Rosary concerns the Sorrowful mysteries, such as the crucifixion and the crowning with thorns.
definition
A craft, art or trade; specifically a guild of craftsmen.
Examples of mysteries in a Sentence
This deliverance was what the mysteries promised.
Demosthenes (De corona, p. 313) mentions various ceremonies practised during the celebration of the mysteries of this deity.
The way Fred loves mysteries you'd think he'd be thrilled to be a part of a real jury.
In the Orphic mysteries " the soul was regarded as a part of the divine, a particula aurae divinae, for which the body in its limited and perishable condition was no fit organ, but a grave or prison(ro a4 pa).
We'll save the mysteries for Fred to solve while we try to pay the bills.
The chief depositaries of these Mandaean mysteries are the priests, who enjoy a high degree of power and social regard.
There are seven mysteries or sacraments.
Let us not seek to penetrate what mysteries they contain; for how can we, miserable sinners that we are, know the terrible and holy secrets of Providence while we remain in this flesh which forms an impenetrable veil between us and the Eternal?
She converses with angels, sometimes even with the Lord, and both hears and see mysteries."
Butler says nothing about incomprehensible mysteries, and protests that reason is the only ground we have to proceed upon.
The mysteries of theology are its best part - not alien to reason but of its substance, the " logos."
British and American divines, on the other hand, are slow to suspect that a new apologetic principle may mean a new system of apologetics, to say nothing of a new dogmatic. Among the evangelicals, for the most part, natural theology, far from being rejected, is not even modified, and certain doctrines continue to be described as incomprehensible mysteries.
Therefore let them first eat meats and be sated, and then let them partake of the mysteries."
In the Eleusinian mysteries Proserpine no doubt played an important part.
He endeavoured to give a philosophical demonstration not only of the existence of God but also of the Trinity and the Incarnation, which were placed by the later Scholastics among the " mysteries."
The prophet is perplexed about the mysteries of life, and questions God respecting them.
The worship and mysteries of Cora at Mantineia were famous.
It has been argued that the sacramental rites of the Christians were largely imitated from the pagan mysteries; but for the first two hundred years this is hardly true, except perhaps in the case of certain Gnostic sects whose leaders intentionally amalgamated the new faith with old pagan ideas and rites.
Nor because the pagans regarded the close meetings of the Christians usually held in private houses as mysteries in which incest and cannibalism were rife, does it follow that the Christians themselves accepted the comparison.
On the contrary, as a thousand passages in the earlier apologists attest, they viewed the pagan mysteries with horror and detestation.
Undeniably Clement of Alexandria and Origen apply the language of the Greek mysteries to Christian gnosis and life.
And in scores of other passages Philo dwells on " the ineffable mysteries " of Jewish faith and allegory.
A bath of bulls' blood was much in vogue as a baptism in the mysteries of Attis.
Its obvious inconvenience for celebrating the holy mysteries, however, caused its gradual modification.
Thus the Church ever receives God and has a twofold nature; its sacraments through material and earthly elements impart a divine power; its teachings agree with the highest truths of philosophy and science, yet add to these the knowledge of mysteries which eye hath not seen, nor ear heard, neither hath it entered into the heart of man to conceive; it sanctifies human relationships, but the happiness of earth at purest and best is only a shadow of the divine bliss which belongs to the redeemed soul.
Members of Coronado's expedition explored the Moqui country and reached the Grand Canyon, and after this a succession of remarkable and heroic explorations followed through the century; which however accomplished little forgeography,further confusing and embellishing rather than clearing up its mysteries.
The central point of primitive Buddhism was the doctrine of "Arahatship " - a system of ethical and mental self-culture, in which deliverance was found from all the mysteries and sorrows of life in a change of heart to be reached The here on earth.
As a chthonian power, she is worshipped at the Samothracian mysteries, and is closely connected with Demeter.
According to Hittorf he was the first who saw the three lines of the hydrogen spectrum, which a few months after his death were recognized in the spectrum of the solar protuberances, and thus solved one of the mysteries of modern astronomy.
In time, however, he perceives that behind the fantastic garb of language there is an earnest and vigorous mind, an imagination that harbours fire within its cloudy folds, and an insight into the mysteries of spiritual life which is often startling.
He carefully establishes the necessity of revelation as a source of knowledge, not merely because it aids us in comprehending in a somewhat better way the truths already furnished by reason, as some of the Arabian philosophers and Maimonides had acknowledged, but because it is the absolute source of our knowledge of the mysteries of the Christian faith; and then he lays down the relations to be observed between reason and revelation, between philosophy and theology.
A man "that speaketh in a tongue speaketh not unto men, but unto God; for no man understandeth;" and therefore it is expedient that he keep this gift for his private chamber and there pour out the mysteries.
In declaring the supreme doctrines of Christianity to be mysteries above reason, he marks off a lower region where reason is to reign; the study of that lower region may well be called, as later centuries have called it, Natural Theology; and as such it presents strong intuitionalist affinities.
He was the mythic founder of a religious school or sect, with a code of rules of life, a mystic eclectic theology, a system of purificatory and expiatory rites, and peculiar mysteries.
Although, however, he adds that at this point he suspended his religious inquiries, " acquiescing with implicit belief in the tenets and mysteries which are adopted by the general consent of Catholics and Protestants," his readers will probably do him no great injustice if they assume that even then it was rather to the negations than to the affirmations of Protestantism that he most heartily assented.
Pico was the first to seek in the Kabbalah a proof of the Christian mysteries and it was by him that Reuchlin was led into the same delusive path.
To obtain these heavenly mysteries, which alone make the Torah superior to profane codes, definite hermeneutical rules are employed, of which the following are the most important.
A wealthy man, addicted to his pleasures and his profits, finds religion to be a traffic so entangled, and of so many piddling accounts, that of all mysteries he cannot skill to keep a stock going upon that trade.
Scholasticism opens with a discussion of certain points in the Aristotelian logic; it speedily begins to apply its logical distinctions to the doctrines of the church; and when it attains its full stature in St Thomas it has, with the exception of certain mysteries, rationalized or Aristotelianized the whole churchly system.
Besides Stephen Petelei (Jetti, a name - "Henrietta " - Felhok, " Clouds ") and Zoltan Ambrus (Pokhdlo Kisasszony, " Miss Cobweb "; Gyanu, " Suspicion") must be mentioned especially Francis Herczeg, who has published a number of very interesting studies of Hungarian social life (Simon Zsuzsa, " Susanna Simon "; Fenn es lenn, " Above and Below "; Egy ledny tortenete, " The History of a Girl "; Idegenete kozott, " Amongst Strangers "); Alexander Brody, who brings a delicate yet resolute analysis to unfold the mysterious and fascinating inner life of persons suffering from overwrought nerves or overstrung mind (A kitlelkil asszony, " The Double-Souled Lady "; Don Quixote kisasszony, " Miss Don Quixote "; Faust orvos, " Faust the Physician "; Tiinder Ilona, Rejtelmek, "Mysteries"; Az eziest kecske, " The Silver Goat "); and Edward Kabos, whose sombre and powerful genius has already produced works, not popular by any means, but full of great promise.
Therefore let them first eat meats and be sated, and then let them partake of the mysteries.
Recent discoveries have made it practically certain that there existed, prior to the extant romances, a collection of short episodic poems, devoted to the glorification of Arthur's famous nephew and his immediate kin (his brother Ghaeris, or Gareth, and his son Guinglain), the authorship of which was attributed to a Welshman, Bleheris; fragments of this collection have been preserved to us alike in the first continuation of Chretien de Troyes Perceval, due to Wauchier de Denain, and in our vernacular Gawain poems. Among these "Bleheris" poems was one dealing with Gawain's adventures at the Grail castle,where the Grail is represented as non-Christian, and present s features strongly reminiscent of the ancient Nature mysteries.
The key to the mysteries of Egyptian history had indeed been found, thanks to the recent efforts of Thomas Young and Champollion, but the deciphering of inscriptions had not yet progressed far enough to give more than a vague inkling of what was to follow.
Those initiated in the mysteries were taught to distinguish two streams in the lower world, one of memory and one of oblivion.
He who so produces them " dances out the word of the true philosophy," - a technical description of the profanation of the mysteries.
I have been initiated by Moses the friend of God in the great mysteries."
But because he uses the language of the Greek mysteries, Philo never imitated the thing itself; and he is ever ready to denounce it in the bitterest terms. Clement and Origen really meant no more than he.
At a later period, however, the difficulty of screening the rites of baptism and Eucharist from the eyes of catechumens and from their ears the creeds and liturgies - a difficulty which had ever been formidable and which after the overthrow of paganism must have become insurmountable - seems to have provoked not only a great outpouring on the part of the Christian rhetors, like Basil, Chrysostom, the Gregories and the Cyrils, of phrases borrowed from the Greek mysteries, but perhaps an actual use of precautions.
All will admit who study the post-Nicene Church, that the Christian sacraments have stolen the clothes of the pagan mysteries, dethroned and forbidden by the Christian emperors.
The catechumenate, an old institution, older in most regions than the mysteries themselves, suggested and rendered feasible such wholesale theft, especially in an age in which the sacerdotal class wished to be pre-eminent, and left nothing undone to enhance in the eyes of the multitude the importance and solemnity of rites which it was their prerogative to administer.