adjective
definition
Relating to mystics or mysticism.
definition
Having a spiritual or magical significance that transcends human understanding.
definition
Inspiring a sense of spiritual mystery, awe, and fascination.
Examples of mystical in a Sentence
Read the mystical book I am sending you; it has an enormous success here.
There are many mystical stories and poems about butterflies.
After the outbreak of the revolution of 1848 he was elected to the Constituent Assembly, and in 1849 to the Legislative Assembly, but his speeches on behalf of the extreme socialist wing were of so abstract and mystical a character that they had no effect.
It had a wide influence in awakening popular piety, and the works that issued from it formed the textbooks of mystical and pietistic minds in the centuries that followed.
Bonaventura runs riot in phrases to describe the union with God, and his devotional works were much drawn upon by mystical preachers.
It was doubtless one of the Friends who sent forth anonymously from the house of the Teutonic Order in Frankfort the famous handbook of mystical devotion called Eine deutsche Theologie, first published in 1516 by Luther.
For Erigena, therefore, the speculative reason is the supreme arbiter; and in accordance with its results the utterances of Scripture and of the church have not infrequently to be subjected to an allegorical or mystical interpretation.
Luria himself wrote no mystical works; what we know of his doctrines and habits comes chiefly from his Boswell, Ilayim Vital.
All these physical theories are blended with a mystical theosophy, of which the most remarkable example is, perhaps, the chemico-astrological speculations of Paracelsus (1493-1541).
The second and third, addressed respectively to a cardinal (Perraud) and a bishop (Le Camus), are polemical or ironical in tone; the others are all written to friends in a warm, expansive mood; the fourth letter especially, appropriated to Mgr Mignot, attains a grand elevation of thought and depth of mystical conviction.
The book's method and form are pervadingly allegorical; its instinct and aim are profoundly mystical.
The gloom and harshness of these Spanish mystics are absent from the tender, contemplative spirit of Francois de Sales (1567-1622); and in the quietism Fof Mme Guyon (1648-1717) and Miguel de Molinos (1627-1696) there is again a sufficient implication of mystical doctrine to rouse the suspicion of the ecclesiastical authorities.
During this controversy Dionysius became convinced that the victory of mystical theology over "Jewish" chiliasm would never be secure so long as the book of Revelation passed for an apostolic writing and kept its place among the homologoumena of the canon.
The same attitude is maintained by the mystical Hugo of school of St Victor.
The, most eminent preacher of the century was Bernard of Clairvaux (1091-1153), esteemed alike by gentle and simple, and summing up the popular scholastic and mystical types of preaching.
A comparatively few pages summed up, in language often vague and mystical, all that the modern world had been permitted to remember of the history of the greatest nations of antiquity.
From references which can be gathered from patristic writings it is abundantly evident that the belief in the mystical meaning of marks on the "organ of organs" was a part of the popular philosophy of their times.
The effect of the mystical conception was to identify Christ with God in order that by his incarnation the divine nature might be brought into union with humanity and the latter be transformed.
Wilkinson's preliminary discourses to these translations and his criticisms of Coleridge's comments upon Swedenborg displayed a striking aptitude not only for mystical.
He was a traveller, a linguist, well versed in Scandinavian literature and philology, the author of mystical poems entitled Improvisations from the Spirit (1857), a social and medical reformer, and a convinced opponent of vivisection and also of vaccination.
In ancient civilizations the moon played a mystical and magical part in popular culture of the time.
His interpretation is on the whole mystical.
All these investigations point clearly to the fact that Gnosticism belongs to the group of mystical religions.
His tendency towards mystical speculation formed a not less fundamental quality of his mind than its strong grasp of positive scientific truth.
The spirit of his thought is mystical and by no means easy to follow, and this difficulty is accentuated, even to German readers, by the use of artificial terminology.
Those heresy-hunts show us the worst side of St Bernard, yet they are in a way just the obverse of his deep mystical piety.
So long as the Neoplatonic influence remained strong, attempts were still made to demonstrate the doctrine of the Trinity, chiefly in a mystical sense as in Erigena, but also by orthodox churchmen like Anselm.
Both of them, however, besides their philosophical writings, are the authors of works of religious edification and mystical piety.
The identity and personality of this "Friend of God," who bulks so largely in the great collection of mystical literature, and is everywhere treated as a half supernatural character, is one of the most difficult problems -in the history of mysticism.
Of the followers of Paracelsus some became mere mystical quacks and impostors.
The prayers (twenty-six in all) are mostly mystical outpourings repeating the aspirations found in her other writings.
His bizarre and mystical style has a strange fascination for the reader; but there is nothing Roman or Italian about it.
Four continental scholars, Fritzsche, Benary, Hitzig and Reuss, independently recognized that Nero was referred to under the mystical number 666.
He was influenced by Isaac Luria on the mystical side, and on the poetical side by Italian drama of the school of Guarini (q.v.).
In it the union between the finite self-consciousness and the infinite ego or God is handled in an almost mystical manner.
Protestantism; on the contrary, he yearned to beat these by their own weapons, chiefly by showing them that Catholics could interpret the Bible in a manner quite as mystical and pietistic as theirs.
The resumption of agricultural labours after the deluge was commemorated in the twelfth month, and a mystical association of the fishes, which were its Pisces.
Only as he becomes a spiritual being through mystical union with Christ can he escape death and enjoy eternal life in the spiritual realm.
Contemporary with him were Hugh of St Victor and his pupil Richard of St Victor, both monks of the abbey of St Victor at Paris, the aim of whose teaching, based on that of the PseudoDionysius, was a mystical absorption of thought in the Godhead and the surrender of self to the Eternal Love.
The term has also been applied to the Italian humanists of the Renaissance, and in modern times, somewhat vaguely, to thinkers who have based their speculations on the Platonic metaphysics or on Plotinus, and incorporated with it a tendency towards a mystical explanation of ultimate phenomena.
In this philosophy the mystical properties of numbers are a leading feature; absurd and mechanical notions are glossed over with the sheen of sacramental mystery; myths are explained by pious fancies and fine-sounding pietistic reflections; miracles, even the most ridiculous, are believed in, and miracles are wrought.
For every philosophy is scholastic whose subject-matter is imaginative and mystical, and which handles this subject-matter according to established rules in logical categories and distinctions.
In the West, where philosophical efforts of any kind had been very rare since the 2nd century, and where mystical contemplation did not meet with the necessary conditions, Neoplatonism found a congenial soil only in isolated individuals.
It is impossible to enlarge upon it here; suffice it to say that the mystical and pietistic devotion of our own day, even in the Protestant churches, is nourished on works whose ancestry can be traced, through a series of intermediate links, to the writings of the pseudoAreopagite.
And finally, as in all mystical religions, so here too, holy rites and formulas, acts of initiation and consecration, all those things which we call sacraments, play a very prominent part.
Through its syncretic origin Gnosticism introduced for the first time into Christianity a whole mass of sacramental, mystical ideas, which had hitherto existed in it only in its earliest phases.
As we have already intimated, Gnosticism had such a power 1 For the disciples of Valentinus, especially Marcus, after whom was named a separate sect, the Marcosians, with their Pythagorean theories of numbers and their strong tincture of the mystical, magic, and sacramental, see Valentinus And Valentinians.
Among these we must mention the JudaeoChristian Gnostic Cerinthus, also the Gnostic Ebionites, of whom Epiphanius (Haer.) gives us an account, and whose writings are to be found in a recension in the collected works of the Pseudo-Clementine Recognitions and Homilies; to the same class belong the Elkesaites with their mystical scripture, the Elxai, extracts of which are given by Hippolytus in the Philos.
This conception of a difference, of an internal structure in the absolute, finds other and not less obscure expressions in the mystical contributions of the Menschliche Freiheit and in the scholastic speculations of the Berlin lectures on mythology.
Indeed, the doctrine of "aspects" and "influences" fitted excellently with his mystical conception of the universe, and enabled him to discharge with a semblance of sincerity the most lucrative part of his professional duties.