Word Finder - mysticism

definition

The beliefs, ideas, or thoughts of mystics.

definition

A doctrine of direct communication or spiritual intuition of divine truth.

definition

A transcendental union of soul or mind with the divine reality or divinity.

definition

Obscure thoughts and speculations.

Mysticism did not cease within the Catholic Church at the Reformation.

St Bernard's mysticism is of a practical cast, dealing mainly with the means by which man may attain to the knowledge and enjoyment of God.

These are the permanent outlines of what may be called the philosophy of mysticism in Christian times, and it is remarkable with how little variation they are repeated from age to age.

The systematic theosophy of Plotinus and his successors does not belong to the present article, except so far as it is the presupposition of their mysticism; but, inasmuch as the mysticism of the medieval Church is directly derived from Neoplatonism through the speculations of the pseudo-Dionysius, Neoplatonic mysticism fills an important section in any historical review of the subject.

Mysticism first appears in the medieval Church as the protest of practical religion against the predominance of the dialectical spirit.

Jan van Ruysbroeck (1294-1381), the father of mysticism in the Netherlands, stood in connexion with the Friends of God, and Tauler is said to have visited him in his seclusion at Groenendal (Vauvert, Griinthal) near Brussels.Ruy sbroeck.

In Erigena mysticism has not yet separated itself in any way from the dogma of the Church.

But, inasmuch as a God is affirmed beyond reason, the mysticism becomes in a.

Their mysticism represents, therefore, no widening or spiritualizing of their theology; in all matters of belief they remain the docile children of their Church.

Mysticism, on the other hand, is marked on its speculative side by even an overweening confidence in human reason.

The scholastic mysticism was, for the most part, practical and psychological in character.

Nevertheless, mysticism did prepare men in a very real way for a break with the traditional system.

In later times Orphic theology engaged the attention of Greek philosophersEudemus the Peripatetic, Chrysippus the Stoic, and Proclus the Neoplatonist, but it was an especially favourite study of the grammarians of Alexandria, where it became so intermixed with Egyptian elements that Orpheus came to be looked upon as the founder of mysticism.

Such was the seedground in which what is specifically known as German mysticism sprang up.

The wild doctrines of Thomas Miinzer and the Zwickau prophets, merging eventually into the excesses of the Peasants' War and the doings of the Anabaptists in Minster, first roused Luther to the dangerous possibilities of mysticism as a disintegrating force.

In the 17th century mysticism is represented in the philosophical field by the so-called Cambridge Platonists, and especially by Henry More (1614-1687), in whom the influence of the Kabbalah is combined with a species of christianized Neoplatonism.

The first influence of Boehme was in the direction of an obscure religious mysticism.

But in that case it might be difficult to find a systematic philosopher who would escape the charge of mysticism; and it is better to remain by long-established and serviceable distinctions.

So, again, when Recejac defines mysticism as " the tendency to draw near to the Absolute in moral union.

But such a position is not describable as mysticism in any recognized sense.

Hamann (1730-1788), the term mysticism may be fitly applied.

Schelling's explicit appeal in the Identitdts-philosophie to an intellectual intuition of the Absolute, is of the essence of mysticism, both as an appeal to a suprarational faculty and as a claim not merely to know but to realize God.

But the link that connects him with churchly realism, as well as with the NeoPlatonic mysticism, is the conviction that complete and certain knowledge rests wholly on divine revelation, i.e.

The so-called mysticism of the Persian Sufis is less intense and practical, more airy and literary in character.

This externality of religious truth to the mind is fundamental in scholasticism, while the opposite view is equally fundamental in mysticism.

Mysticism was more systematically developed by Bernard's contemporary Hugh of St Victor (1096-1141).

The Augustinian monastery of St Victor near Paris became the headquarters of mysticism during the 12th century.

They are the last representatives, of mysticism within the limitations imposed by scholasticism.

Mysticism was pieced on somewhat incongruously to a scholastically accepted theology; the feelings and the intellect were not brought together.

In St Theresa (1515-1582) and John of the Cross Other the counter-reformation can boast of saints second Forms of to none in the calendar for the austerity of their Mysticism.

But, as was to be expected, their mysticism moves in that comparatively narrow round, and consists simply in the heaping up of these sensuous experiences.

Philosophy since the end of the 18th century has frequently shown a tendency to diverge into mysticism.

The later philosophy of Schelling and the philosophy of Franz von Baader, both largely founded upon Boehme, belong rather to theosophy (q.v.) than to mysticism proper.

He invented a religious system founded on the speculative mysticism of the Neoplatonists, and founded a sect, the members of which believed that the new creed would supersede all existing forms of belief.

A " circular system " was advocated by the eminent botanist Fries, and the views of Macleay met with the partial approbation of the celebrated entomologist Kirby, while at least as much may be said of the imaginative Oken, whose mysticism far surpassed that of the Quinarians.

It was the Alexandrian theology that superseded them; that is to say, NeoPlatonic mysticism triumphed over the early Christian hope of the future, first among the "cultured," and then, when the theology of the "cultured" had taken the faith of the "uncultured" under its protection, amongst the latter also.

But mysticism and political servility between them gave the deathblow to chiliasm in the Greek Church.

It strengthened the hands of church democracy; it formed an alliance with the pure souls who held up to the church the ideal of apostolic poverty; it united itself for a time even with mysticism in a common opposition to the supremacy of the church.

How millennarianism nevertheless found its way, with the help of apocalyptic mysticism and Anabaptist influences into the churches of the Reformation, chiefly among the Reformed sects, but afterwards also in the Lutheran Church, how it became incorporated with Pietism, how in more recent times an exceedingly mild type of "academic" chiliasm has been developed from a belief in the verbal inspiration of the Bible, how finally new sects are still springing up here and there with apocalyptic and chiliastic expectations - these are matters which cannot be fully entered upon here.

He carried this tendency to mysticism into his physical researches, and was led by it to take a deep interest in the phenomena of animal magnetism.

Vigour of reasoning and originality of view were not his characteristics as a writer; nor will the student who has raked these dust-heaps of miscellaneous learning and oldfashioned mysticism discover more than a few sentences of genuine enthusiasm and simple-hearted aspiration to repay his trouble and reward his patience.

Jewish orthodoxy found itself attacked by the more revolutionary aspects of mysticism and its tendencies to alter established customs. While the medieval scholasticism denied the possibility of knowing anything unattainable by reason, the spirit of the Kabbalah held that the Deity could be realized, and it sought to bridge the gulf.

From his earliest years he had been deeply impressed with the piety, beauty and thoughtfulness of the writings of the Christian mystics, but it was not till after his accidental meeting with the works of Boehme, about 1734, that pronounced mysticism appeared in his works.

A book on Clement's relation to Mysticism is wanted.

He was an ascetic, and was a keen opponent of the emotional mysticism which was known as the new Hassidism.

Spinoza is a materialistic monist with an inconsistent touch of mysticism and a certain concession, more apparent than real, to the spiritual side of experience.

Richard of St Victor, prior of the monastery from 1162 to 1173, is still more absorbed in mysticism, and his successor Walter loses his temper altogether in abuse of the dialecticians and the Summists alike.

They belong indeed (Gerson in particular) to the history of mysticism rather than of Scholasticism, and the same may be said of another cardinal, Nicolaus of Cusa (1401-1464), who is sometimes reckoned among the last of the Scholastics, but who has more affinity with Erigena than with any intervening teacher.

While this sceptical thesis was embraced by philosophers who had lost their interest in religion, the spiritually minded sought their satisfaction more and more in a mysticism which frequently cast itself loose from ecclesiastical trammels.

The 14th and 15th centuries were the great age of German mysticism, and it was not only in Germany that the tide set this way.