[Opinion] Was mysticism a core part of any religion/spiritual practice? When later followers moved away from this particular aspect, was it detrimental?

In my opinion, I truly do believe that Mysticism is what gives religion/spiritual practices/beliefs, their soul/heart. Without it, you see a watering down. You have the structure, and the shell, but you lose the heart/soul. That why I personally think, after doing some research, why Sufi Islam, is quite clearly, the traditional Islam because it kept the core of what Islam was like back in the day, it preaches following the Shariah and Iman, but also holding strong to the Ihsan. This, I gathered from doing my own research, from reading the Seerah and the Quran. These two texts, in my opinion (and some hadith), provided me with enough proof, that early Islam, was quite frankly, very much mystical, and very Sufi. Something that was later lost as time passed.


I would love to hear your thoughts about this. What religions do you think were mystical at their core in the beginning? Do you agree that Mysticism was a core part of religion? etc.

Yes and yes. Mysticism is the beginning of all religion and we see a gradual decline towards easily digestible populist teachings over time in all major religions. Axial age Alexandria and Greece had an extremely ecclectic mystic scene which birthed Neoplatonism and Hermeticism, Gnosticm,and various mystery cults that all influenced early Christianity. The Christianity that survived out of this came from the fall of Rome and the consolidation of Orthodox teachings as cultural and political law under the Church. Mystic schools were pushed to obscurity after the fall of Rome and this is where the occult first became the occult.

During the Renaissance we see a return towards more introspective lines of thinking, but this quickly gets muddled with the emergence of scientific discipline and instead of pure mysticism we get lines of thinking that become mixed with mathematics and the physical world.

Your point about Sufism is correct. Islam went through a similar process, but they retained their mystical leanings for much longer. Trying to know the divine directly wasn't as shunned as it was in the Christian world. Part of this comes down to how each tradition understood the relationship between human and divine. Christianity inherited a strong dose of Augustinian pessimism about human nature, i.e., original sin, total depravity, the gulf between creator and creation. The idea that a person could unite with God or directly perceive divine reality without mediation started sounding dangerously close to claiming equality with God. Meister Eckhart nearly got burned for saying the soul could become one with God. John of the Cross had to couch everything in metaphor and paradox to avoid the Inquisition.

In the east we see similar themes, but they retain more of their spirituality. Buddhism turns away from a path of self knowledge toward a devotional practice with Pure Lands teachings where if one just believes in something, one will be rewarded.

Eventually we see mysticism all but die out in Christianity today. Protestantism has entirely lost its mystical spark, and whats left of Christian mysticism is confined to orthodox monasteries.

I often wonder if this was actually a benefit to the surviving mystical teachings. What has been passed down to us has emerged out of a pressure cooker of academic scrutiny. The occult wasn't allowed to become watered down by populist misunderstandings and a desire for easy enlightenment and so through the various surviving traditions we receive maps meant for dedicated practitioners.

Only a small percentage of the population would ever be capable of understanding the teachings anyway. Plato had his tripartite division of souls where he said the best course of action was to simply lie to the producer class about philosophical truths, because they were incapable of understanding. The Gnostics had the hylics, same deal.

So i think what really separates the eastern religions from the western ones is the eastern religions take their cues from their mystics instead of leaning heavily into institutional religious authority. Within the Abrahamic faiths mystics have always been outsiders and pariahs as their personal experiences are challenging to institutional authority. Obviously we see mystics at the foundations of movements and doctrines within the Abrahamic faiths but their acceptance amongst the mainstream is almost always post-humously and for branches like the Kabbalists and Sufis they are regarded as outsiders or "lost" by the more accessible but dogmatic institution itself. Christianity is especially notorious for persecuting their mystics only to canonize them at a later date. However in the east we still see a focus on practice centered around gurus and teachers who have direct experience and accumulate followers through their abilities with direct experience. This is how those religions operate on the mainstream scale and why they are more disorganized in terms of dogmatic institutions with the different schools of eastern practice being united mostly through core mystical or philosophical literature.

taschr said:

whats left of Christian mysticism is confined to orthodox monasteries

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Da hell? Most Anglos, and even many of us Latinos do not know much about the mystical side of the Catholicism. And you can't seperate it from Vodou or Brujeria without breaking those magical systems.

So I'm not a fan of the conservative side, but it might help to think of it as many Catholicisms (plural) - that works as an big umbrella and time capsule for many mystical and magical practices (plus some bullshit), and less as a dogma.

The most influential Catholics have always been it's mystics - St. Teresa of Avila, St. Francis, St. John of the Cross. Sure, they are not part of the temporal power structure of pedophile bankers, but who cares? They left something far more meaningful and enduring.

For those who are interested in learning more about Catholic mysticism I recommend "W" at St. Anthony's Tongue.

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Oh. This is very cool.
I get it's very hard to talk about mysticism when it's hidden inside what many of us liberals think of as a problematic religion. But Art works pretty great to talk more universally:

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Mystical experience is the source of religious artifact; effects of following. What (d)evolves in the aftermath of mnemonic and talismanic structure characterizing such authentic visions' teachers, teachings, and traditions can be evidenced by the sands of time.

Direct teaching is the hallmark of all authentic teaching, not so much religious edifice; being under the perversions and pervasion of provisional devices (for their own good, care and feeding). What about careerist managerial hierarchies, baby-sitters, their baby-sitters …let's not talk about bath-water, plumbing, policing, etc.

See essence on your own, then seek a teacher— you'll be glad you did (see essence on your own).

deci belle said:

Direct teaching is the hallmark of all authentic teaching, not so much religious edifice

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There is a place to turn it all off with non-visionary mediation practices like Zen Buddhism, my favorite. But using Magic (mind manifestation), but especially Goetia and Necromancy, we traffic with manifest reality and individuated consciousness.

Over the decades I've noticed those who confuse the Mysticism with Sorcery , the two main tools we have, are usually prey to the biggest causes of delusion, as everyone thinks they have found the sure road to escape Plato's Cave, but they are usually just in more cave. And often uglier and worse parts of the same cave.. The more mystical philosophies of religions - but not the lawyerly nit-picking theological schools - are useful to have a system of stories of what you want to become, and what the spirits will shape themselves around, and what you will experience. So pick stories that make you, the daimons, and people around you like more beautiful, kind, creative, and joyfu, rather than petty, ugly, bitter, and grasping. (Not saying you are these, btw.)

There was episode in one old sci-fi tv show, where mankind went through severe degradation after big war. So they were praying to radio-electrononic schematics and reading corresponding formulas as some kind of conjurations.

So in the same way all this religion looks to me: result of severe degradation of humanity from the peak of its former grace. And not only it doesn't let solve any kind of problems humanity faces, it causes even more problems with all those religious wars and religious fanatics, beng tool of politics and nothing more.

Mysticism, as it is named in this thread, is somewhere in the middle between former Occult Science on one hand and degradation to religion on the other hand. Occasionally peculiar artifacts of old times pop up here and there, which testify for the grand golden age of humanity back in time, but it is very hard to find way to that past grandeur through the intense religious mindset which darkens the mind of modern man.

In all the honesty, a lot of people aren't interested in knowledge, they simply want to be someone's slaves - slaves of another or slaves of some invisible entity. Well, that's where we are now - in the world of slavery.

This is my stance on that, I don't insist on it being the absolute truth, but I am sure there is something to think about.

Adelina, yeah, religions of pointless rules and legalistic "truth" seeking is no fun. Speaking as someone who engages with Catholic myths, in very Bernadro Kastrup sense, it may very well be having 1.406 billion Catholics on the planet warps the quantum reality for those who enter that "mythstream, " as I think of it.


Take it as you will, but I have a pagan and babalawo friend who said the wards that can deflect bullets in Africa barely do anything in the States. I joked and said it's becasue we mystical Catholics control reality over here in the American South West, Latin, Central, and South America . I was kidding, but the basic idea is supported by Jason Miller who wrote those of his clients who go to church have a significant uptick in success probability for the spells he does for them. There are probably many ways to enter into a magically flexible quantum reality, but if don't have one, we just default to the Scientism sub-universe, which boring, and a form of magic to make magic not happen .

MorganBlack said:

There is a place to turn it all off with non-visionary mediation practices like Zen Buddhism, my favorite. But using Magic (mind manifestation), but especially Goetia and Necromancy, we traffic with manifest reality and individuated consciousness.

Over the decades I've noticed those who confuse the Mysticism with Sorcery , the two main tools we have, are usually prey to the biggest causes of delusion, as everyone thinks they have found the sure road to escape Plato's Cave, but they are usually just in more cave. And often uglier and worse parts of the same cave.. The more mystical philosophies of religions - but not the lawyerly nit-picking theological schools - are useful to have a system of stories of what you want to become, and what the spirits will shape themselves around, and what you will experience. So pick stories that make you, the daimons, and people around you like more beautiful, kind, creative, and joyful, rather than petty, ugly, bitter, and grasping. (Not saying you are these, btw.)

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"those who confuse the mysticism with the sorcery" -- I understand the words, but could you please bring that to ground? Like concrete examples, please. I find it rather mystifying because I translate what you are saying as a critique of Neoplatonic Hermeticism which you juxtapose with folk-religion and all of the folk-magical elements that are blended with it. But my translation could be way off. I don't know. I'm reading it as a witch practitioner of applied mysticism, but from a culturally different tradition, rooted in a different language. We are looking at the same river delta with different stories in mind. Maybe we can circumambulate.

Would I be wrong in saying that mysticism is the experience and sorcery is what you do with that experience?

Well said, Robert Ramsay. Mysticism is not magic, per se, at least not historically, but can be seen as preparation for magic - though even these distinctions are also not absolute. Systems like New Thought, Chaos Magic, and other more transcendental approaches work effectively without all the clutter and bric-a-brac of traditional sorcery or goetia. These practices focus on pure manifestation. Great stuff!

But how we discuss these concepts depends greatly on where we enter the conversation and when our individual understanding of "magic" was formed or informed.

Classically speaking, there is a cosmological division: the realm "Above", the Supralunar world, where there are no gods, no spirits, no demons—just "God," or in a Buddhist or Chaos Magic sense, pure consciousness and awareness, including what we might call the "subconscious."

Mysticism, then, is about enhancing and refining one's relationship to the Mystery - in Catholic mysticism this is called "theosis. " But no need to take those myths literally, but I recommend the belief SOMETHING real is going on behind it all - whether you conceive of that as the Divine, God, the gods, or your own subconscious, however you choose to define your cosmo-conception,. This is where it's centered on connections, totality, communion, and direct experience of the transcendent, or minimally more than just your everyday boring personality.

In contrast, the classical cosmological conception distinguishes what they called "magic" - by which they meant practices like sorcery, witchcraft, and necromancy, NOT mysticism, prayer, or connection with the Divine. This classic understanding "practical necromancy" works with sublunar elements, forces, magia materia and spirits. It doesn't have to be about Oneness or unity at all, and can be employed for various purposes, say, to heal or to harm, to protect or to curse - and as being fundamentally about getting things done in the material world, rather than seeking connection,. . You can be as nasty as you want here. This is an externalized practice in the world of STUFF beneath the moon

Modern "witchcraft" systems like Wicca - which owe a huge debt to New Thought -and is basically "wishcraft" with candles - have confused these two domains together, to the detriment of both, in my view. By blending mystical practices (which are about connection with the "Divine" or "transcendent consciousness" ) with practical magic (which is about working with sublunar forces to achieve tangible results), have muddied the waters and lead to idiotic, and nasty pseduo-religions like BALG dark fluff.

For a useful historical understanding of the supralunar and sublunar realms - "The Above" and "The Below" - and how these cosmological divisions shaped classical approaches to mysticism and magic, I highly recommend Skinner's book:

Michael Psellus on the Operation of Daemons: De Operatione Daemonum