Mystery and mysticism

Earlier I wrote about spirituality and gnosis. A subject that certainly belongs to that is mystery. The word comes from Greek and means secretive. The word is used for many things and can then have slightly different meanings. The broadest description is:

Something, a phenomenon, an event you don't understand.

It is used for unexplained and enigmatic things, hidden things and secrets. That mystical can be both something in nature and something created or experienced by humans. The derived word mysticism is mainly used for matters relating to faith. These are things that are incomprehensible to the human mind, supernatural, which are considered truths and constitute an article of faith.

Let's go back to the more general meaning. With the growth of scientific knowledge, many things that were previously considered mysteries have become scientifically explainable. In some cases, science can only explain part of a phenomenon. For example, one knows how something works but not why or what causes it. You can see that a lot in medical science, for example. The combination of science and religion or belief often collides with this, such as Creation Theory versus Evolution Theory.

The mystery is more attractive to many people than the cool scientific explanation. Crop circles, strange objects coming out of the air traps, unexplained archaeological finds, aliens, UFOs, large human-apesque creatures such as the Yeti and the Bigfoot continue to occupy man. The sudden disappearance of whole cultures and groups of animals is still a mystery.