Mystical Studies And How They Work Today

By Charles Kelly


Mysticism has roots that date back into the most ancient religions, and a lot of these still have some surviving sect or tradition. Many types of worship from these ancient systems are present in the mores, customs and traditions of any one country that has played host to them. In a sense, virtuous behavior is something that is founded on religious ritual and ceremony.

This will be mostly lost nowadays, or they may be driven into the subconscious of the people, and come out only in their traits and habits. Mystical studies have this kind of concern, and is driven in part by a search of connections to religions that are far gone. The memories and records are lost, and memory is a sensitive thing that can be affected by wars and constant migrations.

Shamanism was also very widespread before, a kind of worship that was about the more physical aspects. The worship was for trees, rocks and animals, later denounced as barbaric by churches and also other religions. There was a custom for having kings that acted like real divinities, but when one white hair appeared anywhere on his body, he would be sacrificed on a fallow field.

The sacrifice ceremony of a king on agricultural land was for fertilizing it, so that it will be fruitful. His blood, once the most powerful of beings, can satisfy gods of earth and will inspire them to make the land bountiful. After problems in agriculture were solved, they were less needed and a new kind of mystical concern replaced it.

This was a more philosophical kind of mystic view, and it came during the age of the Judaic fathers, or earlier. There would be more philosophical mystics later, founding the most enduring religions that are formally constituted today. These have created academic systems, and provided impetus for all sorts of advances in culture, the arts, science and technology.

The more formal studies about mysticism can belong to the academe, where people like theologians and psychologists can be. They have records that have been purged so that they fit the plane of higher concerns characteristic of all axial religions. These were founded during a timeline that lasted a thousand years, when humanity transformed, like Buddhism, Islam and Christianity.

The base practices or beliefs are seen as holdovers in the racial memory, and things like a rash of violence are seen as symptoms of these. However, there is no true connection to how ancient religions could cause these. The studies here therefore also aim to find how those practices and beliefs may be subconsciously present and active in present day cultures.

Churches consider many base practices cardinal sins, related to domestic practice or in the more social settings of public places. The studies here can make this the threads leading into the dark labyrinths of religious practice said to have died centuries ago. The axial establishments once were zealous in wiping these out, although no one is sure that they have really died out.

The relevant studies in this sense are therefore those that are clean, contemplative and intensive. There may even be vows for abstinence or penitence, but these studies can be secular too so that it can shed light into human experiences of the past. The aim here is to create a very refined high sense of the divinity that can help humanity progress.




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