In a narrow sense, the Mystery is a truth that transcends the created intellect, and transcends it so much that, even though revealed and believed, it remains nevertheless obscure and veiled during the mortal life, if the deciphering of the mysteries, made possible by esotericism, does not intervene.

 

At least, of a good part of them. The etymology, that is the linguistic origin of the word "mystery", derives from the Greek mysterion = a closed, hidden thing.

 

We call mystery all that is kept secret, hidden from those who would not be able to understand its value, namely the people who are immature and unprepared to understand the eternal truths.

 

Among the Greeks, Mysteries were spoken of to indicate several things: a secret rite (arcanum, sacramentum), or a hidden truth to be communicated to the initiates only, according to the affirmations of Heraclitus, Pythagoras, Plato, Euripides and Aristophanes.

If in the non-Christian traditions the mystery and the celebration of the mysteries represented for the believers of the exterior religion all that was not understood and that remained inaccessible to the intellect lacking the initiatic illumination, in Christianity, the Mysteries also took a character of inscrutability for the mass of the believers consisting of the non- Initiates.

 

So that, as then, also today, the Mysteries have remained such for the people little inclined to meditation and high culture.

Tommaso Palamidessi

excerpt from "DEFINITION OF MYSTERY"

from the 4th Booklet