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Sacred Mystery


Sacred mysteries are the areas of supernatural phenomena associated with a divinity or a religious ideology. Sacred mysteries may be either:

Although the term "mystery" is not often used in anthropology, access by initiation or rite of passage to otherwise secret beliefs is an extremely common feature of indigenous religions all over the world.

Mysticism may be defined as an area of philosophical or religious thought which focuses on mysteries in the first sense above. A mystagogue or hierophant is a holder and teacher of secret knowledge in the second sense above.

The mystery religions of antiquity were religious cults which required initiation of a "initiate" or new member before they were accepted, and sometimes had different levels of initiation, as well as doctrines which were mysteries in the sense of requiring supernatural explanation. In some, parts of the doctrine were apparently only known to priests. They included the Eleusinian Mysteries, Mithraism, the Cult of Isis, the Cult of Sol Invictus, and the Essenes. Mystery traditions were popular in ancient Greece and during the height of the Roman Empire, and as discussed below, parts of Early Christianity used secrecy in the same way.

Although the term is not used equally by all Christian traditions, many if not most basic aspects of Christian theology require a supernatural explanation. To name but a few key examples, these include the nature of the Trinity, the Virgin Birth of Jesus, and the Resurrection of Jesus. These are mysteries in the sense that they cannot be explained or apprehended by reason alone.


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