MYSTICISM, NON-CHRISTIAN. In Christian myst icism the aim is to enter into communion with a per sonal God. Where a personal God is recognised, the same aim is pursued in other religions. But before we come to the higher types of religion, it should be noticed that even in lower or primitive religions a sort of myst icism is common in which communion is sought with divine or supernatural powers. Primitive folk have their mysteries of initiation, in which a state of ecstasy is attained. To them various animals and things are holy and able to communicate holiness as being instinct with divine power or life. The heathen Semites had their mystic sacrifices. Robertson Smith notes, for instance (R-S-), that the Harranians offered sacrificial gifts to the dog. " and •in certain mysteries dogs were solemnly declared to be the brothers of the mystae." We find traces of primitive mystical cults even in the Old Testament. It appears from Isa. lxv. 3 ff., lxvi. 3, 17, Ezek. viii. 10, that daring the Exile there was a tendency to revive certain cults of a primitive type. "This ten dency was not confined to the Hebrews. nor did it reach its chief development among them. The causes which produced a resuscitation of obsolete mysteries among the Jews were at work at the same period among all the Northern Semites; for everywhere the old national deities had shown themselves powerless to resist the gods of Assyria and Babylon. And among these nations the tendency to fall back for help on primitive superstitions was not held in check, as it was among the Hebrews, by the counter-influence of the Prophets and the Law. From this period, therefore, we may date with great probability the first rise of the mystical cults which played so large a part in the later developments of ancient paganism. and spread their influence over the whole Graeco-Roman world. Most of these cults appear to have begun among the Northern Semites, or in the parts of Asia Minor that fell under the empire of the Assyrians and Babylonians. The leading feature that distinguishes them from the old public cults, with which they entered into competi tion, is that they were not based on the principle of nationality, but sought recruits from men of every race who were willing to accept initiation through the mystic sacraments; and in pursuance of this object they carried on a missionary propaganda in all parts of the Roman Empire, in a way quite alien to the spirit of national religion." The naturalization of Oriental cults in Greece and Rome, however, led to the introduction there of a more personal element into religion. Thus the cult of the Thracian god Dionysos, a deity of Oriental origin (see Gladys M. N. Davis, The Asiatic Dionysos, 1914), as intro duced into Greece, promised the realization of a personal salvation. In Rome the Oriental mystery-religions which exerted a wide influence were the cult of Cybele of Phrygia, of Isis of Egypt, and of Mithra of Persia. " These religions appealed to the imagination on account of their great antiquity, their elaborate myths, their mystic rites, their promises of regeneration and of salva tion " (G. A. Barton, R.13".). We have noted references in the Old Testament to a lower type of mysticism which was condemned by the great prophets. We may presume that this was condemned all the more sternly, because the prophets themselves knew by experience the difference between the lower and higher types. The great prophet was a true mystic (cp. the article " The Language of the Prophets " in The Quest, July, 1919). He " is carried away by the divine power and speaks as the mouthpiece of God, using lofty poetic diction while in a state of ecstasy " (K. Kohler). In later Judaism, as Kohler notes, there has always been a current of mysticism. We find the beginnings of a developed form in the religion of the Essenes, in the allegorizing methods of Philo, in the speculations about the " Chariot " (merkabah) of the book of Ezekiel, and in the mystical interpretation of the O.T. book, the " Song of Songs." In the Merkabah Mysticism the Chariot, as J. Abelson says (Jewish Mysticism, 1913), became a kind of "mystic way " lead ing up to the final goal of the soul. " Or, more precisely, it was the mystic instrument,' the vehicle by which one was carried direct into the `halls' of the unseen. It was the aim of the mystic to be a Merkabah-rider,' so that he might be enabled, while still in the trammels of the flesh, to mount up to his spiritual Eldorado." As regards the " Song of Songs " (or Canticles), the Rabbis saw in its imagery of human love and marriage a true symbol of the union of Israel with the Divine Father. " The intimate and secret experiences of the soul of the :few, the raptures of its intercourse with God in senses which no outsider could understand, were best reflected in the language of that august and indefinable passion which men call love." But the Jews were not content simply to interpret O.T. writings mystically. They pro duced a large mystic literature which, though starting with the Old Testament, contains many new speculations. Famous examples of this literature are the book " Yet sirah " and the " Zohar." The Sefer Fetsirah (Book of Creation) is of uncertain authorship and date. Judah Halevi (end of 11th century) attributed it to Abraham. Reitzenstein (Poimandres), connecting it with Gnostic activities, assigns it to the second century. It has also been assigned to Rabbi (50-120 A.D.). on account of his skill in the mystic lore of numbers. But the most likely date is about the sixth century A.D., since, as Abelson points out, this century marks the beginning of the Gaonic epoch, in which several important Rabbinic mystical works were composed. In any case, the work has been held in high esteem from the tenth century, and has exercised a great influence on the general develop ment of Jewish Mysticism. " It is a mystical philosophy drawn from the sounds, shapes, relative positions, and numerical values of the letters of the Hebrew alphabet." Abelson notes that although the nucleus of much of the teaching is to be found in the Talmud, the Rabbis were not the originators, but borrowed from older sources, Egyptian, Babylonian. and Mandtean. He points out also that if Alexandrian Neoplatonism is the pith and core of the emanation doctrines of Plotinus, it is also the root of the emanation doctrines of the Book Yetsirah, the Zohar, and indeed of all branches of the mediaeval Kabbalah. The Zohar (" Shining" or " Brightness ";
cp. Dan. xii. 3) is in particular the text-book of Jewish mediaeval mysticism. Its authorship is uncertain, though it purports to be the record of a divine revelation to Rabbi Simeon ben Yobai (b. second century A.D.). It made its first appearance in Spain in the thirteenth century, obviously had a number of authors, and quite as clearly drew from various faiths and philosophies. Neo platonism, Gnosticism. the Talmud and Midrashim, and Persian Sufism all seem to have helped to form and fashion it. While the Zohar claims to be a commentary on the Pentateuch, it is really an independent compend ium of Kabbalistic theosophy. The work emphasises the fact that in the phenomena of the world there is an esoteric as well as an exoteric really. The universe is the outward expression of the inner Divine thought. Man, " having the privilege to behold everywhere the Divine image—the world being an embodiment of God— can, if he will, make his way to the Invisible Author of all; can have union with the Unseen." In addition to such lofty teaching, the work is rich in angelology and in mediaeval astrology. The treatment of the problem of evil is noteworthy. " Evil, sin, and their personifica tions, the demons, are termed kelifoth, i.e., the coverings, wrappings, externals of all existing things. Just as the covering (or husk) of anything Is not the real thing and far inferior to it, so sin and evil are, as it were, the gross, inferior, imperfect aspects of creation. And as the world is an emanation of the Divine, it follows that whatsoever in the world is evil, and not of the Divine, cannot be real. Hence evil is that which has no being; it is a sort of illusion; It is a state of absence, negation; it is a thing which merely appears to be but is not " (Abelson). The general name in Jewish literature for every kind of mystical interpretation is Kabbalah (" esoteric tradition "). Its secret lore is described by Kohler as ill-adapted to the teaching of Judaism and as simply the reaction to the excessive rationalism of the Spanish-Arabic period. " The legalism and casuistry of the Talmud and the Codes appealed too much to the intellect, disregarding the deeper emotional sources of religion and morality; on the other hand, the mysticism of the Cabbalists over-emphasized the emotional element, and eliminated much of •the rational basis of Judaism." In Arabic, Persian. and Turkish the word ' mystic' is represented by gaff, though this word is restricted to mystics who are Moslems, and at first (c. S00 A.D.) bore a bumbler meaning. The Sufis are so called from suf " wool," because they were ascetics who wore rough woollen garments. " The earliest Sufis were, in fact, ascetics and quietists rather than mystics" (R. A. Nicholson, The Mystics of Islam, 1914). In course of time, however, they came to regard asceticism as only the first stage of a long spiritual pilgrimage, and Dr. Nicholson thinks the essence of Sufism is best displayed in its extreme type, which is pantheistic and speculative rather than ascetic or devotional. The Sufi is a " traveller" by slow " stages " along a " path " the goal of which is union with Reality. When he attains illumination, he is endowed with a supernatural power of discernment. When he attains ecstasy be is united with God. " The whole of Sfifism rests on the belief that when the individual self is lost, the Universal Self is found, or, in religious language, that ecstasy affords the only means by which the soul can directly communi cate and become united with God. Asceticism, purifica tion, love, gnosis, saintship—all the leading ideas of Sfifism—are developed from this cardinal principle." The Siift obtains, as divine gifts, gnosis (mystic knowledge) and love; and "gnosis and love are spiritually identical : they teach the same truths in different language " (cp. further SUFIISM). Mysticism in India is characterised by Dr. E. Lehmann (Mysticism in Heathendom and Christendom, 1910) as a mysticism of meditation and of renunciation. " The mysticism of the Hindus did not originate in philosophy, any more than their religion from the first was a philosophical religion. The beginning was adoration, worship, and therein the earliest elements of mysticism are to be found." The Hindu mystic for the most part seeks a life of seclusion and meditation. Union with the divine principle, Brahma and Atman, Is only to be attained by way of meditation. " Insight is what is needed, and Brahma, thus thought out, is meditation." But in practice ordinary meditation is found to be insufficient. It is therefore improved by art, " the art above all arts to which the Hindu applies him self assiduously, the art of raising himself above the life of this world by rapture, forgetting himself in ecstasy, and producing this ecstasy by penances—the art which in India is known as Yoga" (see YOGA). In China, according to Lehmann, the temperament of the people is absolutely opposed to anything of a mystical nature. Nevertheless. Laotze (b. 004 B.C.), the founder of Taoism (q.v.) and the second in importance of China's great sages, produced here a work in which are found all the properties of true mysticism. " It would seem as if here, in the Far East, the groundwork had been laid for that which in the subsequent peregrinations of mysticism should -receive more solid form. The three chords which mysticism always strikes, namely, alienation from the world, the doing away with personality and with self, reverberate here also, and they sound—and this is the remarkable part of it—perfectly Chinese, although con stantly clashing with the normal system of Confucian doctrines, with all its practical and personal activity." In addition to the works mentioned above, see J. C. Oman, Mystics; L. M. J. Garnett; Isaac Husik.
N. God N is a designation used by anthropologists for a deity depicted in the MSS. of the Mayan Indians of Central America. He has the head of an old man, and wears a head-ornament which contains the sign for the year of 360 days. He is described by Sehellhas as "The God of the end of the Year."