What's the difference between mystery and mysticism?
Mystery
Definition:
(a.) A profound secret; something wholly unknown, or something kept cautiously concealed, and therefore exciting curiosity or wonder; something which has not been or can not be explained; hence, specifically, that which is beyond human comprehension.
(a.) A kind of secret religious celebration, to which none were admitted except those who had been initiated by certain preparatory ceremonies; -- usually plural; as, the Eleusinian mysteries.
(a.) The consecrated elements in the eucharist.
(a.) Anything artfully made difficult; an enigma.
(n.) A trade; a handicraft; hence, any business with which one is usually occupied.
(n.) A dramatic representation of a Scriptural subject, often some event in the life of Christ; a dramatic composition of this character; as, the Chester Mysteries, consisting of dramas acted by various craft associations in that city in the early part of the 14th century.
Example Sentences:
(1) Ofcom will conduct research, such as mystery shopping, to assess the transparency of contractual information given to customers by providers at the point of sale".
(2) Totò was a legend in the Vesuvian city – a comedian of genius; poignant, mysterious.
(3) And that ancient Basque cultural gem – the mysterious language with its odd Xs, Ks and Ts – will be honoured at every turn in a city where it was forbidden by Franco.
(4) The etiology of the panvasculitis still remains a mystery.
(5) Meeting after meeting during 2011 to try to hammer out agreements about the basic shape of the Egyptian constitution – meetings that always mysteriously collapsed.
(6) Director Gareth Edwards , who made Godzilla, introduced a tantalizing concept reel to preview the mysterious film, which is part of a series of films exploring other stories outside of the core Star Wars saga.
(7) In EastEnders , the mystery surrounding the identity of Kat's secret squeeze continues amid the grinding of narrative levers and the death rattle of overflogged script-horses.
(8) The exact purpose of the complex is a mystery, though it is clearly ancient.
(9) Of course, the great British countryside was never as twee as that – a point made forcibly by the second album from mysterious electronic collective Hacker Farm .
(10) Askap will also help astronomers investigate one of the greatest mysteries of the universe: dark energy.
(11) Dickens's last completed novel, Our Mutual Friend , has a mysterious hero, John Rokesmith, who turns out to be someone different from the person we were told he was.
(12) Where once Gaga was mysterious and her music unavoidable, the mystique has evaporated and the music easy to miss.
(13) "How these union bosses get elected, how they raise money, how they disperse money is a complete and utter mystery.
(14) Despite extensive research, the aetiology of this infectious disease which affects mainly infants and young children remains mysterious.
(15) Death in utero (or immediately following birth) of children of diabetic mothers remains rather mysterious.
(16) Now trapped in an occupied city, she takes on a job as a housekeeper to mysterious bachelor Gabriel Ortega.
(17) In response to a question from the host, Jake Tapper, about allegations that the Russian ambassador “is a spy”, Rubio said: “It is not a mystery to anyone that virtually every embassy in Washington DC has some intelligence component associated with it.” Fact check: what did Trump's tweets about Obama's 'wiretaps' mean?
(18) Since then, his whereabouts have been a mystery, but this week his brother told Associated Press that he had received new and disturbing information from one of the policemen who took Gao away.
(19) Yet elsewhere in Syria, the strikes against Isis opened what US officials indicate as an opportunity to strike a mysterious al-Qaida cell in Syria believed to have been in the advanced stages for bomb attacks against US or western targets.
(20) How Balls achieves his £1.2bn from a mansion tax is a mystery.
Mysticism
Definition:
(n.) Obscurity of doctrine.
(n.) The doctrine of the Mystics, who professed a pure, sublime, and wholly disinterested devotion, and maintained that they had direct intercourse with the divine Spirit, and aquired a knowledge of God and of spiritual things unattainable by the natural intellect, and such as can not be analyzed or explained.
(n.) The doctrine that the ultimate elements or principles of knowledge or belief are gained by an act or process akin to feeling or faith.
Example Sentences:
(1) They operate on a mystical and symbolic plane, which is foreign to the practice of "Western" medicine.
(2) According to Deborah Mattinson, his pollster, Brown " loved slogans and believed them to be imbued with a mystical power capable of persuading the most intransigent voter", and therefore went a bundle on them – not least " A future fair for all ", the surreal dud with which Labour went to the country in 2010, following 2005's equally idiotic " forward not back ".
(3) On involvement with the guru and a new 'family,' the experienced increased well-being and periods of bliss, and their acceptance of mystic Hindu beliefs was solidified.
(4) Contact was made with a ‘mystical-religious’ group that used the gas to accelerate arriving at their transcendental-meditative state of choice.” It increased in popularity with the rise of festival culture – it’s been a mainstay of Glastonbury’s stone circle and squat parties in Bristol and south London for at least a decade – but the equipment needed to dispense it remained relatively expensive.
(5) Animal Rescue is based on a screenplay by the novelist Dennis Lehane , author of Gone Baby Gone, Mystic River and Shutter Island, all of which have been made into films by Hollywood.
(6) None of the students attributed AIDS to mystical forces, while some associated it with affluence.
(7) As part of their studies, orphans at the centre will be taught a curriculum based on Spirituality for Kids, linked to the Kabbalah school of mysticism, of which Madonna is a follower.
(8) Christians believed, and believe, that the body is not only physical, but also spiritual and mystical, and many believed it was an allegory of church, state and family.
(9) In the interim, Phil cut the solo albums Star Spangled Springer (1973), Phil's Diner (1974) and Mystic Line (1975), and appeared on Roy Wood's album Mustard and on Zevon's debut album in 1976.
(10) All subjects were most likely to cite mystical causes for their disability and to believe that mystical sources would most help them to improve.
(11) If there’s a mystic, a European setting and an antique time-period, you should already know – if only from bitter experience of his recent oeuvre – that you’re in eighth-rate Allen territory.
(12) Bush's fantastical lyrics, influenced by children's literature, esoteric mystical knowledge, daydreams and the lore and legends of old Albion, seemed irrelevant, and deficient in street-cred at a time of tower-block social realism and agit-prop.
(13) A questionnaire was developed to assess adult recall for a range of transpersonal experiences throughout childhood and adolescence (mystical experience, out-of-body experience, lucid dreams, archetypal dreams, ESP), as well as nightmares and night terrors as indicators of more conflicted, negative states.
(14) Such mystical guidance always remained important to him.
(15) As for individuals, intent on shielding themselves from paying tax, intent on giving nothing back, I fail to see the mystical benefit of their physical presence in the UK.
(16) Going beyond, an attempt is made, and this, solely from the anthropological standpoint, to apply these data to the religious and mystical act of Eucharistic Manducation.
(17) The film reflects the conciliatory, almost mystical mood of a man who emerged from prison as a mediator, philosopher and president-in-waiting.
(18) The study of spatial marks implies looking for the fundamental marks of the human being as well as the existence of a mystical space that has to be differenciated from a pathological space.
(19) Stanford University might have been the cradle for a hundred Silicon Valley startups and the hothouse for some of its greatest technical innovations, but the Singularity University is an institution that has been made in the valley's own image: highly networked, fuelled by a cocktail of philanthro-capitalism and endowed with an almost mystical sense of its own destiny.
(20) I’ll call them the Mystic East, the Dead Centre, and the Wild West.