Mystical Jargon

Over the years I’ve accumulated sheets with scribbled or marginal definitions of a lot of words thickening texts that form the scholarly literature on the mystical. I thought I’d consolidate them in one place. This listing will remain “active” in that I’ll keep on adding to it as new ones make me reach for the dictionary.

docetism: From Greek dokein, meaning to “seem, to appear to be,” therefore the belief that the body of Jesus was not really a body, but merely an appearance, a phantom, thus the denial of Jesus as simultaneously being both God and man.

eschatology: eskhatos from the Greek, “last, furthest, uttermost, extreme, most remote”; then the added -ology, from -logy, from Greek logia, Latin legein, “to speak,” hence teaching, doctrine science of — whatever—in this case of the End Times.

epiphany: Greek phainein, “to show,” and epi meaning “on or in.” Therefore “showing forth,” manifestation, appearance.

Now there are several other kinds of -phany. Hierophany is from Greek hieros, holy, sacred—the manifestation of something holy. Theophany where the subject is theos, God. Other such formations sometimes occur, and when they do the initial leading word must be understood to see who or what is “manifesting.”

Authors then tend to turns these words into adjectives (hierophanic, theophanic) to modify words like vision or imagination or experience, by which time the meaning begins to fray because the visceral meaning of the words is, to begin with, something very rarely experienced.

haecceity, hexeity: From Medieval Latin (actually Duns Scotus), haec, “this,” therefore thisness, meaning the quality that makes something, e.g. God, absolutely unique. Its rendering as hexeity is linguistically confusing although it makes spelling the word a lot easier. Hex of course refers to “six” in Greek, but the meaning is the very opposite: unique one-ness.

homologation: Greek root is homologeo, “to agree.” Therefore the word carries the meaning of accreditation or proof or qualification.

hypostasis: From the Greek hypo, “under,” a word that means “that which is underneath,” therefore its substance. The plural is hypostases.

ipseity: A word meaning “self” or “selfhood” using the Latin ipse for self. The reference is often to divine ipseity, or selfness, presumably a way of pointing to “self” writ super large. The word’s root is used in the phrase ipse dixit, attributed to Cicero (106-43 BC), who was castigating appeals to personal authority. The phrase means “he said it himself.” The origin of that was the Greek autos ephā, meaning the same thing, used as “authority” by students of Pythagoras. 

philoxenia: The easiest way to parse this word is by comparing it to its opposite, xenophobia. The last is “fear of strangers, foreigners”; the word here is “love of strangers, foreigners.”

soteriology: From Green soteria, “salvation, preservation.” Also used as soteriological.

syzygy: From Greek syzygia meaning “a union of two, a pairing, yoking, conjunction.” Implied is twinning—and in mystical literature referring to a “heavenly twin” corresponding to the earthly soul. This then widens and thins even to include the concept of the guardian angel.

thaumaturgy: Greek thauma for “wonder, miracle” and ergon for “work”. Miracle-working.

theogony: From the Greek theos and agonia, “struggle, suffering.” God’s sufferings.

theosophy: Greek, theos and sophos, “wise, learned.” Knowledge of God.

The curious effect of using principally Greek words in scholarly discussions of mysticism is to cause a veiling the subject behind a kind of sacred language. Putting these concepts in plain English exposes the scholar to dismissal or attack because the presentation would then have a strongly fundamentalist sound.