One of our many (living) definitions for “Mysticism” @QueerNature is surrendering your life to what you love. What does this look like in times of eco-social fracture?
((Pictured in the photo is a Starburst Anemone—An intertidal being who is helping us apprentice to the mysteries of moving between worlds))
“Mysticism” has come to mean certain things in its European / (originating from Greek) context of use, which is all useful stuff, but we’re also curious about expanding these historical definitions, at least for ourselves. We don’t necessarily want to prescribe what it means for others, merely we want to riff on possibilities.
Many dictionaries would define it as the practice of seeking encounter or union with a divine or sacred reality, often in a way that is very direct and apparent to the senses, or experiential. It has often been used in the context of organized religion to identify devotees who expressed their religiosity in unorthodox ways. Many mystics who gained public attention were/are variously seen as heretics — I.e. they are “doing it wrong” — or alternatively, they can come to be seen as saints or prophets — affirming aspects of said religion in new ways. How mystics are interpreted by their societies, and by the people in offices of power within those religions, depended on many factors mostly having to to with power, politics, and who was friends with who.
“Mystic” comes from the Greek word for initiate, which in the social context of mystery cults in the ancient Greco-Roman world, was one who kept their experience of cult rites secret. Nowadays “mystic” still carries some connotations of privacy (as in, one who has private mystical experiences), despite the fact that in late antique and medieval forms of Christianity and Islam, as well as Judaism, mystics often became sources of public interest, spectacle, and legend, and their “private” experiences ended up having a significant impact on culture. This is part of our inspiration behind envisioning possibilities of a “Public Mysticism,” (a phrase we came up with that is inspired by Krista Tippet’s @onbeing notion of reimagining public theology), particularly in a time of anthropogenic climate chaos and ecological fracture?
What are portals to mysticism for us? We experience it as a politics beyond the human / A more than human romance with the unknown / A psycho-spiritual method for engaging with uncertainty / A way toward a “secure”/creative relationship with Mystery / Faith in the insurrectionary power of things that have yet to emergence, or that are emerging // Belief in the soul’s natural capacity for insurgence // A space of so-called ‘madness,’ un-sanity & imagination carved out by Love // An ecological Eros…
It is trust in the feeling of sacredness in spite of what the dominant culture tells us sacredness is. It is respect for chaos. It is spiritual or soul-shaking wonder at the notion that not everything is, or even can be, known. It is the experience that the world is enchanted and alive despite being told otherwise by people (therefore it feels very related to the suppression / dismissal of animisms by processes of colonization both internal and external). Mysticism is surrendering your life to what you love.
This ties in to more of its historical & religious meaning (and political too), which we find useful: it is also longing for a transformed or Other world, often expressed through a deeply intimate (possibly life-long) relationship with an other-than-human entity. Traditionally in its use, this could be a god, but it could also be a forest, a river, a landscape, an ancestor, an entire species.
In this relationship of having a “soulmate” (or several) who are other than human, there is a strong identification with that entity (across species or category of being), a devotion to them, even a surrender to them, that is performed. Which gets at another layer of meaning for us. Mysticism is not just the contemporary /“modern” notion of spirituality, which especially in an “American” context tends to denote what we believe.
Mysticism is something we can do with our spirituality. One might do this through poetry, through practices of trance, through altered & neurodivergent/emergent states, through art, through activism, through meditation, body modification, walking the land, through fasting or other rituals. These rituals are, among whatever other functions they have, a way or keeping a “hole” in our ways of seeing the world so that the unanticipated can come through and not be deemed heretical, & even can be deemed holy. (& Hole-y)
Mysticism gets at the need for a productive rupture in our cosmologies. This is to also say, mysticism is dangerous especially to status quos of “empires.” It is an overflow of myth, creativity, life force, despair, joy, that can emerge as a reaction to stagnancy in systems. It is particularly important now to cultivate an anti-capitalist (and anti-fascist!) mysticism because one of the strange illusions of late capitalism in a digitized world is that things can appear to not decay. The aesthetic of “newness” abounds. But it is shallow.
Historically we see mysticisms emerge (though not exclusively) in times that are felt as apocalyptic or catastrophic, in the wake of massive disasters or in the shadow of anticipated ones (the r/ship between the plague and medieval mysticism is but one example). This is because these things destabilize our senses of purpose, meaning, and justice. They make “strange” / or alienate/ some human systems of meaning, in ways that can contribute to new imaginaries.
This gets us to the topic of despair. Mysticism is a way of not just metabolizing (which means processing, digesting) despair, but also alchemizing (transforming) it. It is an elusive, shimmering spiritual circuit connecting despair and joy. We believe it is a concept in need of more common notions and conversation at this time partially because despair is growing and also is still mostly seen as taboo, useless, a sign something is wrong with you, selfish, a detraction or detailing of activism, a reason for medicating someone, etc., which is all absolutely untrue.
In fact, (as the eco-feminist psychotherapist Miriam Greenspan points out), despair is a normal reaction to colossal destabilizations of meaning and justice, is a correct complex emotion to be experiencing at this geological time, and calls for nothing less than radical transformation of how we see the world. For us this means a process of re-enchantment (this is a whole topic of its own).
It is also really worth noting right now that mysticism, as transpersonal spiritual longing, can manifest in terrible, harmful forms. Because spiritual surrender, devoting one’s soul to a god, to a concept, to something beyond the self, to ancestors, does have the potential to justify incredible violence, *especially when it is strategically used by powerful public figures as a tool to psychologically control a populist base*.
In some ways, this goes beyond even “Psy Ops” to what one might call a “Spirit” or “Soul Ops.” Check out the brilliant article, “The Magical Thinking of the Far Right,” by Brian Phillips, on how deeply the occult influenced Nazism as well as the current alt-right movement.
Yep, Mysticism can be militant. We can’t take that part out of it. But we can work to become more aware of how esoteric & mystical ways of thinking can serve to use “smoke and mirrors” to consolidate power and justify what is actually just pure hate and resentment toward other beings. As the author of the above essay perfectly puts it:
“The unknown is the largest need of the intellect,” Emily Dickinson wrote. I happen to believe that this is true; but the kind of esotericism that thrives on the far right has never had the slightest interest in the unknown. It wants to be told the news it wants to hear, and the atmosphere of mystery it cultivates—like the pseudo-science to which it often gives rise—only exists to provide obvious lies with a vague cover of authority, a comfortably blurred prestige.” — Brian Phillips, author
We believe that we can’t turn away from the mystical in this cultural and geological moment, even if, like Phillips points out, neopaganism is taking off in the alt right. What if this means that we should in fact, not dismiss so-called “magical thinking,” but actually realize that we have the power and right to stand for our notion of an enchanted world (and uplift the notions of marginalized peoples who are literally being killed for their stances)—one where enchantment is a pathway to anti-fascist and anti-capitalist ways of living on the earth. We fiercely reject the practice of using mysticism to control people. (In some ways, we could argue [and certainly some have] that commodity fetishism in capitalism is a twisted form of mysticism, a zombie animism that locates power in objects manufactured through extraction of vitality from the earth).
Being dismissive of “magical thinking” is the same logic that was and is used to justify indigenous subjugation and genocide, as well as chattel slavery. If we took the militance out of mysticism we would also risk denying that mysticism is dangerous to extractive capitalism. Systems of toxic power that rely on resource extraction “hate” when activist, protectors, guardians, surrender themselves NOT to those systems of power but to the Land. In doing so they reveal that Devotion to a system *other* than extractive capitalism and neoliberal notions of “progress” is powerful and valid. Indigenous protectors are killed for doing this.
We are in a process of articulating these eco-mysticisms as part of what we see as a widespread effort at “mythic remediation,” being undertaken by indigenous activists and land protectors, queer brujxs, psychics, healers, mystics, astrologers, witches.... y’all know who you are!!!
We do this as an act of support and in an effort to help other queer mystics feel less alone, not in an effort to brand or coopt any movement. Since we have spent what feels like a lot of cumulative years of our lives studying and engaging with questions of human spirituality, and also feeling that experience filter through our experiences in the world as trans & queer, & also neurodivergent (or neuroemergent, a word IG follower @neuroemergent_insurgent introduced us to) would feel strange to not share what is coming up for us in these times. If this feel/thought work is useful and empowering to you, we’re honored, and it not, that’s ok too!
It is also worth mentioning, especially because the word “mystic” has European origins, that our working definitions of this eco-mysticism also is related to the healing work going on in our relationship ecology between our ancestries from Europe and Abya Yala (South America), and our choice to use it for ourselves is deeply personal, not an ideology we want to impose on anyone.
To be continued…