How many times have we been enraptured by the unfathomable beauty of a work of art, the magnificence of a painting or the graceful form of a sculpture? And how many times have we paused to observe a fascinating gaze that has stirred something deep within us? I vividly remember the unmistakable sounds of the railway station. The night, its scents, the atmosphere marked by the ineffable feeling of nostalgic melancholy. Between faces, all different and all the same, the railway tracks stretched endlessly, like incorruptible sentinels guarding the path of the human soul toward infinity. How can the elusive feeling of vertigo be described, or the controlled emptiness one feels when walking through the aisles of a majestic cathedral? We are occasionally pervaded by an indefinable sense of mystery. It is an incomprehensible enigma that penetrates the human soul, transporting it to a dimension beyond itself.
“To be out in the open at night, under the silent sky, by a calmly-flowing body of water, is always a mysterious experience that stirs up sensations of the soul that have lain dormant for a long time”.
H. Hesse, Youth is Beautiful, 1916.
About the sense of mystery
The sense of mystery is a spark that suddenly ignites in the face of the unfathomable. It lights a revealing fire. When we look at the façade of a Gothic building or contemplate the sunset, we feel exposed. We are suddenly imperfect in the face of infinity. This is similar to Plato’s Allegory of the Cave1, in which men are imprisoned in a cave and forced to watch a faint fire at its edge. Unaware of the existence of the sun, they lived convinced that the shadows were the only reality of existence. But those were mocking illusions, mere apparent truths.
When faced with the revelation of the mystery, man realises that his own existence is incomplete. Something is hidden beyond the shadowed dimension through which he has until now viewed the world. This sudden sense of incompleteness forces him to search outside himself for the lost harmony. Mystery permeates the soul of writers, artists, navigators and scientists. It manifests itself through them in the creation of art and science, or during a journey, thus generating further mystery.
The spirit of discovery
The physicist Albert Einstein wrote that: “The most beautiful experience we can have is the mysterious. It is the fundamental emotion that stands at the cradle of true art and true science”2. Similarly, Thomas Mann stated that “the mystery gives fire and tension to all our speaking”3. It generates, creates. It “is”, as the founding essence of human nature. Mystery accompanies the spirit of discovery. This is what Aristotle and his Peripatetic school thought. Its members carried out passionate scientific and philosophical investigations about the world. Always in dynamic movement, they prioritised the question over the answer and the enigma over any apparent truth.
The uncertain dimension of existence
Indeed, the existential dimension of human beings evokes the metaphor of a dark and lightless room in which we find ourselves, without knowing why. Like fish who suddenly wonder “but what is water?”4, humans live without truly knowing or being able to define life. They hover on the edge of existence, balancing a present caught between opposing forces: memory, that is never the same (where do I come from?), and a future full of uncertainty (where am I going?).
“One exists, one feels oneself to be a person, to the extent that, in the critical moment in which one is called upon to be, one has at one’s disposal the retrospective memories of effective behaviour that can modify reality, as well as the prospective and creative consciousness of what needs to be done here and now to produce new value. It is in this dialectic between retrospective memory and prospective momentum that presence emerges”.
From the preface by Cesare Cases in E. De Martino, Il mondo magico, Boringhieri, 1973. Translation by the author.
In his work Il mondo magico, anthropologist Ernesto de Martino provides a compelling explanation of the existential condition of humanity. The past is therefore a mystery because memory only exists when it is evoked in the present. The future is also shrouded in mystery, comprising choices and perspectives (telos), and events beyond human control. Between these two opposite poles lies the human moment (who am I?). However, it is the greatest unknown of all because it constantly escapes us.
The sense of mystery at the origins of humanity
This uncertain dimension of existence has affected the human being since primordial times. Immersed in the wilderness, he had to cope with the harsh laws of survival. In the beginning, humans were not unlike their closest evolutionary relatives, the great apes. They were part of a life of zoe, as the ancient Greeks used to define it. This perspective indicates the mere fact of being alive, which is common to all creatures. Moreover, the early man (then as today) was characterized by a basic imperfection, which placed him at a dramatic evolutionary disadvantage5. They had no fur, no claws, no wings, or anything else that could protect them from natural selection.
However, around 40,000 years ago a surprising turning point occurred. The tragic nature of existence has driven people to seek new forms of essence that can provide meaning in the world. The human being elevated himself to the bios dimension, which for the Greeks expressed the way of life of an individual or group. The full expression of this life is culture, in all its manifestations, as defined by the anthropologist Geertz: “man is an animal suspended in webs of significance he himself has spun”6 . According to Levi-Strauss, culture enables us to make sense of our experiences and impose order on the universe, which would otherwise appear chaotic.
The importance of the symbols
From the Paleolithic era onwards, human beings began to confront their fear of the hostile environment, the primordial world and life in general by trying to interpret nature through codified, recognisable symbols. It was at this time that they distanced themselves from their purely biological essence, differentiated themselves from animals: 40,000 years ago, humans really became human.
Yesterday as today, symbols have been one of the ways in which human beings have responded to the bewilderment of existence and the sense of mystery. Indeed, symbolic representation enables us to make sense of reality and complement rational knowledge. Furthermore, symbols define our membership of a group or community that ascribes a certain meaning to them.
The sense of mystery in signs and rituals
Man’s desire to understand the unknown also led to the earliest forms of religion, that were magico-animistic8, totemic and symbolic. Around the totem, to which an animal guide was associated, the community recognised itself and based its identity. The early cults involved codified systems of signs and rituals. Celebrations and rites, whether propitiatory or of passage, helped to maintain the psychological well-being of group members. Perfectly structured, predictable and repeated acts and gestures were attributed metaphysical efficacy, ensuring control over nature and its cycles of life and death. According to the historian of religions Mircea Eliade, by transforming all physiological acts into ceremonies, archaic man strives to transcend time and enter eternity9.
It is no coincidence that the term “mystery” derives from the rituals that constituted the “mysterion” in ancient Greece, that is, the secret rites reserved for initiates of the cult. Furthermore, etymologically speaking, it is interesting that the opposite of “symbol”, from the Greek συμβάλλω (symballo), “to put together”, is the term “devil”, from Διάβολος (diábolos), meaning “one who divides”. The symbol and the devil represent the opposite poles of ancient ritual manifestations. Through complex systems of cultural interpretation, such as ceremonies and symbols, ancient religions sought to exorcise the unknown and mask the enigma of life.
Historical and cultural roots
From the earliest times to the present day, the existential condition of human beings has remained largely unchanged. Despite enormous technological advances over the millennia, we are still like those fish wondering what water is or those men locked in a cave. The sense of mystery continues to inspire and fascinate at the same time. We are poised on the elusive moment, which is there now, and then it is not. To fully understand who we are, we must look to our historical and cultural roots, as well as to the future we want to create, a metaphor for a long and fascinating journey with no return.
Samuele Corrente Naso
Notes
- Platone, Republic, Book VII, 514 b – 520 a. ↩︎
- A. Einstein, The World As I See It, 1934. ↩︎
- T. Mann, Joseph and His brothers, 1933. ↩︎
- D. Foster Wallace, This Is Water: Some Thoughts, Delivered on a Significant Occasion, about Living a Compassionate Life, Little, Brown and Company, 2009. ↩︎
- A. Gehlen, Man: His Nature and Place in the World, Columbia University Press, 1987; H. Plessner, The Levels of Organic Life and the Human: Introduction to Philosophical Anthropology, Fordham University Press, New York, 2019. ↩︎
- C. Geertz, The Interpretation of Cultures: Selected Essays, Basic Books, New York 2000. ↩︎
- Picture by Dagmar Hollmann, licence CC-BY-SA-4.0. ↩︎
- J. Frazer, The Golden Bough: A Study in Comparative Religion, Macmillan Press, 1980. ↩︎
- M. Eliade, Dizionario dei riti, Jaca Book, 2023. ↩︎
