Mysticism and Mystic Death

Mysticism The doctrine that the nature of reality can be known by direct apprehension, by faculties above the senses, by intuition. "Mysticism demands a faculty above reason, by which the subject shall be placed in immediate and complete union with the object of his desire -- a union in which the consciousness of self has disappeared, and in which therefore subject and object are one" (Encyclopedia Britannica, 9th ed. "Mysticism"). It overlaps in meaning such terms as the Neoplatonic ecstasis, and the theosophy of Iamblichus.

Mystic Death An experience at a certain stage of initiation, where the candidate undergoes the experiences of virtual death, differing from actual death in that his body is prevented from dissolution so that he may resume it when the trial has been passed. Through its symbolic representation in the exoteric Mystery dramas, it has passed into the substance of religious creeds where it has been adapted to those formulas, as in the story or mythos of the death and resurrection of Jesus. The Egyptian Book of the Dead is, among other things, a description of some of the experiences undergone by such a candidate.

also refer to MagiMagi