Mysticism is not so much a definite system of thought as a tendency of religious feeling, cher- ished more or less at different periods in most religions by individuals or groups: the essential element being the effort to attain to direct and immediate communion with God or the divine. The tendency appears in the Mysteries (q.v.) of the Greeks, but is more marked in Buddhism, in various Hindu sects, in Sufism, and is the most prominent feature in Neoplatonism and some of the Gnostic systems. But it is more especially to Christian writers of the middle ages that the name of mystics is wont to be given, one of the earliest being Dionysius the Areopagite, followed by Scotus Erigena; and this mode of thought or mood of mind developed itself specially in opposition to the dry, cold, rationalistic formalism of scholastic theology. Among the great Catholic mystics are Bernard of Clairvaux; his contemporaries the Victorines—Hugo, Richard, and Walter of St Victor near Paris; Bonaventura; John of Chur (died 1380); and Thomas à Kempis. The German mystics are specially Meister Eckhart, Suso, Tauler, Ruysbroeck. Aberrant or fanatical forms are found amongst the Fraticelli, Beghards, Beguines, the Brethren of the Free Spirit, the Brethren of the Common Life (to whom Thomas à Kempis belonged), and the Anabaptists. Less theological and more philosophical are Paracelsus, Bruno, Campanella, Jacob Boehme, Schelling, and Swedenborg. In England William Law is a conspicuous example; and some of the Cambridge Platonists like Henry More were to some extent mystical in their religious teaching. Millenarianism has produced several types; from Jansenism sprang the Convulsionaries. In modern Catholicism St Thérèse, Fénélon, Madame Guyon, Molinos, the Quietists, and Bourignon may be specially mentioned. Most of them are discussed in separate articles.
See BOEHME, ECKHART, &c., in this work; also ILLUMINATI, ROSICRUCIANS, THEOSOPHY; Vaughan, Hours with the Mystics (1856; 3d ed. 1880); Du Prel, The Philosophy of Mysticism (trans. by Massey, 1889); and German works on the subject by Görres (1846), Helfferich (1842), Noack (1853), Preger (1881).