Mystic
What a lovely word!
Mystic derives ultimately from the Greek word myein, meaning “to close”. (The further origin of myein is unknown.) In later Greek times, the Greeks had any number of religions that were extremely secretive, and an initiate into one those religions was known as a mystes, a “closed one”. The secret rites or doctrines of these religions were known as mysteria (you see where this is going now, right?) Nowadays these old religions are known as “mystery religions”, and their structure and mysteria have been a huge influence on European ceremonial magic.
This word was used in the Greek Bible to refer to the sacraments, and so came into English as mystery in the 1300s, referring specifically to religious rites. It quickly developed its additional meaning of “anything hidden or unknown”. The word mystic, meaning roughly “pertaining to the sacraments”, also came into English in the 1300s. It was not applied to occult practices or ancient religions until the 1600s.
The sound-correspondence with mist is immediately obvious, and both words refer to things hidden, or half-glimpsed. They begin with the “m” of manifestation; the manifested thing moves up with light energy, and shatters into multiplicity (”s”) along a path (”t”). Taken altogether, the reference seems to be to the veil itself — the thing which does the hiding. That is, the manifestation, the movement, and the dispersal along a path describes the action of the misty mystic veil.
