A posteriori

MUSE, INVOCATION OF: See invocation of the muse.

MUSIC OF THE SPHERES: In medieval and Renaissance Europe, many scholars believed in a beautiful song created by the movement of the heavenly bodies (sun, moon, and planets). The music of spheres supposedly was infinitely beautiful, but humans were unable to hear it, either (a) because of their sinful separation from God, or (b) because they were so used to its presence, their minds automatically filtered it out as background noise.

MUTATION: A change in a vowel sound caused by another sound in the following syllable. In Old English and in Celtic languages like Irish Gaelic and Welsh, the type of mutation called i-mutation was especially common. Another common type is the eclipsis mutation, a mutation in which a basic consonant sound is "eclipsed" or replaced by a stronger sound in a preceding word. For a chart of the most common Irish mutations as examples, click here.

MYSTERY CULT: Unlike the official "public cults" dedicated to the Olympian gods in ancient Greece and Rome, a number of religious practices involved chthonic deities (like Demeter) and imported foreign gods (Ishtar, Osiris, Mithras, etc.). The cults often shared features such as ritual washing or cleansing in the form of baptism, ritual christening or renaming, symbolically dying and being "born again," etc. Possibly some may have offered the hope of an afterlife through metempsychosis (unlike standard Greek and Roman belief which emphasized a gloomy stay in the underworld). Others--in the case of Dionysian worshippers--ritually "slew" the god and ate him or drank his blood symbolically in the form of wine. Regardless of specific varying details, these mystery cults shared a common element of secrecy--a distinction between the uninitiated outsider and the initiated cult member. The cult rituals were held to be so sacred that it was blasphemous to reveal them to outsiders, even to speak of them, describe them, or write them down in any way. The rites were often held in inaccessible areas far from the local city--on mountain-tops or sea-shores or in catacombs. Some, like the mystery cult of Demeter, were open to any prospective members regardless of race, gender, or nationality as long as they spoke sufficient Greek to participate in the rituals. Others were open to certain professions, such as the cult of Mithras which only allowed soldiers to join after an initial baptism in bull's blood. Others were restricted by family (such as local versions of the Lykian wolf cult) or partly restricted by gender (such as the maenads of Dionysus).

MYSTERY CYCLE: A collection of mystery plays in a single manuscript meant to be performed sequentially. See discusion under mystery play, below.

MYSTERY NOVEL: A novel focused on suspense and solving a mystery--especially a murder, theft, kidnapping, or some other crime. The protagonist faces inexplicable events, threats, assaults, and unknown forces or antagonists. Conventionally, the hero is a keenly observant individual (such as Sherlock Holmes) and the police are depicted as incompetent or incapable of solving the crime by themselves. Many of the works of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, Edgar Allan Poe, and Agatha Christie are mystery novels. Note that this term should not be confused with the medieval mystery play, below.

MYSTERY PLAY: A religious play performed outdoors in the medieval period that enacts an event from the Bible, such as the story of Adam and Eve, Noah's flood, the crucifixion, and so on. Although the origins are uncertain, Mary Marshall and other early scholars like E. K. Chambers (author of The Medieval Stage, 1903) suggested that the plays developed out of the Latin liturgy of the church, in particular out of the Quem Quaeritis trope of Easter Day festivals. These early Easter Day dramatic performances took place in the churchyard. Later, these plays gradually became secular and used vernacular languages rather than Latin, and they gradually moved out of the churchyard and ecclesiastical control, becoming outdoor performances controlled by the craftsmen in each city, according to this theory. Other scholars such as V. A. Kolve refute this idea, however.

In any case, we do know that these religious plays were staged and performed by secular audiences. Typically, the various guilds in each city (such as the Carpenters' Guild, the Butchers' Guild, and so on) would sponsor and perform one play during the Corpus Christi festival, competing with each other for the most elaborate performance. Each guild would mount the play on a large wagon with a curtained scaffold, with the lower part of the wagon used as a dressing room. Between forty and fifty of these wagons (one for each guild) would move from spot to spot in the city, so that spectators could watch several performances in a single day. The plays often involved elaborate representations of heaven and hell, mechanical devices to create "special effects," and lavish costuming. The dramatizations became increasingly elaborate, and they show signs of developing psychological realism. The use of mystery in the name may originate in either the idea of spiritual mysteries, which were the focus of each play, or it may result from the Latin word misterium (a guild). The mystery plays were an important precursor to the miracle plays and morality plays (see above) in medieval drama, and they set the stage for the flowering of Renaissance drama that was to come with Shakespeare. Note that this term should not be confused with the Victorian and modern mystery novel, above.