ABSTRACT
The Introduction outlines the Western cultural pattern in the recent history of religion: first there is mystery, then there is no mystery, then there is. We find ourselves today at the end of the second of these historical phases, and at the beginning of the third. Traditional religions played a major role for centuries in the West, then science and philosophy declared there was no mystery, and claimed our religious images and concepts were consoling inventions of our imagination. Now this reductive approach to spiritual mystery is being challenged and overturned by a postsecular turn. This does not represent a return to traditional religions but a new openness to mystery and a sense of the sacred which emerges more from philosophy and experience than from theology and dogma.
