English Version | Mystery Issue: Editor's Letter, October 2024

Mystery. The realm of experience inaccessible to our analytical minds, inexplicable by reason, but which we nevertheless touch in rare transcendental moments, as palpable as a lover's touch, as alive as a prayer, as true as an artistic revelation. But even in these moments, we only touch the curtain that hides the infinity of the unknown universe.

Sasha ray | The Mystery Issue
Élio Nogueira

I find it much more interesting to live without knowing than to have answers that may be wrong. I have approximate and possible answers and different degrees of uncertainty about different things, but I'm not completely sure of anything and there are a lot of things I know nothing about, like what it means for us to all be here. I don't necessarily need to have an answer. I don't feel scared to be part of a mysterious universe, whose purpose, if it exists, we don't know.

Marisa Liz | The Mystery Issue
Ricardo Abrahao

Each person is an enigma. Each of us a puzzle — for ourselves and for everyone else. Tennessee Williams argues that some mystery should be left in the revelation of the characters of a play, just as mystery always exists in the revelation of the character of the players in our lives. Fashion, as well, and the layers used in dresses reflect or hide different personalities. In this issue, we also let ourselves go in this attraction to everything that is secretly mysterious, be it the white light that attracts us or the darker side that equally fascinates us. Mystery, enigma, curiosity are the embryo of creativity. I believe that life is chaotic, a mess of accidents, ambitions, passions, mistakes, daring interests, chance events and unintended consequences, but I also believe that there are connections that brighten our world, revealing its mystery and endless wonders.

Ola Rudnicka | The Mystery Issue
Bohdan Bohdanov

There is always more beyond what we can see or understand, and the attraction to the mystery of all things is, as I hope the pages of this Mystery Issue are, woven into an invisible web of magic and glamour. The word glamour, originally, had a literal magical spell—the spell that promised to transcend ordinary life and make the ideal real. A special combination of mystery and beauty, because in fact, too much information breaks the spell. But, ironically, we live in an age of technology and science, which demands proof and tries to break down and decode everything. Yet we desire mystery because we cannot live without it.

Liza Ostanina | The Mystery Issue
Abdull Artuev

Remembering Carl Sagan, we live in a large universe, full of mystery, beauty and potential for life, yet we rarely stop to marvel at our place in the Cosmos.

Originally translated from The Mystery Issue, published October 2024. Full credits and stories are in the print issue.