David Fanning once asked, ‘How do you solve a problemlike Scriabin?’ Good question. Perhaps the answer isthat while we can't exactly solve the problem, wecan still play a collective role in demystifyinghim. More than any other composer in the Westerntradition, Scriabin sought to shroud himself inmystery; perhaps he did not want us to get to thebottom of him, or his music. At the very least wefind a man who was as desperate to be misunderstoodas he was to be understood. Time and again, hisphilosophical and musical pronouncements that aresupposed to elucidate each other create onlyobfuscation and confusion. And the mystery ofScriabin is not one that we have been keen to solveover the last hundred years. Time has shown thatconsumers of his music – be they performers,critics, academics, or concert-goers – want to keepthe mystery alive. Any attempt to get to the heartof him only pushes him further and further away. Andas we can see from the many contradictions thatarise in his philosophical notebooks – through hiselaborately constructed worldview, despite all hisself-assurance, pomposity, and braggadocio, despiteall his grandiose pronouncements and megalomaniacalprophesying – Scriabin did not understand himselfparticularly well. If we wish to do justice to him,we must endeavour to reconcile the seeminglyirreconcilable facets of the man – his music, hisphilosophy, his mysticism, his performance, hisreligion, his synaesthesia, his cultural legacy. Andalthough the constant peeling back of interpretativelayers may not reveal a central truth at the core,the process offers us startling new perspectivesthat constantly bring into question the nature ofhis many elusive mysteries. Demystification does notnecessarily mean that we must dispense altogetherwith the mystery that we have come to love; we canrather contextualise it anew in different ways,thereby depriving it of some of its power tomisdirect us. Demystifying Scriabin is a grandsynthetic enterprise, almost as great a synthesis asthat of his beloved H. P. Blavatsky in her Secret Doctrine, subtitled‘Synthesis of Science, Religion and Philosophy’. Add‘Music’ to this list, and we come closer toScriabin. Our synthesis requires a dialogue betweena wide range of scholars, each with differentexpertise, different methodological tools, anddifferent hermeneutic strategies.