#Christian Mysticism

[reality-nihilism]

"The Vision of the Cross"

Gustave Doré, 1832.

[psalmlover]

mary in a flower crown, st gabriel of the sorrowful mother, pennsylvania, usa

[nyxshadowhawk]

Amazing Christian mystical art from a medieval manuscript!

@cryptotheism Get a load of the colors on this one! I don’t know which one this is because I didn’t call it up myself (and I think this is one of the ones you needed special permission for, anyway), but it’s incredible.

[idylls-of-the-divine-romance]

Other Christians: Yeah I’m a Christian, but don’t worry, I’m normal.

Meanwhile, Christian Tumblr: I worship a triune God who emptied themself to become a human. He was born a poor teenager and grew up in poverty and at risk of homelessness. He was fully God and fully Human. He taught and lived in radical indiscriminate self giving love and subversive peaceful resistance of oppression. He fought the cause of the widow, orphan, immigrant, poor, and oppressed. He loved the sinner so much they left their sin and followed him, and reconciled both the government allying capitalist and the rebel freedom fighter to harmony in himself. He invites us to take his prescience into ourselves by eating his flesh and drinking his blood. My God then enthroned himself as the exalted king of the world by dying the death of a cursed blaspheming slave. He then rose from the dead and decided his first witnesses would be women, whose witness is worthless in court. His followers then went on to live in voluntary communism, to advocate radical generosity, to destroy ethnic barriers, to elevate the inherent humanity of women and the enslaved, to self identify as exiled and enslaved refugees and pilgrims, to equate God with Love, to diagnose the government as a necessary evil worth responding to with equal parts submission and resistance, and to make the preposterous claim that we conquer the world by giving our lives in self sacrificing love. In my faith, normalcy is heresy.

[tending-toward-silence]

*through clenched teeth* All shall be well, and all shall be well, and all manner of things shall be well

[hairtusk]

Caroline Walker Bynum, The Female Body and Religious Practices in the Later Middle Ages

[thurifer-at-heart]

Love people even in their sin, for that is the semblance of Divine Love and is the highest love on earth. Love all of God's creation, the whole and every grain of sand of it. Love every leaf, every ray of God's light. Love the animals, love the plants, love everything. If you love everything, you will perceive the divine mystery in things. Once you perceive it, you will begin to comprehend it better every day. And you will come at last to love the whole world with an all-embracing love.

—Fyodor Dostoyevsky, The Brothers Karamazov

[many-sparrows]

Almost started crying because I was thinking about how I'll never be able to physically kiss Jesus's hands (I would have made a superb ecstatic mystic). But my boyfriend's strong hands are right here, in mine. And I can talk to my bestfriend late into the night just like I would talk to God in a prayer and her voice will answer back. I think it's imperative that we take our love and devotion to the divine and project it outward. What is the point of devoting your life to 12 hrs of prayer a day or poverty or silence if it does not move you to enrich the lives of others? Serving the Light we find in each other is the chief way to serve the Savior. Kiss Him by kissing the hands of those you love, see His face in the ones who need you, listen when He speaks through others, and so forth

[noosphe-re]

[jesawyer]

Hello, I started reading about anchorites because of playing Pentiment, but it sounds like the whole "receiving visions from God" part isn't really a central part of anchorites? Is that correct?

Either way, is there a different term used within (medieval/renaissance) Christianity to refer to people who regularly received visions, like the character in Pentiment?

And do you have any recommendations for where I could read more about the prophecy aspect specifically?

Thank you ^•^

That's correct; visions were not assumed to be part of living as an anchorite. However, in addition to being an anchorite, Sister Amalie is also a mystic. The closest historical analogue would probably be Julian of Norwich, who was an English anchorite and mystic in the 14th/15th centuries.

One of the saints mentioned frequently in Pentiment, Hildegard of Bingen, was also a mystic.

Christian mysticism is a really fascinating topic. Prophecy is only a small part of it and many mystics did not have prophetic visions. Anyway, great thing to dive into IMO.

[reality-nihilism]

A veiled Carmelite nun.

[psalmlover]

[n3p2ne]

Simone Weil, Gravity and Grace, 1947

[namedvesta]

“I saw in his hand a long spear of gold, and at the iron's point there seemed to be a little fire. He appeared to me to be thrusting it at times into my heart, and to pierce my very entrails; when he drew it out, he seemed to draw them out also, and to leave me all on fire with a great love of God. The pain was so sharp that it made me utter several moans; and yet the sweetness of this intense pain was so excessive, that I could never wish to be rid of it.”

— Teresa of Avila, The Life of St. Teresa of Jesus (XXIX.17).

— Giuseppe Bazzani, The Ecstasy of Saint Theresa (𝟣𝟩𝟦𝟪).

[saintcande]

"As a dog returns to his vomit, so a fool repeats his folly" Proverbs 26:11

[hairtusk]

Alec Irwin, 'Devoured by God: Cannibalism, Mysticism, and Ethics in Simone Weil'