Abstract
Imagination abides in ambiguity, its glory and liability: ‘twofold Always’, says Blake, ‘May God us keep/From single vision, and Newton’s sleep!’1 The attack on Newton is for confusing nature congealed into matter with the whole of nature, thereby causing Spirit to sleep. But to attend to Spirit only, and ignore one’s place in the world, is to risk a debilitating indifference. Tranquillity found merely by emptying one’s self ‘of every image and of all activity’, writes John of Ruysbroeck (1293–1381) in his attack on the quietist Beghards, leads to a state of suspension, a ‘bare vacancy’ which is the ‘beginning of all ghostly error’.2
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Bibliographical Guide To Texts Without Comment
Richard of St Victor, Selected Writings on Contemplation, trans. Clare Kirchberger (London: Faber and Faber, 1957), p. 254.
Julian of Norwich, Revelations of Divine Love, Grace Warwick (ed.) (London: Methuen, 1901), p. 26.
Ibid., p. 10.
Origen, Selections from the Commentaries and Homilies of Origen, trans. R. B. Tollington (London: SPCK, 1929), pp. 75–6.
Ibid., p. 40.
St Bonaventure, The Works of Bonaventure, vol. I, Mystical Opuscula, trans. José de Vinck (New Jersey: St Anthony Guild Press, 1960), p. 27.
Richard of St Victor, Selected Writings, pp. 91–2.
Meister Eckhart, Meister Eckhart, I, p. 186.
Benet of Canfield (William Fitch), The Rule of Perfection (Roan, 1609), p. 155.
Anonymous, The Cloud of Unknowing and Other Treatises by an English Mystic of the Fourteenth Century, with a commentary on the Cloud by Father Augustine Baker, OSB, Dom Justin McCann(ed.) (London: Burns, Oates and Washbourne, 1924), pp. 34–5.
Francisais Ludovicus Blosius, A Book of Spiritual Instruction, trans. Bertrand A. Wilberforce (London and Leamington: Art and Book Co., 1900), p. 95.
Dionysius the Areopagite, Dionysius the Areopagite on the Divine Names and the Mystical Theology (London: SPCK, 1920), p. 191.
Simone Weil, Waiting for God, trans. Emma Craufurd (New York and London: Harper and Row, 1973), pp. 146–7.
Evagrius Ponticus, Chapters on Prayer, trans. John Eudes Bamberger (Massachusetts: Cistercian Publications, 1970), p. 79.
John Cassian, A Select Library of the Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, series II, (Oxford: 1894), XI, p. 303.
St Augustine of Hippo, Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, III, p. 127.
George Fox, Book of Miracles, ed. Henry J. Cadbury (Cambridge: At the University Press, 1948), p. 112.
Augustine Baker, Sancta Sophia (Douay: John Patte and Thomas Fievet, 1657), III, p. 14.
Meister Eckhart, Meister Eckhart, I, 186.
Madame Guyon, A Method of Prayer, trans. Dugald Macfadyen (London: James Clarke, 1902), pp. 64–5.
Miguel de Molinos, The Spiritual Guide which Disentangles the Soul, Kathleen Lyttleton (ed.) (London: Methuen, 1907), p. 116.
Evagrius Ponticus, Chapters on Prayer, p. 39.
Mechthild of Magdeburg, The Revelations of Mechthild of Magdeburg (1210–97), or, The Flowing Light of the Godhead, trans. Lucy Menzies (London: Longmans, Green, 1953), p. 108.
Benet of Canfield (William Fitch), Rule of Perfection, p. 152.
St Catherine of Genoa, The Treatise on Purgatory, trans. H. E. Manning (London: Burns and Lambert, 1858), p. 12.
John Tauler, The Inner Way, p. 3.
Thomas à Kempis, Of the Imitation of Christ, p. 84.
Fenelon, François de Selignac de la Mothe, The Maxims of the Saints Explained (London: H. Rhodes, 1698), p. 87.
Richard Jefferies, The Story of My Heart (London: Longmans, Green, 1907), p. 144.
St John of the Cross, Works, II, p. 379.
Ibid., II, p. 380.
John Tauler, The Inner Way, p. 205.
Anonymous, The Cloud of Unknowing, pp. 16–17.
John of Ruysbroeck, Adornment, etc., p. 241.
St Augustine of Hippo, Confessions, trans. E. B. Pusey (London: Everyman, 1907), p. 260.
Thomas Traherne, Centuries, Poems, and Thanksgivings, H. M. Margoliouth (ed.), 2 vols. (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1958), I, p. 143.
Meister Eckhart, Meister Eckhart, I, p. 180.
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© 1983 Patrick Grant
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Grant, P. (1983). Imagination and Mystery. In: Literature of Mysticism in Western Tradition. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-17151-4_2
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