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Reading group: Teresa of Ávila’s Interior Castle, one set of dwelling places a week

Agnieszka Malinowska Fellow
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Mysticism & spiritualityMedieval ChristianTeresa of Ávila#carmelite#interior-castle#prayer#reading-group
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I would like to read Teresa of Ávila's Interior Castle (1577) together over four weeks, starting Monday 19 October. It is short, vivid and much more argumentative than its reputation. Teresa wrote it for the nuns of her order, at the request of her superiors, and she keeps apologising for her lack of learning while making very precise distinctions.

Her central image: the soul as a castle made of a single diamond or very clear crystal, with many rooms arranged in seven sets of "dwelling places" (moradas, often translated "mansions"), and God at the centre. Prayer is the door.

Plan

  • Week 1 (from 19 Oct): Dwelling places I–III. The castle image, self-knowledge, the creatures in the outer rooms, the well-ordered life that can still be stuck.
  • Week 2: Dwelling places IV. The shift from what we do in prayer to what is received; her image of two basins of water, one filled by aqueducts, one from a spring.
  • Week 3: Dwelling places V–VI. The silkworm and the butterfly; trials, visions, and her careful warnings about deception.
  • Week 4: Dwelling places VII. The final union, and her surprising return, at the end, to Martha and Mary and the need for work.

Translations: E. Allison Peers, or Kavanaugh and Rodriguez, are both widely used; Mirabai Starr's is freer and more readable. I will read a Polish translation from our parish library and check against the Spanish where I can.

Believers, unbelievers and the curious are equally welcome. The question I'd like us to keep in view: is this a description of experiences, a method, or an argument about what a self is?

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4 replies

  1. Siobhán Keane

    Fellow

    I'm in, with the Peers translation, which my mother had.

    For week 1 it's worth keeping Augustine nearby. His great move was to tell the reader not to go outward but to return into herself, because truth dwells in the inner person. Teresa's castle feels like that instruction turned into architecture. The difference is that she seems far more interested than Augustine in what the rooms are like, and less in the argument for why God is at the centre.

  2. Elif Yıldız

    Fellow

    I'd love to join, once my midterm is over on Thursday, so I'll start a few days late.

    My grandmother used to read Attar to me, and the seven sets of rooms remind me of the seven valleys in The Conference of the Birds. I'm curious whether that's a real parallel or just the number seven doing what the number seven does in every tradition. Maybe we can watch for that.

  3. Nikos Theodoridis

    Fellow

    Count me in. I'll be reading with the Orthodox hesychast tradition in the back of my mind, which has its own long discussion of prayer of the heart and of how to test experiences.

    One question to bring to week 3: Teresa is very suspicious of visions and voices, more than many readers expect from a mystic. She keeps giving criteria for telling genuine experiences from imagination or illness. I want to see whether those criteria are about the experience itself or about its fruits in how a person lives.

  4. Agnieszka Malinowska

    Fellow

    Wonderful, three already, and very different starting points. Elif, the seven valleys are a good thing to watch for; let's note where the parallel holds and where it doesn't. Nikos, I suspect the answer will be "fruits", but she surprises me every time I read her.

    I'll post the week 1 thread on Monday morning, before I leave for school.