/lit/ - Literature

>>14961108
Blessed thread

Read Dark Night of the Soul years back but was too underdeveloped to get much out of it, it's John's more advanced material as I recall.

Catholic mysticism is fantastic, and incredibly rich. It's kind of been wiped from the Church's collective memory since the Quietist controversy, but there is an absolute stack of material.

The sad thing is that people turn to Buddhism/Hinduism/Hermeticism etc for muh deep spirituality without realising how deep the Catholic tradition goes.

John's buddy Teresa de Avila is also S-rank reading, The Interior Castle is great.

John of Ruysbroeck is also an excellent read. I've got more interested in the lowlands material like Hadewijch as time's gone on

I personally think some of the less orthodox material (e.g. Marguerite Porete, Sister Catherine Treatise, Miguel de Molinos) are worth reading, regardless of how you feel about the Church's arguments against them (reading Molinos now and I personally feel that there was a lot of strawmanning from seething Jesuits at the time)

The problem I find with the John/Teresa material is that it's a little impenetrable for a layman, I suspect to make serious progress you'd need to find a (Discalced) Carmelite/ Carthusian/ etc monk as a spiritual director