The Interior Castle

This book is classic. The intimacy relationship with Christ. This book is detailed by n how to go into deep prayer with the Father.

Very profound 🌹

I am grateful for this book. It is the perfect size to hold and read. Not too thick or cumbersome. The cover is intriguing and appropriate for the book.

Travel through the 7 mansions of the soul with St. Teresa of Avila. Spiritual blessings are present throughout this book.

Good read

Any Christian whether Catholic or Protestant can read this book is to discover what Jesus Christ is doing in their life. It is liberating!!! I

I was interested in reading what other women had to tell me about prayer and Teresa of Avila sounded particularly inspiring. I selected Mirabai Starr's translation of Interior Castle precisely because she "took the liberty... to soften some of [Teresa's] more loaded religious vocabulary." They say that all translations are interpretations. This translator is aware of her motives and tells us what those motives are. Since I am not a medieval Catholic (or a modern one), I am comfortable with those motives. Mirabai Starr writes that she did strive to "convey the message truly." Teresa's main analogy, of the soul as a crystal castle with God dwelling at the center, is very powerful. Teresa frequently advises her nuns to know themselves. That is her most important practical advice. She insists that without self-knowledge and the resulting humility, it is not possible to make progress in prayer. This translation has given me access to a perspective on the soul's journey to God that I would probably not have been to appreciate in another translation. I am very grateful to Mirabai Starr for making the words of this mystic available to me.

I should have paid careful attention to the translation I ordered. As I began reading the introduction, I was confronted with the fact that Starr elected to replace/soften words like "sin" and "evil." She went so far as to to replace "Holy Trinity." There was additional commentary about how we need not pay much attention (or be discouraged) by St. Teresa's self-deprecation --I fear she has missed the point that the Saint has given ALL credit to the Father Almighty. Though, since Starr was concerned with the "feminist," she found it necessary to give her opinion as to why the Saint wrote this way. A point that she so clearly missed...honestly, it's shocking that she didn't grasp her humility. We live in a world where people insist on injecting their own beliefs into everything, and other everyone. A world that is more concerned with 'feelings' than 'truth.' The arrogance and ego involved in taking a Saint's personal writings and changing them because you think you know best is, frankly, mind blowing. If you think you could have written it better, I urge you to write your own manuscript instead of ba*tardizing St. Teresa's. Upon starting the Zimmerman translation, I learned quite a lot via the introduction. Her original writings were edited by members of the clergy early on --entire sentences removed, reworded, etc. It wasn't until another member of the clergy got his hands on it (Fray Luis de Leon) that her writings were restored to the original. Fray Luis de Leon's words echo my thoughts as I read through the Starr translation, so I have opted to use his own words so as not to corrupt them or render them entirely useless: "Many passages of this book written by the holy Mother have been scored through, other words being substituted or notes being added in the margin. Most of these corrections are badly done, the original text being much better. It will be noticed that the holy Mother's sentences are superior and agree with the context, which is not the case with the corrections. These improvements and glosses may therefore be dispensed with. Having myself read and considered everything with great care, it appears to me that the reader, too, should have before him the words of the author who knew best what to say; for this reason I have left out the additions, and have restored what has been changed, excepting only a few corrections made by the writer herself. I beg of the reader that he would in charity reverence the words and even the letters traced by so holy a hand, and strive to understand what has been written. He will then see that there was no need for corrections; should he fail to understand her, let him believe that the writer knew what she said, and that her words cannot be tampered with if they are not to lose their meaning; otherwise what was to the point will seem out of place. This is how books become corrupted, useless, and are finally lost." If the previous corrections by clergy were "badly done" in the eyes of Fray Luis de Leon, I shudder to think what he would think of Starr's translation. We need not try to make the Interior Castle more like the world --rather: make the world more like the Interior Castle.

Great book. Quality as advertised.

Love this book what an amazing saint I did find it slightly hard to understand as it’s older English.

Very enlightening and well translated. Good read.

Hard work, but and excellent piece of work. Glad I have the book to hand.

Interior Castle was written by St. Teresa of Avila. Teresa describes seven "mansions" or stages of prayer, leading from self-knowledge to the "spiritual marriage" (union) with God in the center, achieved through humility, meditation, and detachment. It is a guide to Catholic mysticism. The stages/themes are: The Castle & The Goal, the First Three Mansions (The Active Path), the Fourth Mansion (The Transition), the Fifth Mansion (The Prayer of Union), the Sixth Mansion (The Transformation) and the Seventh Mansion (The Spiritual Marriage)