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WorkTeresa of Ávila

The Interior Castle

It pictures the soul as a castle of clear crystal whose seven sets of rooms lead inward, through prayer, to union with God.

by Teresa of Ávila293 passages held

  • Spanish, the original language
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Original title
Las moradas del castillo interior
First published
(aged 62)
Original language
Spanish

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Overview

By the spring of 1577 Teresa of Ávila was sixty-two and so exhausted that her doctor had told her to write as little by hand as she could. Her Life, the account of her prayer written more than a decade earlier, sat in the Inquisition's keeping with no sign that it would be returned. Jerónimo Gracián, the young friar who was her confessor and her superior in the reform, told her to recall what she could and write another book. She began in Toledo on 2 June and, after a break of several months, finished at San José in Ávila on 29 November. In the first chapter she says a picture came to her while she was praying for something to say: the soul as a castle made from a single diamond or very clear crystal, with many rooms, and God living at its centre. The book's claim is that the way to God runs inward, through self-knowledge, and that the door into the castle is prayer. Its seven moradas, or dwelling places, follow a soul from the outer rooms, still crowded with worldly business, to the innermost, where it lives in a union with God that she calls spiritual marriage; from the fourth onward, the work is more God's than the soul's. She wrote it for the nuns of her convents, as her prologue says. She later entrusted the manuscript to Gracián, who lent it for a time to María de San José, prioress of the Discalced Carmelites in Seville; it reached the Seville convent for good in 1617, and the convent still holds it. Gracián went through the autograph, crossing out and rewording, sometimes whole sentences at a time. When Luis de León, the Augustinian scholar who edited her works, printed the book at Salamanca in 1588, he set those corrections aside and restored her own readings, though he made many small verbal changes of his own.

Key concepts

What are the dwelling places of the Interior Castle?

The rooms of the soul, in seven sets, through which a person moves toward God at the centre. Teresa's word is moradas, dwelling places, and each set holds many rooms, above, below and to the sides. In the first three the soul advances largely by its own effort in prayer and self-knowledge. From the fourth on, God does more and more of the work, until the seventh, where he dwells.

What is the difference between consolations and spiritual delights?

Consolations come from our own effort, delights come straight from God. Teresa's contentos are the pleasures we gain through meditation and petition, natural in origin though God helps. Her gustos begin in God and overflow into our nature. She pictures two basins: one filled from far away through many channels and much skill, the other built at the spring itself and filling without a sound.

What does 'humility is walking in truth' mean?

That humility is simply seeing oneself accurately. God is supreme Truth, Teresa reasons, and the truth about us is that nothing good in us comes from ourselves. Whoever understands this walks in truth, and whoever does not walks in a lie. Humility is therefore not self-contempt or a show of lowliness but honesty, and the more of that truth someone grasps, the more they please God.

What is spiritual marriage, and how does it differ from union?

It is the lasting union of the seventh dwelling places, where the soul stays with God at its centre. Earlier union, Teresa says, is like two wax candles joined so closely that their light is one, yet they can be parted again. Spiritual marriage is like rain falling into a river: the waters can no longer be told apart or divided. The betrothal of the sixth rooms leads to it.

Themes of the book

What this book returns to, gathered into themes and ordered by how much of the text each one occupies.

A castle of clear crystal

If God lives at the centre of the soul, why do so many people spend their lives outside their own walls? The outer rooms answer with prayer and an honest look at oneself.

The soul, Teresa proposes, is a castle made of a single diamond or very clear crystal, with many rooms around a centre where God lives. Telling someone to enter where they already are sounds absurd, she admits, yet many souls stay among the vermin by the outer walls. The door is prayer, and the first work is self-knowledge, for we hardly know who we are. Sin does not dim the sun at the centre. It hangs a black cloth over the crystal, and the light no longer reaches it.

  • self-knowledge
  • humility
  • sin
  • the soul
  • prayer
  • attention
  • imagination
  • temptation

Enter a dialogue

From silkworm to butterfly

What happens when prayer stops being something a person does and becomes something done to them? From the fourth dwelling places inward, the answer belongs more and more to God.

From the fourth dwelling places on, the work passes from the soul to God. Teresa pictures two basins, one filled through long channels by human skill, the other built at the spring and filling without a sound. In the fifth she turns to the silkworm, which spins its cocoon, dies inside it and comes out a small white butterfly that no longer knows itself. The sixth bring words and visions to be tested, and a betrothal. In the seventh, God and the soul are married beyond parting.

  • divine grace
  • grace
  • contemplation
  • contemplative prayer
  • spiritual consolation
  • mystical experience
  • spiritual experience
  • divine presence
  • divine union
  • spiritual development
  • mysticism
  • spiritual discernment
  • discernment

Enter a dialogue

Works, always works

How can anyone tell whether all this inner life is real? For Teresa the proof lies outside prayer, in how a person treats the sister beside them.

However high the rooms, Teresa keeps pulling her nuns back to deeds. Progress lies not in thinking much but in loving much, and union is no private sweetness: if a sister is ill and you can ease her, lose the devotion and help. We cannot know for certain whether we love God, she argues, but we can know whether we love our neighbour. Even spiritual marriage exists so that works may always be born of it. The rich young man who went away sad stands behind every room.

  • love
  • divine love
  • virtue
  • perseverance
  • detachment
  • obedience
  • suffering
  • salvation

Enter a dialogue

Within this work

passages held
293
distinct concepts
308
by passages held, corpus-wide
#254

What this book thinks together

The wheel takes this book’s leading concepts and shows how often they come up together. The wider the band between two, the more of its passages speak of both. Among them, most often together: “divine grace” and “humility”.
Concept co-occurrence, strongest first 8 concepts, joined by 27 pairings. 83 pairings reach beyond these concepts and are not drawn.
ConceptPaired conceptShared passages
divine gracehumility22
humilityprayer15
divine gracemysticism14
divine graceprayer12
religious experiencespiritual discernment10
humilitysuffering8
divine gracesuffering7
humilityspiritual discernment7
mysticismreligious experience7
humilitymysticism6
prayerspiritual discernment6
contemplationprayer5
humilityreligious experience5
mysticismprayer5
mysticismsuffering4
contemplationsuffering3
divine gracereligious experience3
prayerreligious experience3
prayersuffering3
contemplationdivine grace2
contemplationhumility2
contemplationmysticism2
contemplationreligious experience2
mysticismspiritual discernment2
spiritual discernmentsuffering2
contemplationspiritual discernment1
divine gracespiritual discernment1

Works held

The author's work in order, this book marked in place. Your-language title first, the original beneath it where the two differ; side chips show which full texts are held.

  1. 1565 The Book of Her Life (Libro de la vida)

    The earliest of her books sets an account of her prayer inside the story of her life; its later chapters tell of founding San José in Ávila, the first convent of her reform, in 1562.

     ES
  2. 1567 Meditations on the Song of Songs (Conceptos del amor de Dios)

    In form a commentary: seven short chapters on a few verses of the Song of Songs, read through her own experience of prayer rather than through the scholars' glosses.

     ES
  3. 1577 The Interior Castle (Las moradas del castillo interior) you are here ES
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