The transmission
The Teachers
1,020 who carried the discovery — across Hermetic, Vedic, Sufi, mystic, scientific, and modern streams. Start with the essential few, or browse by family and tradition.
1,020 teachers · 42 traditions
55 teachers
Christian Mysticism
Clement of Alexandria
True gnosis and the marriage of Greek philosophy with Christian faith
c.150-c.215
Christian Mysticism
Origen of Alexandria
The soul's ascent and the restoration of all (apokatastasis)
c.185-253
Christian Mysticism
Gregory of Nazianzus
The mind's ascent toward a God who can be approached but never comprehended
329-390
Christian Mysticism
Basil the Great
Communal ascent - the inner life ordered through shared discipline
330-379
Christian Mysticism
Gregory of Nyssa
Epektasis — the soul's endless ascent into God
c.335-395
Christian Mysticism
Ambrose of Milan
The inward word - reading scripture for the soul's hidden sense
c.339-397
Christian Mysticism
Evagrius Ponticus
The eight thoughts, apatheia, and pure contemplative prayer
345-399
Christian Mysticism
Augustine of Hippo
Interiority — God more inward than my innermost
354-430
Christian Mysticism
John Cassian
Carried Egyptian desert wisdom to the Latin West, making purity of heart and unceasing prayer the monk's whole…
c.360-435
Christian Mysticism
John Climacus
The 30-rung ladder of ascent: still the mind, guard the heart, and let the remembrance of Jesus become one wit…
c.579-649
Christian Mysticism
Maximus the Confessor
Theosis — deification and the logoi of all things
c.580-662
Christian Mysticism
Isaac the Syrian
Boundless divine mercy and the merciful heart that burns for all creation
c.613-700
Christian Mysticism
John Scotus Eriugena
Reality as a single unfolding of God, known best through what cannot be said of it.
c.810-877
Christian Mysticism
Symeon the New Theologian
God can be known now as uncreated Light — a conscious, felt experience, not a doctrine to be believed.
949-1022
Christian Mysticism
Bernard of Clairvaux
Mystical love — the degrees of love and bridal union
1090-1153
Christian Mysticism
Hildegard of Bingen
Viriditas & living-light vision
1098-1179
Christian Mysticism
Francis of Assisi
Radical poverty and love of all creation as the way to union with God
c.1181-1226
Christian Mysticism
Albertus Magnus
Faith and reason joined; the patient reading of nature as God's other book
c. 1200-1280
Christian Mysticism
Bonaventure
The staged ascent of the mind to God, from creation to union beyond intellect
c.1221-1274
Christian Mysticism
Thomas Aquinas
The beatific vision — union of intellect and will in God
1225-1274
Christian Mysticism
Marguerite Porete
Annihilation of the will
c.1250-1310
Christian Mysticism
Meister Eckhart
Birth of God in the soul-ground
c.1260-c.1328
Christian Mysticism
Jan van Ruusbroec
Active-contemplative union
1293-1381
Christian Mysticism
Gregory Palamas
The essence/energies distinction, the uncreated light of Tabor, and inner prayer of the heart
1296-1359
Christian Mysticism
Johannes Tauler
The ground of the soul, where God is eternally born, reached by turning within
c.1300-1361
Christian Mysticism
Julian of Norwich
Divine love — 'all shall be well' and the motherhood of God
c.1343-after 1416
Christian Mysticism
Catherine of Siena
Self-knowledge and mystical union — the inner cell
1347-1380
Christian Mysticism
The Cloud of Unknowing (Anonymous)
Forgetting via love-knowing
c.1370s (composition)
Christian Mysticism
Thomas à Kempis
Interior devotion — the imitation of Christ within
c.1380-1471
Christian Mysticism
Nicholas of Cusa
Coincidence of opposites
1401-1464
Christian Mysticism
Ignatius of Loyola
Disciplined imagination and discernment of spirits
1491-1556
Christian Mysticism
Teresa of Ávila
Seven mansions of inner ascent
1515-1582
Christian Mysticism
John of the Cross
Purgative dark night to union
1542-1591
Christian Mysticism
Francis de Sales
Devout life for everyone, in everyday life
1567-1622
Christian Mysticism
Jakob Böhme
Imagination shaping itself out of the groundless Ungrund
1575-1624
Christian Mysticism
Jacob Böhme
The divine birth and the abyss-ground (Ungrund) of God
1575-1624
Christian Mysticism
Brother Lawrence of the Resurrection
Continuous attention to God
c.1614-1691
Christian Mysticism
Jeanne-Marie Bouvier de la Motte Guyon (Madame Guyon)
Quietist pure-love surrender
1648-1717
Christian Mysticism
Jean-Pierre de Caussade
Sacrament of the present moment
1675-1751
Christian Mysticism
William Law
Devotion as the total dedication of the inner life to God
1686-1761
Christian Mysticism
Emanuel Swedenborg
Doctrine of correspondences; spiritual worlds
1688-1772
Christian Mysticism
Friedrich von Hügel
Religion as the union of its institutional, intellectual, and mystical elements
1852-1925
Christian Mysticism
Evelyn Underhill
Mysticism as the soul's transforming union with Absolute Reality
1875-1941
Christian Mysticism
Pierre Teilhard de Chardin
Evolution converging on the Omega Point through the noosphere
1881-1955
Christian Mysticism
Edith Stein
Empathy, interiority, and the science of the cross
1891-1942
Christian Mysticism
Vladimir Lossky
Apophatic (negative) theology as the living path to union with God
1903-1958
Christian Mysticism
Thomas Merton
Contemplation as recovery of the true self in God
1915-1968
Christian Mysticism
Thomas Keating
Centering Prayer as consent to the presence and action of God
1923-2018
Christian Mysticism
Beatrice Bruteau
A self-creating, evolving cosmos awakening to nondual union through contemplative love
1930-2014
Christian Mysticism
Bernadette Roberts
The contemplative territory beyond union, where the self itself falls away into no-self.
1931-2017
Christian Mysticism
Richard Rohr
Transformation through the death of the False Self into the True Self
1943-
Christian Mysticism
Cynthia Bourgeault
Centering Prayer as a path to nondual awakening and the Wisdom way of knowing
1947-
Christian Mysticism
Hadewijch
Minne — the fierce, mutual Love between the soul and God
13th century
Christian Mysticism
Jesus of Nazareth
The kingdom of God is within you
c. 4 BCE - c. 30/33 CE
Christian Mysticism
Pseudo-Dionysius the Areopagite
Apophatic theology — union with God in the divine darkness
c. 5th-6th century