Recs for getting into christian esoterism?

>>24505984 (OP)

>>24505984 (OP)
cloud of unknowing?
depends on how "esoteric" (jewish) you want to get

>We shall have ample opportunity later to see what fundamental importance the symbolism of numbers assumes in Dante’s work; and even if this symbolism is not uniquely Pythagorean, and reappears in other doctrines for the simple reason that truth is one, it is no less permissible to think that, from Pythagoras to Virgil, and from Virgil to Dante, the ‘chain of the tradition’ was undoubtedly unbroken on Italian soil.

>>24506189
Who is the next in the tradition after Dante?

>>24506240
my diary desu

>>24505984 (OP)
It depends. When you say Christian esotericism, do you mean spiritual experience that goes beyond the conceptual, or /x/-tier schizo syncretism and occultism? If you want the former, check out Gregory of Nyssa, Teresa of Avila, John Wesley, and Christos Yannaras. If you want the latter, read the Bible and go outside for once.

>>24506866
y?

>>24505984 (OP)
Daily rosary (15 decades), fasting, almsgiving.

>>24506866
Both are cool but I was looking into the pure/magical kristos myth that connects with hyperborean archetypes. Later bastardized by centuries of mishandling of the divine thruths.

First, I will say that pic related is excellent, and that both the Modern Scholar and Great Courses classes on Dante are also excellent. Moevs is more advanced obviously. I had the good fortune to get to attend an entire graduate seminar on the Commedia as a philosophy text, and these were still helpful.

>>24506240
No one. But consider the gap between Virgil and Dante.

Homer starts by showing us the emptiness of the pursuit of arete for its own sake, the way the drive of thymos ultimately turns cannibalistic. Achilles tells Odysseus he would rather be the servant of a nobody than "lord it over all these exhausted dead." Achilles' shield is terrifying because it displays how the world of Homer is ultimately meaningless, the cities at peace and war endlessly cycling, the cycles consuming their heros and sending them down to Hades to become nothing. Yet he also shows us why we ought to strive for excellence. This is the "bright despair" C.S. Lewis speaks of.

Virgil is an advance in that he sees how thymos must be ordered to logos for it to avoid collapsing inward on itself. Only logos has access to transcendence, which is divine and so its own ground. Pietas replaced arete. Virgil's gods are half anthropomorphic, half principles. Humans only see them for what they are when they turn their backs to leave; only when history is behind us do we see the Logos at work. History has a telos embodied in Rome.

Yet Virgil is a skeptic. Aeneas ascends from the underworld through the lying Ivory Gate. He doesn't fulfill Anchises commands but rather slays Turnus in thymotic rage to end the narrative. For Virgil, man can be oriented to the Logos, but he forever oscillates between purgatory and a hell enslaved to the passions and appetites.

Dante is able to resolve this though hope and faith and the breaking in on history of Christ, the Logos Itself. Mary offers the model for man, whose collective historical mission is to give birth the the Logos in the immanent plane of history in thought and deed, being His body, the Church, and Bride at the end of history.

What comes after thymos and epithumia ordered to logos? Modernity largely focuses on pathologies of logos, the fear that it lacks the capacity to rule. This comes in two main forms, volanturism (elevation of the will) and a straight jacket intellectualism that absolutizes human logos as a tool, ignoring that it is a participation in transcendent Logos.

Hence, we get portraits of sickness:

Volanturism:
Milton's Satan
Macbeth
Smerdyakov Karamazov, etc.

And intellectualism:
Hamlet
Ivan Karamazov, etc.

Dostoevsky might come the closest to plumbing these across his works, but he leaves things not fully resolved. The world is still waiting for its next Dante, a poet who can heal Reason and return here to her rightful place as ruler, the return of Sophia. I think Solovyov is a good first step though.

>>24508346
Anna Karenina is a great example too.

But even later lit follows this pattern. You might think A Brave New World is about the tyranny of hedonism, of epithumia, but it is really about human logos that has become trapped in its own finitude. Having lost sight of any orienting Logos, the quest to "be like onto God," it becomes enslaved to the appetites (just as Hume would have it). Tyler Durden is a recent example of the Volanturist thread. The best characters show how the one pathology also leads to the other. Raskolnikov and the Underground Man are great here.

What is shocking, once you see it, is how influential liberal thinkers such as Rawls positively promote exactly what is show to be sickness here, and to absolutize it over all society. And worst of all, they have been successful!

People complain about post-modernism, and there are issues there, but I think liberalism has been far more pernicious in some ways, even as it has also had some very good results. As Maratain says, the good is sewn alongside the bad in history. We mustn't make things Manichean.

>>24508359
Beowulf versus William Stace's Man Against Darkness is another good comparison. Both very Anglo in a way (what became Anglo culture). But the point of Beowulf is that, at best, the truly mighty can only hold back the darkness for a few decades. Stace's project also seems to have collapsed; Enlightenment procedural reason wed to athiesm cannot ground society, it collapsed under the weight of its own finitude instead of being pulled upwards (upwards like the vaulting ceilings of cathedrals built over generations, an unthinkable timescale for neoliberalism).

But I think a subtext in Beowulf is that "Christ does better." In the end, he sweeps away the darkness whole cloth, with his incomparable glory, and draws all creation up to himself.

But to stay on topic, >>24505984 (OP)
all of pic related are good. Mind's Journey is great but not super accessible. I really like William Harmless' Mystics, which covers it, Eckhart, Merton, Hildegard, etc. It's out of print, but there is always Anna's and Libgen. Light from Light is another good anthology, but Harmless is better at giving context.

Your pic is from the Rosicrucians who are even further removed from Christianity than Masons are.
Is that the kind of thing you're looking for?

>>24508367
Thanks my bro it's probably going to take a while to go through all that. My feeble mind is attracted more promptly to "the cosmic mystery of JC" is this a good starting point for a poor soul that has only dabbled with occultism here and there?

>>24508390
No, I just searched for a random pic that looked kind of alchemistic

>>24508446
Yes and no. Yes, it is fairly accessible and has good notes. But it's also more "theology." Unfortunately, Maximus philosophy is dabbled throughout works that focus a lot of asceticism, Biblical exegesis, and more strictly theological concerns, as well as praxis. Von Balthasar's book Cosmic Liturgy is really good here, but also not accessible.

I might recommend pic related as a first stop actually, and you might get by ignoring the Hegel and contemporary parts. Once you understand Plato's psychology, I think it is easier to get more from Maximus. Eric Perl's Thinking Being is very good on the metaphysical side too, but rather technical.

Wallace is extremely accessible, but the cost is that it isn't Christian and leaves out a lot that deepens Plato's insights in Christianity. But it's a good starting point because it is accessible.

>>24508359
>People complain about post-modernism, and there are issues there, but I think liberalism has been far more pernicious in some ways, even as it has also had some very good results. As Maratain says, the good is sewn alongside the bad in history.
This. Ironically, postmodernism has provided far better grounds for theology than liberalism ever did. Postmodern theology gave us Milbank (and arguably Marion, depending on which of his influences you emphasize), while afaik, liberal theology has produced nothing but increasingly secularized distortions of faith.

>>24508515
I see. Well it might be a good start for me since I don't really understood plato when I read him a long time ago. Thanks my man

>>24508359
Learn to notice the details. For example, the similarities between Jesus and Superman end only with a) doing extraordinary things, b) sympathy of followers. Superman is an alien who operates a closed catalog of powers that are useful in specific situations. Superman can even be treated as a god, but he is a Greek type god, closed within the framework of his individuality and quite limited. To a large extent, his divinity ends with strength and the ability to use it. Meanwhile, Jesus has no "power", Jesus is a soteriological figure who, instead of individual abilities, continues the actions of God himself, i.e. the process of Creation. One who follows Christ continues Creation. Jesus does not even have to perform miracles to have such a function (which is why he so often gives them up).

Love each other

There is no Christian esotericism
If you're looking for mysticism, start with the hesychasts