The Spiritual Exercises by St. Ignatius of Loyola
🟊🟊🟊🟊
An interesting orthodox Christian approach to mysticism. It shares some fundamental technical elements with more heterodox mystical approaches in the Renaissance (the grimoire tradition), such as extensive use of visualization as a form of ritual enactment, fixed itineraries for meditative "travel", etc. It's essentially a fully orthodox version of pathworking, but instead of working up the Tree of Life, the exercitant works his way through the life and passion of Christ. It even offers some helpful instructions for distinguishing visitations from good and evil spirits!
Like any good instructional for astral travel, it advises the operant to try to use all five senses to experience the various scenes. Some of the concrete suggestions in that vein are frankly a little weird, even in context. There are suggestions that one, in essence, sniff the baby Jesus, or kiss the spot where Mary had been sitting.
Nonetheless, its a very interesting artifact of its era, to say the least. I read it now because it featured prominently in Vollman's Fathers and Crows, and I was curious how much of Vollman's engagement with it was rooted in fact (some, but not as much as I expected), but I had a longstanding interest in reading it because Crowley spoke warmly of the spiritual exercises in a few places. For example in the Eight Lectures on Yoga, as part of a long digression on the Society of Jesus, he remarked:
I should like to mention here that the Spiritual Exercises of St. Ignatius are in their essence really admirable Yoga practices. They have, it is true, a tinge of magical technique, and they have been devised to serve a dogmatic end. That was, however, necessary, and it was good magic too, at that, because the original will of the Founder was to produce a war engine as a counterblast to the Reformation. He was very wise to devise a plan, irrespective of its abstract merits as philosophy, which would most efficiently serve that single purpose. The only trouble has been that this pur— pose was not sufficiently cosmic in scope to resist internal forces. Having attained the higher planes by practice of these exercises, they found that the original purpose of the Society was not really adequate to their powers; they were, so to speak, over—engined. They stupidly invaded the spiritual sphere of the other authorities whom they were founded to support, and thus we see them actually quarrelling with the Pope, while failing signally to obtain possession of the Papacy. Being thus thwarted in their endeavours, and confused in their purpose, they redoubled the ardour of their exercises; and it is one of the characteristics of all spiritual exercises, if honestly and efficiently performed, that they constantly lead you on to higher planes, where all dogmatic considerations, all intellectual concepts, are invalid. Hence, we find that it is not altogether surprising that the General of the Order and his immediate circle have been supposed to be atheists. If that were true, it would only show that they have been corrupted by their preoccupation with the practical politics of the world, which it is impossible to conduct on any but an atheistic basis; it is brainless hypocrisy to pretend otherwise, and should be restricted to the exclusive use of the Foreign Office. It would, perhaps, be more sensible to suppose that the heads of the Order have really attained the greatest heights of spiritual knowledge and freedom, and it is quite possible that the best term to describe their attitude would be either Pantheistic or Gnostic.
Crowley was a great borrower and systemizer, and was the heir to a great syncretic project in mysticism, so it's no surprise he finds something to like in it. But it affirms my impression that the Exercises and the Western magickal tradition aren't so separate.
Israel Regardie, a student of Crowley's and famous occultist in his own right (or should I say rite?), also cited the exercises with approval (in his excellent The Tree of Life) in reference to the development of the imaginative faculty in ritual:
Although holding no brief for Catholicism with its luminary Jesuitism, nevertheless there is a remarkable book, indispensable and invaluable to the student, written by a Jesuit Mystic, St. Ignatius of Loyola. Outlined in this slight volume is a. most extraordinary system of training, having particular reference to the imagination. Extraordinary, that is, when followed for its own sake, divorced from all dogma and Catholic theology. It is, of course, Christian in intent, with symbols of sectarian appeal to Catholics. With a little dis- crimination, however, the heart of this method may easily be separated from the doctrinal chaff of dogma. It was by this experimental method that St. Ignatius became the man of towering genius that he was; a man who earned the reputation of being, according to Professor William James, one of the most powerful engines of human organization and construction ever seen on the face of the earth. In this book, The Spiritual Exercises, Loyola counsels his disciples to relive in the sphere of the imagination all the events in the outward historic life of their Master, Jesus Christ. By this method they are to force their imaginations to see, touch, smell and taste those invisible things, and rehearse those incidents long since accomplished and vanished, which were perceived through the senses of their incarnated Lord. St. Ignatius desires the imagination to be exalted to its uttermost. If you are meditating on an article of faith, he would have you construct the locality clearly and with exactitude before the vision of the mind’s eye, to observe it carefully and closely, even to touch it as it were. If it be hell, he gives you burning rocks to handle ; he makes you float in a frightful darkness as thick as pitch ; he places liquid sulphur upon your tongue. Your nostrils are filled with an abominable stench as of hell itself, and he shows you terrible torments, causing you to hear excruciating groans. He would have you construct the vision of Calvary with the glorified Christ, crowned with thorns, on the Cross, accomplishing the redemption of mankind, surveying the heavens with painful eyes, while calling upon His Father in Heaven. He would have you envisage the startling wonder of the resurrection and the miracles performed long ago in Palestine—all this St. Ignatius bids your will to create in imagination by constant exercise.
Franz Hartman wrote some years ago, on this same subject, that “the exercises prescribed by Loyola are calculated to develop the powers of the soul, especially the imagination and will. The disciple has to concentrate his mind upon the accounts given in the Bible of the birth, suffering and death of Jesus of Nazareth, as if these were actual historical facts. He thus regards them, as it were, as a mental spectator, but by gradually working upon his imagination he becomes, so to say, a participator of it; his feelings and emotions are raised up to a state of higher vibrations; he becomes himself the actor in the play, experiencing himself the joys and sufferings of Christ, as if he were the Christ Himself; and this identification with the object of his imagination may be carried to such an extent that even stigmata, or bleeding wounds corresponding to those on the body of the crucified Christ, will appear on his own body.”
Now although the Theurgist need not carry the practice so far as to produce the effects of which Hartman speaks, yet without doubt the method is an infallible one for stimulating that creative faculty in which one is deficient. Perseverance and continual application will assuredly bestow upon the student a will which is indomitable, a mind capable of prolonged concentration, and above all an imagi- nation which is the apotheosis of creativeness. Should he not approve of the religious import which the Saint makes of these exercises—and should he evince a profound disapproval of Catholic dogma and theology—then let the student use his own imagination to construct his own exercises which will be more favourable and suited to his individual temperament. Let him picture to himself that he is sitting by a mighty waterfall, a Niagara, and before his inner eye let him create an image of the river high up in its source, murmuring and rambling peacefully along.
Regardie carries the river analogy along for a while further, which is very interesting, primarily because the metaphor of a river (as far as I can tell) appears nowhere in the Exercises, but does figure very prominently in Vollmann's book in connection with the Exercises (Vollman very frequently likens them to climbing along a series of cataracts and waterfalls up to the source of the river in stunning detail). It makes me wonder if Vollmann may have read Regardie.
In any case, it's clear that the Exercises have proven to be a touch stone for mystics of various stripes, orthodox or otherwise.