The Mirror of Simple Souls: Marguerite Porete

Often decried as a "heretical" Quietest, Marguerite Porete was a woman that dared to speak of her own direct intuitive experience of the Divine in a time when women were often held as incapable of genuine beatitude.

And beyond this - her beatific vision in many ways proved higher and subtler still than her male peers. For that she was sentenced to death by burning at the stake. But her legacy lives on in these words that serve to guide us through the higher realms of spiritual pursuit, to the infinite wellspring of God itself.

Transcript

The Mirror of Simple Souls by Marguerite Pourette Chapter 6 Of the sixth state,

Which is when a soul is of all things made free,

Pure,

And clarified.

The sixth is that a soul sees not her nought by deepness of meekness,

Nor God by highful bounty,

But God sees it in her of his divine majesty,

Who clarifies her by himself.

So that she sees that none is but God himself,

Who is that from whence all things are.

And this that is,

Is God himself.

And this soul sees not but God himself.

For whosoever sees this of himself,

He sees nothing but God's self.

And then is a soul in the sixth state of all things made free,

Pure,

And clarified,

Not glorified,

For glorifying is in the seventh estate that we shall have in glory that none can speak of.

But pure,

Clarified,

She sees not God nor herself,

But God sees this of him in her,

For her,

Without her,

And shows her that there is none but her.

Nor she knows anything but him,

Nor she loves anything but him,

Nor she praises anything but him.

For there's only the self.

That which is,

Is of his bounty.

So loving her in his goodness,

Which he has by fullness given her.

This fullness given,

It is in God himself.

And God may not from his goodness depart,

That it should not dwell in him.

And therefore is he the thing which is of his fullness.

And bounty is what God is.

So thus she sees fullness through this high bounty by divine light in the sixth estate,

Of which beholding the soul is clarified.

There is none but he that is,

And she sees this being of divine majesty by union of love and fullness spread and laid in him.

This she sees in him of whom,

Who is the maker unmade,

Without touching of anything that is creaturely.

All is of his own proper being,

And this proper self-being is the sixth being of which we've promised the auditors to speak in the takings of love.

And love is by himself,

Of his fullness,

The debts all paid.

Reviews

A great mystic. Thank you 🙏🏻.