Alexandrines from The Cherubinic Pilgrim

Alexandrines from The Cherubinic Pilgrim is a book by Angelus Silesius, first published in 1657 under the original German title Der Cherubinische Wandersmann. This edition, selected and abridged by Julia Bilger, presents a curated selection of Silesius’s mystical verses in the distinctive alexandrine meter—six-foot rhymed couplets that reflect both the poet’s deep religious conviction and his finely tuned lyrical sensibility.

The work is a key contribution to German Baroque spiritual poetry and Christian mysticism, offering aphoristic meditations on the soul’s union with God. Angelus Silesius, a Silesian physician and convert to Catholicism, was heavily influenced by the works of Meister Eckhart, Jacob Böhme, and the broader tradition of Christian Neoplatonism.

The verses in The Cherubinic Pilgrim—and by extension this abridged edition—often explore themes such as the dissolution of the ego, the immediacy of divine presence, and the paradoxes of spiritual truth. Despite their 17th-century origin, these spiritual aphorisms possess a timeless, contemplative power, and this selection distills the essence of Silesius’s mysticism into a brief but potent encounter with a soul wholly devoted to the divine.