Spiritual Torrents

What It's About

Spiritual Torrents is a mystical treatise built around an extended metaphor: the soul's journey to God likened to a torrent flowing from its mountain source, through canyons and rough terrain, before finally reaching the open sea. Guyon uses this image to map out successive stages of spiritual development, from the active, effortful practices of a beginner in prayer, through increasingly passive states of faith, to a final condition of deep union with the divine will.

Key Concepts

The work is a foundational text of Quietism, the contemplative movement that stressed passive surrender to God over active devotional effort. Central to Guyon's scheme are the "active" and "passive" ways of prayer, and what she terms the degrees of the soul's "spoliation" — a progressive stripping away of self-will and self-interest as a prerequisite for union with God.

About the Author

Jeanne Guyon (1648–1717) was a French mystic and one of the leading figures of the Quietist movement. Her teaching that ordinary people could reach God through personal, contemplative prayer rather than through clerical mediation was judged heretical by the Catholic Church, and she was imprisoned from 1695 to 1703 following the publication of her writings on the subject.

About This Edition

This is a 1875 translation by A. W. Marston.