The Interior Castle

The Interior Castle, known in Spanish as Las moradas, is a work by Teresa of Ávila, founder of the Discalced Carmelite Order. She wrote it in 1577 as a guide to spiritual growth through prayer and service. Its central image is the soul as a diamond shaped like a castle, divided into seven dwellings. Each dwelling marks a step in the approach to God, from the purification of sin to union with the Creator.

She began writing on 2 June 1577 and finished on 29 November of that year. The timing was delicate: the Spanish Inquisition was examining her earlier book, the Life, to decide whether its account of her experiences could be considered heretical. According to her confessor, Fray Diego de Cetina, Teresa decided to write after receiving a vision. The work was not published until 1588 in Salamanca, in an edition prepared by Fray Luis de León.

The first three dwellings are reached through active prayer, while the last four belong to contemplative prayer. The progression runs from the prayer of quiet in the fourth dwelling to an emerging and then deeper union with God, culminating in the spiritual marriage of the seventh, where the soul, forgetful of itself, feels that Christ lives within it.

Its influence reaches contemporary literature and thought as well. Writers such as Elizabeth Gilbert, Caroline Myss and Jeffrey Eugenides cite or draw on it, and the Uruguayan writer Mario Levrero regarded it as a constant source of inspiration. The philosopher Christia Mercer has also suggested a possible debt of Descartes's evil genius argument to the saint's work.