Many people today surround themselves with crystals, whether for healing properties or as part of their spirituality. But the question of whether crystals can affect the body or the spirit goes back millennia. Marisa Galvez has identified two distinct traditions for understanding crystals. First, there’s a Christian tradition that focuses on how crystals might allow us to transcend the body into a realm of pure spirituality. But there’s also a tradition that links crystals to erotic love. In medieval poetry, the shimmering qualities of crystals are used to capture an experience of love that’s dizzying yet pleasurable.
Tag: ancient
It’s difficult to maintain attention when surrounded by distractions. Even if we’re just trying to focus on our own thoughts, distracting words have a way of popping into our head uninvited. David Marno has been studying early Christian thinkers, for whom prayer meant paying attention to God, leading them to worry that distracting thoughts were caused by evil demons. But avoiding these demons of distraction wasn’t the goal for everyone: the poet and preacher John Donne believed that true attention could only emerge out of distractedness, and so wrote poetry that moves readers from distraction to spiritual attention.