by Meister Eckhart

The Castle of the Soul is Sermon VIII in C. de B. Evans's 1924 translation of Franz Pfeiffer's collected works of Meister Eckhart. Its scriptural text is Luke 10:38 — Jesus entering a certain fastness, received by a virgin who was a wife — and from the compressed paradox of that phrase Eckhart unfolds two distinct teachings. First, the soul must be virgin: void of alien images, as free as before she existed. But virginity alone is barren; the soul must also be wife, bearing the Son back into the Father with a hundredfold fruit. Second, and deeper: within the soul is a power Eckhart has called tabernacle, spark, and spiritual light, but which surpasses all these names. Here he calls it the fastness — the castellum — and says it is so one and indivisible, so way-transcending, that not even God enters it as Father, Son, or Holy Ghost. Only as the undivided One, having no jot of mode or quality, does he enter. Into this fastness Jesus ascended; into this fastness the soul is invited to become.

Eckhart (c. 1260–1328) was a Dominican friar, theologian, and mystic, born in Hochheim in Thuringia. He studied and taught in Paris, held the chair of theology at Cologne, and rose to the rank of Vicar-General of the Bohemian province. In 1326 the Archbishop of Cologne brought heresy charges against him; Eckhart appealed directly to the Pope, died in 1328 before the verdict, and was posthumously condemned in the bull In Agro Dominico (1329). D.T. Suzuki declared him the one Western mystic who could speak the language of Zen — and the fastness passage, in which God himself cannot look into the soul's inmost ground as a conditioned being, is among the reasons. This archive presents the complete text of the sermon in the translation of C. de B. Evans, published in London by John M. Watkins, 1924, as Volume I of his edition of Meister Eckhart's works. Evans translated from Franz Pfeiffer's 1857 critical edition of the Middle High German text (Deutsche Mystiker des vierzehnten Jahrhunderts, vol. ii), where the work appears as Sermon VIII. Source digitised at the Internet Archive (identifiers: meistereckhart0001eckh; in.ernet.dli.2015.31707). The sermon is reproduced here as a public-domain archival text.

Intravit Jesus in quoddam castellum et mulier quedam excepit illum etc. (Luc. 10). I quote first in Latin this text from the gospel. The translation reads: 'Our Lord Jesus Christ went up into a certain fastness and was received by a certain virgin who was a wife.'

Mark the term. Needs must it be a virgin by whom Jesus is received. Virgin is, in other words, a person void of alien images, free as he was when he existed not. It may be questioned: Man born and launched on rational life, how can he be as free from images as he was when he was not, he knowing a variety of things, images all of them: how can he possibly be void thereof?

I answer that, were I sufficiently intelligent to have within me intellectually the sum of all the forms conceived by man and which subsist in God himself, I having no property in them and no idea of ownership, positive or negative, past or to come, but standing in the present now perfectly free in the will of God and doing it perpetually: then verily I were a virgin, unhandicapped by forms, just as I was when I was not.

Further, I hold that the fact of being virgin does not deprive a man at all of works that he has done: he is untrammelled, virgin-free of them in the sovran truth, even as Jesus is absolutely free and virgin in himself. According to the masters, likeness, likeness only, is the cause of union, so man must be maiden, virgin, to receive the virgin Jesus.

Now lay this fact to heart: the ever virgin is never fruitful. To be fruitful the soul must be wife. Spouse is the noblest title of the soul, nobler than virgin. For a man to receive God within him is good and in receiving he is virgin. But for God to be fruitful in him is still better: the fruits of his gift being gratitude therefor, and in this newborn thankfulness the spirit is the spouse bearing Jesus back into his Father's heart.

Many good gifts received in maidenhood are not brought forth in wifely fruitfulness, reborn in praise and thanks to God. Such gifts corrupt and come to naught, man being no better and no happier for them. In this case his virginity is useless because to his virginity he does not add the perfect fruitfulness of wife. That is the mischief. Hence my text, 'Jesus ascended to a certain fastness and was received by a certain maid who was a wife.' It must be so, as I have said.

Wedded folks yield little more than one fruit yearly. But it is other wedded ones that I have now in mind: those whose hearts are wedded to praying, fasting, vigils or other outward discipline and mortifications of the flesh. A predilection for this sort of thing, involving loss of freedom to wait instantly on God in the here and now, and follow him alone in the light wherein he would fain show thee what to do and what to leave undone, moment by moment, fresh and clearly, as though thou hadst naught else, nor would nor could not: any such proclivity or preoccupation which constantly deprives thee of this freedom I call here a year, and thy soul yields no fruit till she is done with this work of thy affection nor hast thou any trust in God or in thyself till thou hast finished with thy predilection; in other words, thou hast no peace. There is no fruit till thy own work is done. I reckon this a year and one whose yield is poor; the proceeds of affection not of freedom. And these folks I call wedded, yoked to their affections. Their crop is small and undersized at that, so I say, in God's sight.

The virgin wife, free and unbound in her affections, is ever as near God as to herself. She abounds in fruit and big withal, no more nor less than God is himself. This fruit, his birth, does that virgin bear who is a wife; daily she yields her hundred and her thousandfold, nay, numberless her labours and her fruits in that most noble ground, the very ground, to speak more plainly, wherein the Father is begetting his eternal Word: there she is big with fruit. For Jesus, light and shine of the paternal heart (according to St Paul he is the 'light and splendour' of the Father's heart), this Jesus is atoned with her and she with him, she is radiant with him and shining as the one alone, as one pure brilliant light in the paternal heart.

Elsewhere I have declared, there is a power in the soul untouched by time and flesh, flowing from the Spirit, remaining in the Spirit, altogether spiritual. In this power is God, ever verdant, flowering in all the joy and glory of his actual self. Such dear delight, such inconceivable deep joy as none can fully tell, for in this power the eternal Father is procreating his eternal Son without a pause, the power being big with child, the Father's Son and its own self this selfsame Son withal, in the unique power of the Father. Suppose a man absolute monarch, the sole possessor of all earthly goods; suppose he gave up all for God and was the poorest of the poor; and that God laid on him to boot a burden big as ever he did lay on mortal man, all which he bare down to his death and then God granted him one fleeting vision of his being in this power: so vehement would be his joy that poverty and suffering would be wiped out. Aye, though God gave him never any taste of heaven but this, yet would he have the guerdon of his passion, for God himself is in this power as in the eternal now. If a man's spirit were always joined to God in this same power, he could not age.

For the now wherein God made the first man and the now wherein the last man disappears and the now I speak in, all are the same in God where there is but the now. Behold this man in the same light as God having in him no past nor yet to come, only one level of eternity. This man in truth has motion taken from him and all things stand intrinsic in him. Nothing new comes to him from future things nor yet by accident for he dwells in the now, ever new and unceasingly renewed. So dominant is God in this same power.

There is another power, immortal too: proceeding from the Spirit, remaining in the Spirit, altogether spiritual. In this power God is fiery, aglow with all his riches, with all his sweetness and with all his bliss. Aye, in this power is such poignant joy, such vehement, immoderate delight as none can tell nor yet in truth reveal. I say, moreover, if once a man in intellectual vision did really glimpse the bliss and joy therein, then all his sufferings, all God intends that he should suffer, would be a trifle, a mere nothing to him; nay, I say more, it would be pure joy and pleasure.

Wouldst thou know for certain whether thy sufferings are thine own or God's? Tell by these tokens. Suffering for thyself, in whatever way, the suffering hurts thee and is hard to bear. But suffering for God and God alone thy suffering hurts thee not nor does it burden thee, for God bears the load. Believe me, if there were a man willing to suffer on account of God and of God alone, then though he fell a sudden prey to the collective sufferings of all the world it would not trouble him nor bow him down, for God would be the bearer of his burden. If the burden they put upon my neck is forthwith shouldered by another I would as lief a hundred pounds as one, for not to me is it heavy and distressful. In brief: man's sufferings for God and God alone he makes both light and pleasant.

I prefaced this sermon with the words: 'Jesus went up into a fastness and was received by a virgin who was wife.' Why? She must needs be virgin and wife too. How Jesus was received I have explained. I have not told the meaning of this fastness and that I will now proceed to do.

From time to time I tell of the one power in the soul which alone is free. Sometimes I have called it the tabernacle of the soul; sometimes a spiritual light, anon I say it is a spark. But now I say: it is neither this nor that. Yet it is somewhat: somewhat more exalted over this and that than the heavens are above the earth. So now I name it in a nobler fashion than before as regarding rank and mode which it transcends. It is of all names free, of all forms void: exempt and free as God is in himself. It is one and simple as God is one and simple, and no man can in any wise behold it. This same power I am speaking of, herein God blooms and thrives in all his Godhood and the spirit in God; in this very power the Father bears his only Son no less than in himself, for verily he liveth in this power, the spirit with the Father giving birth therein to his very Son, itself this selfsame Son, for in this light which is the light of truth, it is the Son himself. Could ye see with my heart ye would understand my words, but it is true, for truth itself has said it.

So one and simple is this fastness, frowning above all ways, of which I mind me and am telling you, within the soul, that this high faculty I speak of is not worthy even of a fleeting glance therein; nor is that other power God glows and burns in, it durst not peer in either; so one and indivisible this refuge is, so way-and power-transcending this solitary one that never mode nor faculty has any insight there, not even God himself. Never for an instant, as God lives, does God see into this, nor did he ever look in his conditioned nature, in his guise of Person. Note well, this one alone is lacking in every mode and quality. It follows that for God to see therein would cost him all his divine names and personal properties: all these he must forgo to look therein: only as one and indivisible, having no jot of mode or quality, not Father nor Son nor Holy Ghost as such, can he do this; as somewhat, yes, but not as this or that.

As one and impartible behold him entering this one that here I call the fastness of the soul, but in no different guise can he get in: thus only does he enter and subsist in it. In part the soul is the same as God but not altogether. — This that I tell you is true: truth is my witness and my soul the pledge. May we be as this fastness whereinto on ascending Jesus is received to abide eternally as I have said. So help us God. Amen.

Colophon

The Castle of the Soul (Sermon VIII in the Pfeiffer edition) by Meister Eckhart (c. 1260–1328). This archive reproduces the translation of C. de B. Evans, published in The Works of Meister Eckhart, Volume I, London: John M. Watkins, 1924. Evans translated from the Middle High German text established by Franz Pfeiffer in Deutsche Mystiker des vierzehnten Jahrhunderts, vol. ii (Leipzig, 1857). The scriptural text is Luke 10:38. Source digitised at the Internet Archive (identifiers: meistereckhart0001eckh; in.ernet.dli.2015.31707). The sermon is reproduced here as a public-domain archival text.

Compiled and formatted for the Good Work Library by the New Tianmu Anglican Church, 2026.

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