Author of Effort and Grace: https://nitter.cf/t.co/zkoCyUlsrT Ecologies of Ecstasy https://nitter.cf/t.co/Kd0ELBTHI1 Find me on SubStack https://nitter.cf/t.co/Pz57l5gWIp
Gothenburg
Joined December 2019
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What got me onto writing about plant-thinking and mysticism? The fact that biologists' descriptions of plant intelligence and behaviour are eerily similar to mystics' descriptions of "pure prayer," contemplation, etc. Also, the vegetal metaphors used by mystics.
Dr Simone Kotva retweeted
All these AI agents who offer to research stuff for me - well no, clearly not, as you only have access to stuff that’s already online, just as I do. However, if you can acquire a robotic physical body, learn palaeography and visit archives in Warsaw or St Petersburg etc. then we can talk
My book, Effort and Grace: On the Spiritual Exercise of Philosophy (2020), has been selected as the 2026-2027 winner of the inaugural E. Jane Doering Prize awarded by the American Weil Society for excellence in Weil Studies in connection to literature and/or French studies:
Thoughts on approaching mysticism as a scholar-practitioner: simonekotva.substack.com/p/t…
New post on St Francis' up on Substack. It's about the Canticle of the Creatures and its relationship to the Benedicite: simonekotva.substack.com/p/s…
Dr Simone Kotva retweeted
Thomas Aquinas' handwriting.
I was told by my medieval Latin and paleography professor at Notre Dame that only a handful of nerds can get through it. (He didn't say nerds.)
It's heavily abbreviated (as nearly all texts were in his day), so you have to know Latin, know the many abbreviations, and then know his ideosyncracies. Good luck.
My latest post on Substack is a first-person entry on my weird relationship to a dead French mystic and how I became a Simone Weil scholar:
simonekotva.substack.com/p/s…
New post over at Techniques of Ecstasy on the vegetal mysticism of Thérèse of Lisieux, one of my favourite saints: open.substack.com/pub/simone…
My new book is released this week: dedicated to the community at the Abbey of Our Lady of the Redwoods and to Sr. Veronique Geeroms. A significant portion of the work for the book came together as I was hanging out with the trees at Redwoods Abbey.open.substack.com/pub/simone…
I’d like to end this twelve-part reflection on cardiocentric meditation techniques in Christian mysticism by considering a triad central to its Catholic expression: the Three Hearts of the Holy Family: open.substack.com/pub/simone…
Today in my Twelve Days of Mysticism it’s time to review some apotropaic uses of Sacred Heart imagery. Let me know in the comments if you’ve had experiences with the Sacred Heart badge/scapular: open.substack.com/pub/simone…
Today I touch grass and talk about what it might be like to enter the place of the heart on an average day of practice. I’ve written about a number of historical techniques but today I thought it was time for a bit of phenomenology: open.substack.com/pub/simone…
Today I am thinking about breathing techniques in Christian cardiocentric meditation practices: open.substack.com/pub/simone…
In John Croiset’s spiritual manual, the Sacred Heart takes the practitioner straight to the divine engine of the universe, where human prayers become fuel for the cosmic energy that turns Creation: open.substack.com/pub/simone…
I am the sort of person who cannot read a mystic's autobiography without testing at lest one of the methods they used to experience ecstasy.
Today I’m thinking about Margaret Mary Alacoque and her visions of the heart of God but also of her own heart, “like a tiny atom” consumed and transformed by the fire of God: open.substack.com/pub/simone…
We are halfway through the Twelve Days of Mysticism and it’s time to get blood-drunk: an ancient and (judging by its popularity in medieval and early modern Europe) effective technique that appears to have brought many mystics swiftly to ecstasy. open.substack.com/pub/simone…
In the Twelve Days of Mysticism, part 5, I read a fifteenth-century manual that describes how to enter God’s heart. This is an intense deity practice that requires dedicated immersion during which the practitioner prepares to be consumed by divine fire: open.substack.com/pub/simone…
