Image: Tránsito en Espiral (Spiral Transit)
Painting by Remedios Varo (1962)

Event Description

This talk explores striking similarities between Christian and Sufi understandings of the soul’s spiritual journey towards closeness to the Divine. Traditionally symbolised as an interior journey through mansions, castles, stations or valleys of the Way, this path involves qualities such as awakening, repentance, humility, patience, trust, detachment and unity. These are not fixed states, but evolving conditions of the heart through which we move from ego-centredness towards God-centredness.

The talk focuses on two key texts: St Teresa of Avila’s The Interior Castle, which describes seven mansions of the soul, and Farid Ud-Din Attar’s The Conference of the Birds, a classic of Sufi devotional poetry that explores the spiritual journey through symbolic stages of the Way.

Refreshments will be provided.

Julienne McLean practices as a psychologist, Jungian analyst and supervisor in north London, as well as being a spiritual director, and has been in private practice for more than 30 years. She has had a lifelong involvement in the Christian contemplative tradition, with a particular interest in the relationship between Jungian, depth psychology and Christian mysticism.

For many years, she lectured and organised study groups, retreats and pilgrimages in England, Scotland and Spain, on Jungian psychology and Carmelite Spirituality, particularly on the lives and writings of the sixteenth-century Spanish Carmelite saints, St Teresa of Avila and St John of the Cross. Since 2018, she has been involved in the Centre for Applied Carmelite Spirituality, Oxford, where she is a lecturer/tutor on the Spiritual Direction Formation Programme. 

She is the author of ‘Towards Mystical Union’ (St Pauls, 2003, 2013, 2017) a modern commentary on St Teresa’s of Avila’s major text on prayer, The Interior Castle. She has published many papers over 30 years, and in 2023, a collection of her significant papers/talks was published as ‘The Diamond Heart – Jungian Psychology and the Christian Mystical Tradition’ (Chiron Publications, USA). Her more recent publication is a paper in Harvest (2024) called ‘The Diamond Heart – Interiority, Symbols, Soul and Presence’ which is also available as a podcast.