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tradition of mediaeval feminine mys- ticism, which experienced a moment of splendour in the thirteenth century with prominent figures such as Hilde- gard of Bingen. The conclusive proof of the genealogical link to European mysticism is to be found in the preface that Father Jerónimo Gracián wrote for The Life of Saint Teresa by Herself,
in which he feels obliged to justify the reasons behind Teresa’s writings and points out that both she and her pred- ecessors – who in the eyes of her male judges had always been suspected of being possessed by the devil – obtain their strength for writing and singing from ‘charity’.
On her path of inner search, Teresa initiates a process of reflection and self-analysis through which her under- standing of herself improves as she traces and constructs the meaning of her life. As we learn from historian and essayist Milagros Rivera Garretas, sovereign personal spirituality is the saint’s political challenge, her genu- ine mystic revolution. Sometimes she writes as if at top speed, stumbling and trembling as she strives to find the words to define her emotions, her feelings, her experiences. She ‘obeys’ her confessors when she writes, and uses this obedience as a protective shield. She expresses her certain-
ties and doubts, striking up a direct dialogue with God and experiencing the pleasures of intimate prayer. In her many battles she is guided by a
subjective lucidity, ‘a spark of security’ that shines in her soul in spite of all the darknesses (The Interior Castle).
In her discourse on her life, her path to- wards perfection and her foundations, Teresa anticipated the emergence of psychoanalysis by five hundred years, but above all she granted herself
the right to transform herself and to change the unfair world around her. By giving her experiences a textual body, she created a transconfessional and transhistorical corpus6 that is still meaningful today as its profound humanity defines all spiritual and mystic experiences, not to mention the relationship with power and the cog- nitive and ideological systems of each historical period.
Major religions and spiritual philos- ophies idealise woman and make her the embodiment of essential wisdom, yet her right to be ordained priestess or to occupy the highest hierarchies and become pope or Dalai Lama still isn’t recognised. Mediaeval theolo- gians in the West declared that women had no soul, and St Paul had insisted that they should not be teachers or speak in public. Women have histori- cally been relegated to a subordinate position, both from a legal perspective and in economic, social and creative terms, and those voices that suggest
a new feminine vision have either been rejected or silenced and their work consigned to the margins or to the contemporary glass ceiling that
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