Past Masters | Bernard Clairvaux | Substack

Descent and Ascent as Theological Grammar

From Katabasis to Kenosis, From Anabasis to Theosis.

Apr 14 • Bernard Clairvaux

Recent posts

Truth Standing on Its Head

Paradox as Problem and as Principle in Chesterton's The Man Who Was Thursday

Mar 15 • Bernard Clairvaux

Ecstasy, a Sacramental Cosmos, and the Theurgic Mind

Made by Ecstasy, for Ecstasy: Literature in a Sacramental World

Feb 15 • Bernard Clairvaux

Arthur Machen: Ecstasy and the Literary Imagination

From Homer’s bards to Machen’s horror, a hidden tradition runs on rapture, displacement, and the shock of the unknown.

Feb 8 • Bernard Clairvaux

A Holy Fool in the Interior Castle: Christian Folly and Spanish Mysticism in R. A. Lafferty’s Fourth Mansions

A Broken Stairway, a Hidden Fountain, and the Fool Who Sees

Jan 31 • Bernard Clairvaux

Narnia: The Analogical World of C. S. Lewis

Narnia Means More Than Allegory – How Lewis Thought Stories Tell the Truth

Jan 21 • Bernard Clairvaux

R.A. Lafferty and G.K. Chesterton: Seeing “Through Other Eyes” into “The Weirdest World”

By turning perspective itself into a speculative device, R. A. Lafferty makes the ordinary world appear strange, comic, and deeply unsettling.

Jan 10