17. Abstract of: Magnetisation to God Update of recent researches on the concept of Magnetic Centre Saint Theophan the Recluse, one of the greatest of those who, in nineteenth century Russia, continued the tradition of the early fathers, may have been the first to use the then just discovered concept of magnetism to describe the way in which the love transmitted through the Spirit transforms the human heart. The idea of 'magnetism to God' was first applied to this inner phenomenon, so far as we know, in the second half of the nineteenth century by the Russian hermit Saint Theophan the Recluse, who around 1860-1870 speaks sometimes about magnetisation to God, and sometimes about Gravitation to God. Theophan was a major investigator in this field of the Christian interior life. Under the Aegis of the Synod of the Russian church he spent seven years researching sources in the Middle-East before he became a bishop, and then a hermit. He travelled round the monasteries of Syria, Egypt and Palestine, finding manuscripts which he had copied and shipped over the Russian, where he translated them. His researches were directly responsible for the addition to the Russian version of the Philokalia of sources not available to the compilers of the earlier Greek version or the earlier Russian version of Paisious Velitchkovsky. |
