Ascetic Works 1-1 part 1/2

OF EVAGRIUS THE MONK. Since you recently wrote to me from the Holy Mountain, while I was dwelling in Scetis, most beloved brother Anatolius, and entreated me to explain to you the symbolic habit of the monks in Egypt:

for you considered that it is neither without reason nor superfluous, since it differs so greatly from the other forms of dress used by men;

come then, let us declare all that we have learned about this from the holy Fathers.

The cowl is a symbol of the grace of our God and Saviour, which shelters their ruling faculty (the nous) and cherishes their infancy in Christ, on account of those who continually strive to strike and wound them.

Those, therefore, who wear this upon their head sing in spirit these words:

"Unless the Lord build the house and guard the city, in vain has the builder laboured and he who tries to keep watch."

Such sayings produce humility and uproot pride, that ancient evil which cast down to the earth Lucifer who rose in the morning.

The bareness of the hands reveals the unfeigned character of their way of life;

for vainglory is terrible at concealing and overshadowing the virtues, ever hunting after the glory that comes from men and driving away faith.

"For how can you believe," he says, "who receive glory from one another, and seek not the glory that comes from the only God?" For the good must be chosen not for the sake of something else but rather for its own sake;

for if this be not granted, then whatever moves us to the doing of the good will appear far more honourable than the deed itself—which would be most absurd, to think or say that anything is greater than God.

The analabos (scapular), again, which is wound crosswise about their shoulders, is a symbol of faith in Christ, which lifts up the meek, ever wards off whatever hinders them, and provides them with unimpeded labour.

The belt, which binds tightly about their loins, thrusts away all impurity and proclaims this:

"It is good for a man not to touch a woman."

The sheepskin cloak is worn by those who always bear about in their body the mortification of Jesus, muzzling all the irrational passions of the body and cutting off the vices of the soul by partaking of the good;

loving poverty and fleeing covetousness as the mother of idolatry.

The staff is a tree of life to all who lay hold of it, and a sure support to those who lean upon it as upon the Lord.

Of these things, then, the habit is a symbol, as it were a summary of their realities;

and these are the words which the Fathers ever speak to them:

"Faith, O children, is confirmed by the fear of God, and this in turn by self-control (continence); this is made unwavering by patience and hope, from which is born dispassion (apatheia), whose offspring is love; and love is the gate to natural contemplation (theoria physike), which is succeeded by theology and the ultimate blessedness."

Concerning the sacred habit and the teaching of the elders, let this much suffice for us at present.

But concerning the life both of praxis (the practical life) and of gnosis (the contemplative life) we now give an account—not all that we have seen or heard, but as much as we learned from them to pass on to others—having concisely divided the practical matters into a hundred chapters and the gnostic into six hundred and fifty;

and some things we have concealed, others we have left in shadow, that we may not give what is holy to the dogs nor cast our pearls before swine.

But these things will be evident to those who have set foot in the same track as they.

BY THE SAME AUTHOR: THE PRACTICAL TREATISE, ONE HUNDRED CHAPTERS. Christianity is the teaching (dogma) of our Saviour Christ, composed of the practical, the natural, and the theological.

The kingdom of heaven is dispassion (apatheia) of the soul together with true knowledge of beings (of all that exists).

The kingdom of God is knowledge of the Holy Trinity, coextensive with the constitution of the mind (nous) and surpassing its incorruptibility.

Whatever a man loves, that also he by all means desires; and what he desires, that he strives to attain;

and desire is the beginning of every pleasure, while sense-perception gives birth to desire;

for that which has no part in sense-perception is also free from passion.

Against the anchorites (solitaries) the demons wrestle stripped (face to face); but against those who practise virtue in cenobitic communities or in companionships, they arm the more careless of the brothers;

and the second warfare is much lighter than the first, because it is not possible to find on earth men more bitter than the demons, or who take upon themselves all their malice at once.

Concerning the eight thoughts (logismoi). There are in all eight most generic thoughts, in which every thought is contained.

First is that of gluttony, and after it that of fornication;

third, that of avarice (love of money);

[fourth, sadness; fifth, anger; sixth, listlessness (acedia);] seventh, that of vainglory;

[eighth, that of pride.] That all of these trouble the soul or do not trouble it is not in our power;

but whether they linger or do not linger, and whether they stir up the passions or do not, is in our power.

The thought of gluttony suggests to the monk a swift falling away from his asceticism;

depicting the stomach, the liver, the spleen, dropsy, a long illness, scarcity of necessities, and the lack of physicians.

It often brings him also to the remembrance of certain brothers who have fallen into these very sufferings.

Sometimes too it persuades those very ones who have suffered to approach the ascetics and recount their own misfortunes, claiming that it was from their asceticism that they became thus.

The demon of fornication compels one to desire various bodies;

and it presses more violently upon those who practise continence, so that, thinking they accomplish nothing, they may give up;

and, defiling the soul, it bends it down toward those acts;

it makes the soul speak certain words and again hear them, as though the thing were actually seen and present.

Avarice suggests a long old age, inability of the hands for labour, famines to come and diseases to befall, the bitterness of poverty, and how shameful it is to receive from others the things needed for one's necessities.

Sadness (lype) sometimes arises through the deprivation of desires, and sometimes also accompanies anger.

Through the deprivation of desires it arises in this way:

certain thoughts, anticipating, lead the soul to the remembrance of home, parents, and one's former manner of life.

And when they see it not resisting but following along and dissolving in pleasures of the mind, then, seizing it, they plunge it into sadness, on the ground that those former things no longer exist and can no longer exist throughout this present life;

and the wretched soul, in proportion as it was dissolved over the former thoughts, is by so much contracted and humbled over the latter.

Anger is a most acute passion;

for it is said to be a boiling and movement of the irascible part against one who has done wrong or seems to have done wrong;

and it savages the soul all day long, but especially in prayers it carries off the mind, mirroring before it the face of the one who has grieved it.

And sometimes, when it lingers and changes into rancour (resentment), it causes disturbances at night, wasting and pallor of the body, and the onslaughts of venomous beasts.

These four things, occurring after rancour, one may find accompanying many thoughts.

The demon of listlessness (acedia), which is also called the noonday demon, is the heaviest of all the demons;

and it besets the monk about the fourth hour, and encircles his soul until the eighth hour.

And first it makes the sun appear sluggish or motionless, making the day seem fifty hours long.

Then it forces him to keep gazing toward the windows and to leap out of the cell, to stare at the sun to see how far it is from the ninth hour, and to peer here and there in case some brother [should come].

Moreover it casts hatred for the place, for the very mode of life, and for the work of the hands;

and [it suggests] that love has failed among the brothers and there is no one to console;

and if, during those days, someone happens to have grieved the monk, this too the demon adds to the increase of the hatred.

It leads him also to a longing for other places, where the necessities are easily found and where he may take up an easier and more profitable craft;

and it adds that to please the Lord is not a matter of place;

for everywhere, it says, the Divine is to be worshipped.

It joins to these the remembrance of one's own kin and of one's former manner of life;

and it depicts the long span of life, setting before his eyes the toils of asceticism;

and, as the saying goes, it sets in motion every device, so that the monk may abandon his cell and flee the arena.

Upon this demon no other demon immediately follows;

but a certain peaceful condition and unspeakable joy succeed in the soul after the struggle.

The thought of vainglory is a most subtle one, and it slips in upon those who do well, wishing to publish abroad their struggles and to hunt after the glory that comes from men; it conjures up demons crying out, little women being healed, and a crowd touching his garments;

it foretells to him a priesthood besides, and sets those seeking him at his doors;

and [it says] that if he be unwilling, he will be led away bound.

And thus, having lifted him up high with empty hopes, it flies off, leaving him either to the demon of pride to tempt him, or to that of sadness, which brings him thoughts contrary to those hopes;

and there are times when it hands over to the demon of fornication the one who, a little before, was a bound captive and a holy priest.

The demon of pride is the cause of the most grievous fall for the soul;

for it persuades the soul not to acknowledge God as helper, but to consider itself the cause of its good deeds, and to puff itself up against the brothers as senseless, because they do not all recognize this about it.

Following upon this come anger and sadness, and the final evil—derangement of mind, madness, and the sight of a multitude of demons in the air.

Against the eight thoughts. The wandering mind (nous) is steadied by reading, vigils, and prayer;

inflamed desire is quenched by hunger, toil, and withdrawal (solitude);

seething anger is stilled by psalmody, long-suffering, and mercy;

[these being applied] at the proper times and in due measure;

for things done without measure and out of season are short-lived;

and what is short-lived is harmful rather than beneficial.

Whenever our soul craves various foods, then let it be straitened with bread and water, that it may become thankful even over a bare morsel;

for satiety desires varied dishes, but hunger reckons satiety with bread to be blessedness.

The lack of water contributes greatly to chastity;

and let the three hundred Israelites with Gideon, who overcame Midian, persuade you of this.

As it is impossible for life and death to coexist in the same person, so it is impossible for love to coexist in anyone together with riches;

for love is destructive not only of riches but even of our own transitory life.

He who flees all worldly pleasures is a tower inaccessible to the demon of sadness;

for sadness is the deprivation of a pleasure, whether present or expected;

and it is impossible to repel this enemy while we have an attachment to anything earthly;

for there it sets its snare and works its sadness, where it sees us most inclined.

Anger and hatred increase the irascible part (thymos);

but almsgiving and gentleness diminish even that which is present.

Let not the sun go down upon our wrath, lest the demons, coming upon us by night, terrify the soul and make the mind more cowardly for the next day's warfare;

for fearful apparitions naturally arise out of the disturbance of the irascible part;

and nothing else so makes the mind a deserter as a disturbed irascible part.

Whenever the irascible part of our soul, fastening on some pretext, is thrown into turmoil, then the demons also suggest to us withdrawal (flight) as something good, so that, not resolving the causes of our sadness, we may not free ourselves from the disturbance.

But whenever the concupiscible part is heated up, then again they make us "lovers of men" (sociable), calling us hard and savage, so that, desiring bodies, we may keep company with bodies.

Rather, we ought to do the contrary.

Do not give yourself over to the thought of anger by fighting in your mind with the one who has grieved you;

nor again to that of fornication by imagining the pleasure at length;

for the one darkens the soul, and the other invites it to the burning of the passion;

and both make your mind defiled;

and, imagining these images at the time of prayer and not offering pure prayer to God, you straightway fall in with the demon of listlessness (acedia);

which especially leaps upon such conditions and, like a dog, snatches the soul as one snatches a fawn.

It is the nature of the irascible part (thymos) to fight against the demons and to struggle for any pleasure whatsoever.

Wherefore the angels, suggesting to us spiritual pleasure and the blessedness that comes from it, exhort us to turn the irascible part against the demons;

but the demons, in turn, dragging us toward worldly desires, force the irascible part, contrary to nature, to fight against men, so that the mind, being darkened and falling from knowledge, may become a traitor to the virtues.

Take heed to yourself, lest you ever drive away one of the brothers by provoking him, and so you will not escape, all your life, the demon of sadness, which will always be a stumbling-block to you at the time of prayer.

Gifts extinguish rancour (the remembrance of wrongs);

and let Jacob persuade you, who came up to Esau with gifts when he went out to meet him with four hundred men.

But we, being poor, let us fulfil the need by hospitality of the table.

Whenever we fall in with the demon of listlessness, then, dividing the soul with tears, let us make one part the comforter and the other the comforted, sowing good hopes in ourselves and chanting over ourselves the words of holy David:

"Why are you cast down, O my soul, and why do you trouble me? Hope in God, for I shall yet praise Him,

the salvation of my countenance and my God."

One ought not, at the time of temptations, to abandon the cell by fabricating seemingly reasonable pretexts, but to sit within and endure, and nobly to receive all who come, but especially the demon of listlessness, who, being the heaviest of all, renders the soul most tried and proven.

For to flee such struggles and to evade them teaches the mind to be unskilled, cowardly, and a runaway.

Our holy and most practical teacher used to say:

the monk ought always so to prepare himself as one about to die tomorrow, and again so to treat the body as one who will live with it for many years.

For the former, he said, cuts off the thoughts of listlessness and makes the monk more zealous;

while the latter keeps the body sound and always preserves its self-control in due measure.

It is difficult to escape the thought of vainglory;

for what you do to demolish it becomes for you the beginning of another vainglory.

Not against every right thought of ours do the demons set themselves in opposition, but against some these very vices oppose us, the vices according to which we have been formed (habituated).

I have known the demon of vainglory to be driven out by almost all the demons, and shamelessly to stand by at the falls of those who drove it out, and to display to the monk the greatness of his virtues.

He who has touched knowledge (gnosis) and reaps the pleasure that comes from it will no longer be persuaded by the demon of vainglory, even when it offers him all the pleasures of the world;

for what greater thing could it promise than spiritual contemplation? But as long as we are without taste of knowledge, let us eagerly work at the practical life, showing God our aim, that we do all things for the sake of the knowledge of Him.

Remember your former life and your ancient transgressions, and how, being subject to passion, by the mercy of Christ you passed over to dispassion, and how again you came out of the world that so often and so greatly humbled you.

Consider for me also this:

who it is that guards you in the desert, and who it is that drives away the demons gnashing their teeth against you.

For such thoughts produce humility and do not admit the demon of pride.

Concerning the passions. Those things whose memories we hold with passion, their realities also we first received with passion;

and again, whatever realities we receive with passion, of these too we shall have memories filled with passion.

Hence he who has conquered the demons that act upon him despises the things acted upon by them;

for the immaterial warfare is harder than the material.

The passions of the soul take their occasions from men;

those of the body, from the body;

and the passions of the body are cut off by continence, those of the soul by spiritual love.

Those who preside over the passions of the soul persist until death;

but those over the bodily passions retreat more quickly;

and the other demons resemble the rising or setting sun, fastening on some one part of the soul;

but the noonday demon is wont to encompass the whole soul and to choke the mind.

Therefore withdrawal (solitude) is sweet after the emptying out of the passions;

for then the memories are only bare;

and the wrestling no longer prepares the monk for struggle, but for the contemplation of it (of solitude).

Whether thought stirs the passions or the passions stir thought is a question to be considered;

for to some the former seemed true, to others the latter.

The passions are naturally set in motion by the senses;

and when love and continence are present, they will not be moved; but when these are absent, they will be moved;

and the irascible part needs more remedies than the concupiscible, and for this reason love is called great, because it is the bridle of the irascible part;

and this love that holy Moses symbolically named "the serpent-fighter" (ophiomachos) in his treatise on natural things.

At the prevailing foul stench among the demons, the soul is wont to be inflamed toward [evil] thoughts, when, as they draw near, it perceives them, being itself conformed to the passion of the one that troubles it.

Counsels. It is not possible at every season to fulfil the customary rule, but one must attend to the occasion and try to do, as far as possible, those commandments that the circumstances allow;

for the demons themselves are not ignorant of such occasions.

Hence, moving against us, they hinder what can be done and compel us to do what cannot be done;

for they hinder the sick from giving thanks in their pains and from being long-suffering toward those who serve them;

and again they urge those who are exhausted to practise continence, and those who are weighed down to stand and sing psalms.

Whenever we are constrained to spend a little time in cities or villages, then most of all let us hold to continence more strictly while mingling with worldly people, lest our mind, becoming coarse and deprived of its accustomed care because of the present occasion, do something unwished-for and become a fugitive, struck down by the demons.

Do not, when tempted, set yourself to pray before first speaking some words in anger against the one who afflicts you;

for, your soul being conformed to the thoughts, it comes about that your prayer is not even pure;

but if you speak something against them in anger, you confound and obliterate the conceptions of the adversaries.

For this is what anger naturally works, even upon better conceptions.

One must also recognize the differences among the demons and note their seasons;

and we shall know from the thoughts, and the thoughts from the deeds, which of the demons are rare and heavier, and which are frequent and lighter, and which are those that suddenly leap in and snatch the mind toward blasphemy.

These things it is necessary to know, so that when the thoughts begin to stir up their own materials, before we are cast far out of our proper state, we may say something against them and identify the one that is present;

thus we make progress, and make those [demons] marvel at us and fly off in anguish.

Whenever, in their struggle against the monks, the demons are unable [to prevail], then, withdrawing a little, they watch to see which of the virtues has in the meantime been neglected, and, suddenly attacking by way of that one, they plunder the wretched soul.

The wicked demons draw to their aid demons more wicked than themselves;

and though opposed to one another in their dispositions, they agree only for the destruction of the soul.

Let not the demon disturb us who snatches the mind toward blasphemy of God and toward those forbidden fantasies which I myself have not even dared to commit to writing; nor let it cut off our zeal;

for the Lord is the knower of hearts, and He knows that not even when we were in the world did we ever rage with such madness.

The aim of this demon is to make us cease from prayer, so that we may not stand before the Lord our God, nor dare to stretch out our hands against Him concerning whom we have entertained such thoughts.

Of the sufferings in the soul there comes a sign, either some word that is uttered or some movement of the body that occurs, by which the enemies perceive whether we still hold their thoughts within and are in travail over them, or whether, having cast them off, we are concerned about our salvation.

For God alone, who made us, knows the mind, and He needs no signs in order to know the things hidden in the heart.

Against worldly people the demons wrestle rather by means of things (deeds); but against the monks, for the most part, by means of thoughts;

for because of the desert they are deprived of things.

And as much easier as it is to sin in thought than in deed, by so much harder also is the warfare in thought than that which is mounted by means of things;

for the mind is a thing easily moved and hard to restrain from lawless fantasies.

We are not commanded to work continually, to keep vigil, and to fast; but to pray without ceasing has been laid down for us as law;

because those former things, which heal the passible part of the soul, also require our body for their accomplishment, and the body, through its own weakness, is not sufficient for the toils;

but prayer makes the mind vigorous and pure for the struggle, the mind being by nature able to pray even apart from this body and to fight against the demons on behalf of all the powers of the soul.

If any of the monks wishes to make trial of the savage demons and to gain experience of their craft, let him observe the thoughts, and note their intensifications and their relaxations, their interweavings, and their times; and which of the demons do this, and which demon follows which, and which does not follow which;

and let him seek from Christ the explanations (logoi) of these things.

For [the demons] are greatly enraged at those who pursue the practical life more gnostically (with deeper understanding), wishing to shoot down in the darkness those who are upright in heart.

Observing closely, you will find two of the demons to be the swiftest, all but outrunning the movement of our mind:

the demon of fornication, and the one that snatches us toward blasphemy of God;

but the second is short-lived, while the first, if it does not stir the thoughts with passion, will not hinder us with respect to the knowledge of God.

To separate body from soul belongs only to Him who bound them together;

but to separate soul from body belongs also to him who longs for virtue.

For our Fathers call withdrawal (anachoresis) a meditation on death and a flight from the body.

Those who badly nourish the flesh and make provision for it unto desires, let them blame themselves and not the flesh;

for they know the grace of the Creator who have acquired the dispassion of the soul through this very body and have to some degree applied themselves to the contemplation of beings.

Concerning what happens in sleep. Whenever, in the fantasies of sleep, the demons make war upon the concupiscible part—they themselves displaying, and we running toward, meetings with acquaintances, banquets of kinsfolk, choirs of women, and whatever else is productive of pleasures—then we are sick in this part, and the passion prevails.

But whenever again they throw the irascible part into confusion, forcing us to travel precipitous roads, bringing on armed men and venomous, flesh-eating beasts—and we are terrified at the roads, and flee, pursued by the beasts and the men—then let us take thought for the irascible part, and, calling upon Christ in our vigils, let us use the aforesaid remedies.

The natural movements of the body in sleep that are without images indicate that the soul is to some extent healthy;

but the congealing (fixing) of images is a token of sickness;

and regard the indefinite faces as a symbol of an old passion, but the defined ones as a symbol of a wound received just now.

The tokens of dispassion (apatheia) we shall come to recognize by day through the thoughts, and by night through the dreams;

and we shall say that dispassion is the health of the soul, and that knowledge is its food, which alone is wont to join us to the holy powers;

since the conjunction with incorporeal beings naturally comes about from a like disposition.

Concerning the condition that approaches dispassion. There are two peaceful conditions of the soul: one that is yielded up from the natural seeds, and another that comes about from the withdrawal of the demons;

and the former is followed by humility together with compunction, and tears, and boundless longing toward the Divine, and immeasurable zeal for the work;

but the latter [is followed] by vainglory together with pride, which, by the destruction (driving off) of the remaining demons, drags the monk down.

He, therefore, who keeps the boundaries of the former condition will more keenly recognize the onslaughts of the demons.

The demon of vainglory is opposed to the demon of fornication, and it is among things impossible for these two to assault the soul at the same time;

since the one promises honours, while the other is the cause of dishonour.

Whichever of these two, then, draws near and presses upon you, fashion within yourself, as it were, the thoughts of the opposing demon;

and if you are able, as the saying goes, to knock out one nail with another nail, know that you are near the boundaries of dispassion;

for your mind has been strong enough to make demonic thoughts vanish by human thoughts.

But to repel the thought of vainglory through humility, or that of fornication through chastity, would be a token of the deepest dispassion.

And try to do this in the case of all the demons that are opposed to one another;

for at the same time you will also come to know by which passion you have more been formed.

Nevertheless, with all your power, ask of God to ward off the enemies by the second way.

The more the soul advances, the greater are the adversaries that succeed in confronting it;

for I am not persuaded that the same demons always remain with it;

and this those especially know who apply themselves more keenly to the temptations, and who see the dispassion that is present in them being pried loose by those that succeed [the earlier demons].

Perfect dispassion comes to be in the soul after the victory over all the demons that oppose the practical life;

but imperfect dispassion is so called with respect, for the time being, to the power of the demon that is still wrestling with it.

The mind will not go forth, nor make that good journey abroad, nor come to be in the country of the incorporeal beings, unless it has first set right the things within;

for the turmoil of the things at home is wont to turn it back toward the things from which it had gone out.