The figure is used to describe the whole course of the mystical life – the soul’s progress from the First Mansions to the Seventh and its transformation from an imperfect and sinful creature into the Bride of the Spiritual Marriage.
These mansions are not “arranged in a row one behind another” but variously – “some above, others below, others at each side and in the centre and midst of them all is the chiefest mansion, where the most secret things pass between God and the soul.” I began to think of the soul as if it were a castle made of a single diamond or of very clear crystal, in which there are many rooms, just as in Heaven there are many mansions. After a brief preface, the author comes at once to her subject: Its conception, like that of so many works of genius, is extremely simple. “In its language and style, the Interior Castle is more correct, and yet at the same time more natural and flexible, than the Way of Perfection.
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