Christian mysticism  

"It has been said that "Mysticism finds in Plato all its texts," and certainly most of Christian mysticism may be traced back to the Neo-Platonists. From their time to our own we find this tendency towards a theologia mystica appearing in one form or another, -whether it be in the secret traditions of the Jewish Cabala-in the preaching of Eckhart in the fourteenth century-in the revival of Neo-Platonism at Florence in the days of Cosmo de Medici-in the science of sympathies taught by Agrippa and Paracelsus - in Jacob Behmen's celestial visions-or in Saint Teresa's "four degrees" of prayer necessary to reach a perfect "quietism."--Plato (1874) by Clifton Wilbraham Collins