October 04, 2026

Let The Silkworm Die

Let the silkworm die, as indeed it must, once it has done the work it was created to do.

Teresa wrote The Interior Castle in 1577, in the middle of the bitter conflict within the Carmelite order that had already landed her friend John of the Cross in prison and threatened to undo the reform she had spent her life building. In the Fifth Mansions she turns to the image of a silkworm that spins its own cocoon and then must die inside it before anything new can emerge. She was writing for women who had left their families, buried their sisters, and watched cherished plans fall apart, women who already knew what it meant to lose something dear. For Teresa, grief was not the enemy of a fruitful life but its hinge: something had to end quietly before something else could live.