That man is just who is informed with and transformed into justice.
Meister Eckhart, Sermon Fifty-Nine (Pf 59, Q 39, QT 25)
I to myself would live,
To enjoy the blessings that to Heaven I owe,
Alone, contemplative,
And freely love forgo,
Nor hope, fear, hatred, jealousy e’er know.Fray Luis de León, The Life Removed
To be a philosopher is not merely to have subtle thoughts, nor even to found a school, but so to love wisdom as to live according to its dictates, a life of simplicity, independence, magnanimity, and trust. It is to solve some of the problems of life, not only theoretically, but practically.
Henry David Thoreau, Walden
Simón Royo Hernández || Mysticism is tantamount to atheism because it asserts that all of Nature is sacred and divine, in the Spinozist sense; this is tantamount to saying, therefore, that every Church is false and that every Pope and transcendent God is a lie; and for that reason, mysticism is the only form of spirituality compatible with anarchist materialism.
Within the diversity of revolutionary and emancipatory paths, there are two forms of libertarian communism and two paths of anarchist revolution defined by their character: the intense and the moderate, that of hubris (excess) and that of sophrosyne (moderation) – two paths leading to the same destination. These are two paths that also entail two conceptions of mysticism, yet two paths that are a single path, latent within a single life—that of the plurality dwelling within the anarchic subject. Hence Simone Weil was mistaken in refusing to join the “Democratic Communist Circle”[1] because of the presence within it of George Bataille:
“For him (Bataille), revolution is the triumph of the irrational; for me, it is methodical action in which each person strives to limit the damage; for him, it is the liberation of instincts, particularly those generally regarded as pathological; for me, it is the supremacy of morality. What do we have in common? (…) How can we coexist within the same revolutionary organisation (…) when we understand revolution to mean two different things?”[2]
We would argue that Simone Weil was mistaken in her refusal to join that group, since both the rational and the irrational—what Nietzsche termed the Apollonian and the Dionysian—are both integral parts of the democratic communist revolution and are both present in the libertarian world.
Within the landscape of so-called irrationalism, if any form of spirituality were to be found in anarchism, it would be mysticism: the intimate, intense or expansive feeling that we are part of a sacred whole, of an environment that can be none other than the Earth as a whole, reached not only through reason, but also through intuition and feeling.
We see that mysticism is present in all religions, which have very often regarded it as heretical and persecuted and burned its adherents. We can also see that all religions have had a connection to anarchism, the point of contact being mysticism.[3]
The link between anarchism and mysticism can be traced within contemporary thought among authors such as Reiner Schürmann[4] and Simon Critchley,[5] rather than seeking it out, disoriented, among the esoteric and the eccentric, or in those who tend to ramble on with their New Age prescriptions, individualistic movements closer to the selfish neoliberalism of triumphant capitalism than to anything else.
Anarchic mysticism is communal, community-based, collective; it breaks with the principle of individuation and is founded on a certain simplicity and detachment from the material things so highly valued by capitalism: “There are many who cannot understand this, and this does not surprise me, for he who would understand this must be very detached and raised above all things.”[6] To understand poverty, one must be poor. To understand detachment, one must let go.
Letting go of our attachment to exchange value restores the use value of things; detaching ourselves from capitalism brings us closer to the simplicity of a life more deeply immersed in and in touch with Nature, from which we have strayed so far and which has been so mistreated and exploited.
From these latter thinkers, whose writings are highly challenging to read, we can extract—in language more accessible to those uninitiated in philosophy—the connections between contemporary anarchic ontology and secular mysticism, and the connections between aleatory materialism and the spirituality of the righteous, thereby shedding light on the links between mysticism and anarchism.
It was Reiner Schürmann who chose the mystic Meister Eckhart to illustrate the links between mysticism and anarchy, and who set us on the path of anarchic ontology; he is therefore one of the most trusted figures to guide us, initially, in articulating and strengthening this movement and establishing that connection.
Another thinker close to libertarian communism, Gianni Vattimo, also chose the mystic Joachim of Fiore to illustrate his proposal of “weak thought”—the aim of undermining dogmatic or “strong”, hierarchical and absolutist thought, such as that proclaimed by monotheistic churches, be they Christian, Jewish or Muslim, or by despotic governments of all stripes. The theological-political precedes the political and has shaped it for centuries throughout a Modernity running parallel to the triumph of capitalism and the deterioration of the planet.
In the case of another thinker, Toni Negri—who is close to anarchism for having developed a non-authoritarian form of Marxism—he chose Saint Francis of Assisi to illustrate his philosophical and political proposal, which he links to a “materialist spirituality” that finds “divinity” in the productive creativity of the multitude and in the effort to persevere in the very being of that free and autonomous multitude.
In Negri’s thought, mysticism does not refer to traditional religious spirituality but to a form of materialist and immanent mysticism, deeply linked to his interpretation of Baruch Spinoza. It consists of the self-organisation and productive power of the multitude, which forms a kind of secularised “mystical body” that seeks to transform reality and possesses clear political potential.
Critiques of the dogmas, churches and religious doctrines of Modernity—those of Feuerbach, Nietzsche, Marx and Freud, alongside those of Bakunin—may well come together to form an atheistic corpus proclaiming the non-existence of the transcendent God of all monotheistic religions. This critique, which is summed up in the death of God, makes it possible to absorb into its ranks all the mystics of these religions—considered heretics and atheists, such as Spinoza—by making room to articulate what a multitude of anthropological cultures had already expressed: that the Earth is sacred and that, therefore, everything can be regarded as sacred and divine.
In Landauer, mysticism is linked to utopia, not as in religions that promise paradise after death, but as the place (topia) where the libertarian revolutionary who wishes to change things is found, here and now:
“Utopia is a combination of ambitions that will never reach their goals; they will always create but a new topia. Revolution is the period of transition that lies between the old topia and the new topia.”[7]
By preferring a mystical anarchism characterised by animistic and random materialism over a corporealist one, as Bakunin did,[8] thereby denying all transcendence, and by promoting equality among beings and the priority of space over time, as in Reclus and Kropotkin, we find three things that anarchism has in common with ecological Amerindian cultures: animism, immanentism and the earthly realm as the sole habitat, as Viveiros de Castro has pointed out:
“By placing human beings (the Yanomami) on an equal footing with spirits, animals, trees, rain and the sky—all of which are conceived as “animated”, that is, capable of intentional action (and reaction)—as constituent elements of the ecosystem, this approach expresses a fundamental position within the cosmologies of Amazonian societies and many other pre-modern peoples. Indigenous peoples “respond” to Western (Christian or modern) anthropocentrism with what I have called, not without a certain degree of criticism, anthropomorphism, that is, the virtual inclusion of everything that exists within the category of humanity. In indigenous cosmologies, we often find the assertion that various non-human species “are human” or “are people” (that is, they were human in mythical times, or remain human beneath their animal “garb”, or have humanoid master spirits, etc.), in the sense that they possess many, if not all, of the capacities we consider distinctive to humans. What troubles us about this idea is that Indigenous peoples do not recognise these attributes as exclusively human. (…). It is increasingly necessary to carry out an agrarian reform of philosophy, a refocusing on spatiality as the terrain of the struggle for the meaning of the Earth.”[9]
Libertarian ecology thus aligns itself with a “materialist spirituality”– if one may use that oxymoron – which regards the Earth as our home, our place to live, a space that belongs to everyone and to no one, and to which we are grateful for its bounty, which also belongs to everyone and to no one. It calls us to an ethic that promotes communal action as that which acts with the Earth by making use of its resources without destroying or exploiting them, seeking to be in harmony with it and, so to speak, voluntarily allied with it.
It is about being united and connected freely and equally, not only amongst human beings and their free and equal communities, but also in fellowship with Nature as a whole, with the Earth regarded as sacred and inviolable, with animals and with the other beings that inhabit it. Libertarian ecology thus presents itself as a discipline for the preservation of the sacred and as a harmonious connection with that which shelters us.
Turning to the now-classic thinkers of anarchism, we can see that Élisée Reclus and Henri David Thoreau had already recognised the need for harmony between free and equal human beings and Nature, and glimpse how they strove to demonstrate that anarchism is also, and always has been, an ecology. In their work, their particular form of mysticism was a marked naturalistic and animistic pantheism, as both viewed Nature not as an exploitable resource, but as a living and sacred organism with which human beings must harmonise.
“I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived. I did not wish to live what was not life, living is so dear; nor did I wish to practise resignation, unless it was quite necessary. I wanted to live deep and suck out all the marrow of life, to live so sturdily and Spartan-like as to put to rout all that was not life, to cut a broad swath and shave close, to drive life into a corner, and reduce it to its lowest terms, and, if it proved to be mean, why then to get the whole and genuine meanness of it, and publish its meanness to the world; or if it were sublime, to know it by experience, and be able to give a true account of it in my next excursion.”[10]
An existential form of anarchism and an ecological vitalism provide the framework for the life and work of the man who advocated civil disobedience as a means of confronting the injustices of the dominant system of his time.
Reclus conceived of human societies as “geological agents” that transform the environment, anticipating by more than a century current concepts such as the Anthropocene and the rejection of progress as a conception of time. Successive industrial revolutions have ravaged the planet rather than beautifying it; different cultures either destroy or harmoniously transform the terrestrial environment in which they live.
“Human activity, so powerful in draining marshes and lakes, in removing barriers between countries, and in altering the original distribution of plant and animal species, is therefore of decisive importance in the transformations undergone by the Earth’s surface. It can beautify the Earth, but it can also disfigure it; depending on the social conditions and customs of each people, it contributes at times to the degradation of nature and at other times to its transfiguration.”[11]
Just as in Gustave Landauer’s anarcho-socialism, which drew inspiration from Kropotkin, Reclus and Thoreau fused libertarian thought with a certain communal and spiritual mysticism rooted in ecology, acknowledging that human liberation could also be grounded in a sense of spiritual union with the earth, without the need for religious intermediaries; a form of reconnection that unites us with the earth in an immanent way, thus focusing on an inner experience—both direct and shared—, an experience centred on finding the sacred here on earth.
It must therefore be said that within anarchism there also exists a form of spirituality, a certain mysticism understood as anarchic ecology, as respect for and communion with the earthly sacred, but to express it in the way we have done forms part of a philosophical proposal we have been calling “anarchic ontology”; it is part of a philosophy that articulates the contributions of classical anarchism with developments in contemporary anarchist thought, thereby demonstrating that we are in the process of constructing and deconstructing a solid theoretical foundation for political anarchism today.
[1] “Democratic Communist Circle”, Wikipedia.
[2] Simone Pétrement, La vie de Simone Weil – 1909-1934, Fayard, 1978, p. 422.
[3] Leo Tolstoy is a notable example in relation to Christianity [see: The Anarchist Library]; Abdenur Prado El islam como anarquismo místico. Virus Editorial, Madrid 2025; Michael Löwy, Redemption and Utopia:Jewish Libertarian Thought in Central Europe, Verso Books, 1992.
[4] Reiner Schürmann, Francesco Guercio (ed.), Ian Alexander Moore (ed.), Ways of Releasement: Writings on God, Eckhart, and Zen, Diaphanes, 2024; Reiner Schürmann Wandering joy: Meister Eckhart’s, mystical philosophy, Lindisfarne Books, 1997.
[5] Simon Critchley, On Mysticism: The Experience of Ecstasy, Profile Books, 2025.
[6] Meister Eckhart, “Sermon Eighteen” (Q 30, Pf 66), The Complete Mystical Works of Meister Eckhart, The Crossroad Publishing Company, 2009, p. 136.
[7] Gustav Landauer, “Revolution”, in Revolution and Other Writings: A Political Reader, PM Press, 2010, p. 113.
[8] Simón Royo Hernández, “Pensar el materialismo anárquico”, Redes Libertarias, 13/05/2025.
[9] Eduardo Viveiros de Castro, “Devenir angélico o humanidad perspectiva: la antropología cristiana puesta a prueba por las cosmologías animistas”, Artillería inmanente, 24/09/2024; Simón Royo Hernández, “Ontología anárquica y anarquismo político: la igualdad entre los seres”, Redes Libertarias, 27/11/2025; Landauer also owes a great deal to Nietzsche. See: Simón Royo Hernández, “Friedrich Nietzsche: El sentido de la tierra tras la muerte de Dios”, 2003, www.academia.edu.
[10] Henry David Thoreau, Walden, 1854.
[11] Élisée Reclus La Tierra. Tomo II, p. 748. Cited in: introducción de Beatriz Giblin titulada Una sensibilidad ecológica, in: Élisée Reclus El Hombre y La Tierra. México. FCE., 1986, p. 6.
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