From the book
Centuries of Meditations
Thomas Traherne · Diotimos Editions · 2026
Browse this book’s lexicon →Orientation
At a Glance
- The wordThe Holy Spirit is the third person of the Trinity, named also Holy Ghost and Comforter.
- In TraherneThe prayer following the meditation on the cross asks for a personal participation in the life displayed at Pentecost: breath, fire, light, and praise gather the Spirit’s effects.
- In this edition“Holy Ghost” is an older English name for Holy Spirit; it does not mean an apparition.
- A place to beginPentecostal wind and fiery tongues frame a prayer for illumination and awakened powers.
Meaning
The Holy Spirit is the third person of the Trinity, named also Holy Ghost and Comforter. The meditations emphasise indwelling, illumination, purification, and the enabling of an active likeness to God.
Use in the book
The prayer following the meditation on the cross asks for a personal participation in the life displayed at Pentecost: breath, fire, light, and praise gather the Spirit’s effects. The difference between capacity and act is crucial. Creation gives powers of knowing and loving; the Holy Ghost makes sonship actual through their righteous exercise. This inward work is not merely private. To be filled with the Spirit is to live in Christ’s love toward every person, treating each through the relation Christ has established. The larger theological account places this indwelling within the Spirit’s eternal procession and the historical life of the Church.
Places to read
- I.95Pentecostal wind and fiery tongues frame a prayer for illumination and awakened powers.
- I.99The Holy Ghost brings sonship from capacity into act.
- II.45Divine love in the soul is described through the Spirit’s purifying and strengthening presence.
- IV.28Being filled with the Spirit entails loving and treating each person in relation to Christ.
- III.100The Spirit’s eternal procession and historical outpouring belong to communion with God.
In this edition
“Holy Ghost” is an older English name for Holy Spirit; it does not mean an apparition. Do not confuse a capitalised personal title with every generic use of “spirit” for a human faculty or disposition.