Hermitage Note: The Evil Eight

The Philokalia is full of insightful thoughts and guidance. Stumbling onto it was one of those happenings that I refer to as a providential accident. I think most of my greatest discoveries in life have been providential accidents … stumbling and bumbling along on my part while being directed by the unseen hand of God.

Some of the “sayings” in the Philokalia are a bit difficult to understand. Others are plain and easily understood, even to our Western minds, if we simply choose to audire or listen with the ear of the heart as Saint Benedict encourages us to do. I think, if we are going to get anywhere in, with, and for God in these terribly deceptive politically polarized times, listening with the ear of the heart [as Benedict tell us in verse one of the Prologue to the Rule] is imperative. Otherwise, without observing this very first imperative in progressing spiritually, we will ever be tossed about by the contrary winds and waves generated by emotionalism and our own carnal wills. Without observing we are blinded by our own emotional preferences. Without observing we never become doers of what we have heard. Without observing there is no real conversatio morum or conversion of life.

I think we are living in a time of great separation. It really is something of a sheep and goats thing that is going on. Our own actions … what we personally allow or disallow in our lives … what we give our affections to … are, like it or not, branding us. 666? We choose whose brand we wear. We choose how we will live our mortal lives. We choose where our souls will abide eternally in their immortality. Will it be heaven? Will it be hell?

I have experienced enough hell. I have experienced enough of it already both here on earth and, as I heard it called recently by a dear brother and Father in the Eastern church, the hell of my own heart. I choose heaven.

I realize, in choosing heaven, that the way to heaven [or the way to live in order to get to heaven] is plainly marked by the lives of those who have already gone on to their eternal reward. It is to these that I primarily look for models of the faith, and especially to those earlier models who lived the Christian faith to the fullest in times where dire persecution was more the norm than the exception.

The teachings of the elders, preserved in the Philokalia, instruct us:

“Let us hold fast, therefore, to prayer and humility, for together with watchfulness they act like a burning sword against the demons. If we do this, we shall daily and hourly be able to celebrate a secret festival of joy within our hearts.”

“Every evil thought is subsumed in the eight principle evil thoughts and all take their origin from the eight, much as every accursed demon-god of the Greeks derives from Hera and Zeus according to their myths. These eight approach the heart’s entrance and, if they find the intellect unguarded, one by one they enter, each in its own time. Whichever of the eight enters the heart introduces a swarm of other evil thoughts as well; and having thus darkened the intellect, it stimulates the body and provokes it to sinful actions.”

In AD 375, Evagrius developed a comprehensive list of eight evil “thoughts”, or eight terrible temptations, from which all sinful behavior springs. This list was intended to serve a diagnostic purpose: to help people identify the process of temptation, their own strengths and weaknesses, and the remedies available for overcoming temptation.

This basic list [The Evil Eight] appears again and again in his writings and, in one way or another, throughout the entire course of Christian history where followers of Christ take seriously their need for deeper spiritual development.

The evil eight are: gluttony, lust or fornication, avarice or love of money, dejection or sadness, anger, despondency or listlessness, vainglory, and pride … an evil eight that have always been around and are now, seemingly unbridled and unchecked, riding roughshod over the world today.

Saint John Cassian [AD 360 - 435] calls these the Eight Principle Faults and prescribes their remedies in his Institutes. John Cassian was a Christian monk and theologian who is celebrated in both the Western and Eastern churches for his mystical writings. Cassian is also noted for his role in bringing the ideas and practices of Christian monasticism to the early medieval West. Note, too, that Cassian was practicing monasticism in the West before Saint Benedict came onto the scene. Hence, we find Benedict referencing and recommending Cassian to his monks in Chapter 73 the Holy Rule.

I read Cassian early on in my life as an Oblate of Saint Benedict. Though he did make something of an impression on me, I cannot say that I was honestly prepared to hear him then. Nor can I honestly say that I want to hear what he says now. I do, however, feel prodded to revisit Cassian as part of my own spiritual course in 2021.