Out Towards the Inward

A »story of the invisible world on single pages« – poet and theologian Christian Lehnert has nothing less in mind for this book. The starting point for his thoughts are nature spirits and lower deities, dualistic notions of angels and demons, the formation of divine hierarchies, border crossings between this world and the other side with mysterious intellectual contraband in tow.

Gnosis, kabbalah and visions feature just as modern psychological techniques. From the so-called ›factual‹ side of reality, however, appear analogies of seeing apparitions in philosophical thought and in the natural sciences. The underlying question is: How can the numinous become a progressive power today, in a post-secular world, which subverts and liquefies the predominant, seemingly firmly joined worldviews? Lehnert follows the small fractures in the solid stratums of religious or scientific, liberal or secular worldviews, searching for those fractures through which doubt enters, where the forgotten axioms of ›precision‹ and the brittleness of their opinions shine.

How does one depict such things? Conceptual thinking, poetic image and narration, autobiographical elements and speculation oscillate into one another in the individual texts, illuminating each other. A flexible form of writing sets in: seeking speech that feels its way into the ineffable. That way, fragments of a confession gather – always from the starting and reference point of the own life made of and without fictions – as »pages« in very different pitches. As a whole, they maintain the form of a question.

»[The book] promises great gain for all those who don‘t want to content themselves with the antiquated obsolescence as which religion is often presented to us.« Birthe Mühlhoff, Süddeutsche Zeitung

»both spiritually and intellectually stimulating« Michael Wolf, Der Tagesspiegel