Beyond Greed; Female Mystics

Matthew aFox and The Creation Spirituality Team

Week of 11/17-22/2025:
Beyond Greed — Aeesha Clottey & Inspiring Female Mystics

November 17, 2025: Aquinas and Korten on Limiting Institutionalized Greed (MF)

Greed is rampant right now. In the past 42 years, 800 people have joined the ranks of billionaires, and soon we will have our first ever trillionaire. Our society is so rigged in favor of the super-rich. They have the power and often make the laws.

Meanwhile, the big, bad budget bill gutted healthcare and food assistance for the masses. David Korten compares our current economic system of unlimited growth to a cancer. “Our economic philosophy based on constant growth is a kind of cancer that seems to parallel the rise of bodily cancer in our time…. Both are killers.”

Meanwhile, perhaps the best way to counteract the institutionalized greed of today’s America is by demanding the overturn of Supreme Court’s Citizens United decision (2010).
From PLUTOCRACY to DEEP DEMOCRACY – David Korten

David Korten speaks on moving “From Plutocracy to Deep Democracy.” Video by eon3.

November 18, 2025: Aeesha Clottey: A Friend, Co-Worker, Champion for Love & Justice (MF)

Many beautiful souls have passed on this past year, and Aeesha Clottey is another. She was the youngest in an African American family of 12 children who grew up in Louisiana during the pre-Civil Rights era of deep segregation. All 12 went to college!

Aeesha was on the board of the University of Creation Spirituality and was a fierce champion of our Cosmic Mass and supporter of our YELLAWE program for inner city teenagers. Aeesha and her husband Kokomon wrote two books together: Color Theory: Race is a Powerful Illusion and Eternal Quest for Happiness. They also directed healing programs, including: Mindful Drumming Circles, Racial Healing Circles, The Good Neighbor Project, and Unleashing the Human Spirit Retreats. Aeesha was always thinking about ways to serve the younger generation.

Kokomon and Aeesha Clottey, from Matthew Fox’s photo archive.

November 19, 2025: More on The Holy Life Journey of Aeesha Clottey (MF)

Matthew was among about six people invited to speak at Aeesha’s Celebration of Life Ceremony. This included some of her surviving siblings as well as Dr. Dianne Cirincione Jampolsky, director of the International Attitudinal Healing Center, who knew Aeesha very well. Dianne spoke of the global impact of Aeesha and Kokomon’s work by way of the Attitudinal Healing Connection’s international outreach. She named at least 15 countries where Aeesha’s work is now known, including China, Vietnam, Mexico, Japan, Italy, and beyond. But they were also a “power couple” for good and healing closer to home, in Oakland. Aeesha’s big, radiant smile uplifted everyone who saw it, and came from a deep place of Joy and Purpose that energized her life.

November 20, 2025: November: Sadness and Its Remedies (GG)

Along with all the beauty that November brings—the cool, crisp days, the colorful foliage, the crackling fires—there is also, for some of us, the despair that accompanies Seasonal Affective Disorder, or SAD.

Hildegard of Bingen knew about the imbalances that can arise with November. When the soul of the person feels something harmful to herself or her body, her heart, liver and blood vessels contract.

Consequently, the harm rises like a cloud that overshadows the heart, and the person becomes sad. For the onset of the cold season, Hildegard suggests a diet with warm food, such as soups. She also suggests eating chestnuts and drinking fennel tea, accompanied with the right kind of spices—those which dry the organs of the body, rather than producing an excessive amount of fluids.

November 21, 2025: Living in Hell, Purgatory, or Heaven (GG)

Gianluigi wants us to know that in yesterday’s DM, he did not intend in the least to trivialize mental pain, or to suggest that SAD can simply be cured through diet. Instead he wants to show how our mental and physical health are inextricably linked.

To talk about spiritual health, let’s refer to Mechthild of Magdeburg. One of the chapters of her book* is titled: How our home is now in Heaven, now in Purgatory, now in Hell.

Being in purgatory happens when we make mistakes and we can regain the status that we lost by means of purgation or cleansing.

Being in hell usually means there is no hope. Yet Mechthild explicitly says that God’s compassion follows sinners there, so that they are there today, but perhaps tomorrow in the company of angels.

But what is especially interesting is that Mechthild claims that we are already living in these three states, here in this life, and we move from one to another.

The most important sentence in the entire chapter is this: Thus our home may be in or out of heaven, in purgatory or in unblessed hell, with whichever place we voluntarily associate ourselves. It seems Mechthild’s whole message is focused on the possibility of living a blessed life not just in the afterlife, but here in this very body of ours.

Dante Alighieri holds his epic poem, the Divine Comedy, pointing with his right hand to a procession of sinners to Hell. Behind him is Purgatory, and to his left the city of Florence. Above are indicated the circles of Heaven. Painting by Domenico di Michelino, 1465. Wikimedia Commons.

November 22, 2025: Nothing Can Prevent a Woman from Loving (GG)

While Mechthild of Magdeburg might well have influenced Dante concerning the imaginary shape of Purgatory (see DM Nov. 21), another woman is remembered as the greatest “expert” of Purgatory itself. Her name is Catherine of Genoa (1447-1510).

Catherine came from wealth and was married to a nobleman, but riches didn’t ease her troubled mind. One day, she saw blood covering all four walls of her bedroom. She probably thought she was going mad. She locked herself in for days. When she emerged, she was a calm, balanced, and secure person.

She had decided that the blood on her walls was that of Jesus, washing her clean from all her sins. She promptly left both palace and husband in order to devote the rest of her life to serving the sick and the poor, performing even the most humble services.

* Mechthild of Magdeburg, The Flowing Light of the Godhead, translated by Lucy Menzies (Martino Publishing, Mansfield Center, CT, 2012)

Banner image: Another remedy for Seasonal Affective Disorder (aka SAD) is to hang mini-lights inside your house, and don’t take them down after Christmas. Keep them up all year round, turning them on whenever a siege of the SADs begins. A big picture window that reflects them, will magnify the effect. Photo by media team member Rosanna Tufts; used with permission.

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Related Reading by Matthew Fox

Christian Mystics: 365 Readings & Meditations.

Hildegard of Bingen, A Saint for Our Times: Unleashing Her Power in the 21st Century.

Original Blessing: A Primer in Creation Spirituality.

Sins of the Spirit, Blessings of the Flesh: Transforming Evil in Soul and Society.