The average Christian who accepts or rejects purgatory usually views it as a demi-hell set up by divine justice between heaven and hell to punish those who have died without having made sufficient reparation for their sins. This article contends, however, that the purgatorial stage of the consciousness of the mystics, caused by their intense experience of the incompatibility of sin and divine Love, is a paradigm of postmortem purgatory and is confirmed by recent theological writing.