Observations placeholder
Bingen, Hildegard of - Walls of flame
Identifier
000153
Type of Spiritual Experience
Background
The last line is her interpretation, the first part however is pure vision. If you compare this vision with the diagram which comes from Robert Fludd’s Utriusque Cosmi, Maioris scilicet et Minoris, metaphysica, physica, atque technica Historia, we can see an almost identical vision
A description of the experience
Hildegard of Bingen from The Vita
And I, a person not glowing with the strength of strong lions or taught by their inspiration, but a tender and fragile rib imbued with a mystical breath, saw a blazing fire, incomprehensible, inextinguishable, wholly living and wholly Life with a flame in it the colour of the sky, which burned ardently with a gentle breath and which was as inseparably within the blazing fire as the viscera are within a human being. And I saw that the flame sparked and blazed up. And behold! The atmosphere suddenly rose up in a dark sphere of great magnitude and that flame hovered over it and gave it one blow after another which struck sparks from it until the atmosphere was perfected and so heaven and earth stood fully formed and resplendent