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The man who mistook his wife for a hatOne such vision, illustrated by a figure of stars falling and being quenched in the ocean (Figure B), signifies for her 'The Fall of the Angels': I saw a great star most splendid and beautiful, and with it an exceeding multitude of falling stars which with the star followed southwards . . . And suddenly they were all annihilated, being turned into black coals . . . and cast into the abyss so that I could see them no more. Such is Hildegard's allegorical interpretation. Our literal interpretation would be that she experienced a shower of phosphenes in transit across the visual field, their passage being succeeded by a negative scotoma. Visions with fortification-figures are represented in her Zelus Dei (Figure C) and Sedens Lucidus (Figure D), the fortifications radiating from a brilliantly luminous and (in the original) shimmering and coloured point. These two visions are combined in a composite vision (first picture), and in this she interprets the fortifications as the aedificium of the city of God. Great rapturous intensity invests the experience of these auras, especially on the rare occasions when a second scotoma follows in the wake of the original scintillation: The light which I see is not located, but yet is more brilliant than the sun, nor can I examine its height, length or breadth, and I name it 'the cloud of the living light' ...» |
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