Observations placeholder
Bingen, Hildegard of - Helped by monks
Identifier
000151
Type of Spiritual Experience
Background
If the communication is in words and sentences it is a bodied or disembodied soul. If the communication is symbolic, or uses words as puns, or is simply a ‘thought’ without words – an impression conveyed, communication is with a Spirit being , Spirit helper or Intelligence.
Hildegard received a lot of words, a lot.
Most of her communication does not look like the ramblings of a disembodied soul but a bodied soul, so the monk is a real possibility. It is thus possible that the communications she received in words were from this man, her earthly helper.
A description of the experience
Hildegard of Bingen from The Vita
As best I could, I concealed the vision I saw in my soul. I was ignorant of much in the outer world, because of the frequent illness that I suffered, from the time of my mother’s milk right up to now; it wore my body out and made my powers fail. Exhausted by all this, I asked a nurse of mine if she saw anything save external objects. ‘Nothing’ she answered, for she saw none of those others. Then seized with great fear, I did not dare reveal it to anyone……
But if the force of the vision – in which I made an exhibition of myself more childish than befitted my age – subsided a little, I blushed profusely and often wept, and many times I should gladly have kept silent, had I been allowed. And still, because of the fear I had of other people, I did not tell anyone how I saw. But a certain high-born woman, to whom I had been entrusted for education, noted this and disclosed it to a monk whom she knew……