Observations placeholder
Loyola, Ignatius of - Hallucination of a serpent with glittering eyes
Identifier
000400
Type of Spiritual Experience
Background
A description of the experience
The Autobiography of Saint Ignatius Loyola
It was while he was living at the hospital at Manresa that the following strange event took place. Very frequently on a clear moonlight night there appeared in the courtyard before him an indistinct shape which he could not see clearly enough to tell what it was. Yet it appeared so symmetrical and beautiful that his soul was filled with pleasure and joy as he gazed at it. It had something of the form of a serpent with glittering eyes, and yet they were not eyes. He felt an indescribable joy steal over him at the sight of this object. The oftener he saw it, the greater was the consolation he derived from it, and when the vision left him, his soul was filled with sorrow and sadness.
Up to this period he had remained in a constant state of tranquillity and consolation, without any interior knowledge of the trials that beset the spiritual life. But during the time that the vision lasted, sometimes for days, or a little previous to that time, his soul was violently agitated by a thought that brought him no little uneasiness. There flashed upon his mind the idea of the difficulty that attended the kind of life he had begun, and he felt as if he heard some one whispering to him, " How can you keep up for seventy years of your life these practices which you have begun ? "
The source of the experience
Loyola, Ignatius ofConcepts, symbols and science items
Concepts
Symbols
SerpentScience Items
Activities and commonsteps
Activities
Overloads
Being badly woundedExtreme pain
Leeches
Loss of blood, haemorrhaging and letting blood
Nutritional deprivation