Hildegard speaks about her visionary experience - Station 3

How does Hildegard reconcile her experience of seeing visions with her activities of writing and composing music, and how do these activities contribute to her understanding of her role as a "seeress"?

Lately many people have called me the ‚seeress of the Rhine’. And many know that I have composed songs to the honor of God, the Virgin and the saints. How can I explain that all this belongs together!? Yes, I have always been a seeing listener and a listening seeress.

In the third year of my life, I saw such a great light that my soul trembled, yet because of my childhood, I was unable to talk about it. Until my fifteenth year, I saw much, and I talked about some of it so that those who heard this were amazed and wondered where and who it came from. Therefore I wondered myself that I – while deeply looking into my soul – my outward sight remained, and that I heard about this from no other soul. Therefore I kept secret this vision that I saw in my soul as much as I could do. Only at the age of 43 have I revealed myself about this to my dear brother Volmar. At that time a heavy illness had laid me low. Then I had to acknowledge that I could no longer resist God’s will that I reveal myself about my visions. In my book ‘know the ways’, the Liber Scivias, I then put down all the visions that I have had since then. In these visions God gave me an insight in the position of the human being in the cosmos and His story with the mankind – from creation to incarnation and redemption till the Last Judgement.

And much later in my life when I was already 79 years old, it was the curious Walloon monk Guibert of Gembloux to write about my visionary experience myself. Thus my vision reaches out to the most diverse people even in faraway countries and places. I receive this vision not with my physical ears nor in the phantasy of my heart, and also not through the mediation of my five senses. Rather I see and hear this only in my soul and with my eyes open so that I never suffer the exhaustion of an ecstasy. In this vision I have seen the Living Light and in the shadow of the Living Light, many scriptures, words, virtues and some works of the human beings have literally blazed. Everything I have seen in this Light, I keep in my memory for a long time. Because in this vision, I see, hear and know all at once, and, at the same time I learn what I know in an instant.

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