Here’s a thing we once all knew: humans at our best are not thinking beings, but beings being thought. One glance at the life of Hildegard of Bingen proves this. A child when she started receiving visions from the divine, this twelfth-century nun would go on to write ten books, found a convent, be nicknamed the Sybil of the Rhine for her work advising (and challenging) emperors and popes, invent languages, found the study of natural history in Germany, and revolutionize musical composition. Her genius was not cultivated in a siloed academic department, nor brewed through private study or honed by market competition. It was received from the beyond, and skillfully brought to fruition. My Q&A with her selects and reimagines words from across her published work—particularly her first theological book, Scivias—and her letters.

In an age when ideas about the shape of tomorrow are coming thick and fast and any old thought can be whizzed into a thing in a flash, Hildegard of Bingen still has much to teach us about receiving the thoughts that matter, learning what they feel like, and cultivating deep reverence for their source. 

ER: Tell us a little about yourself. 

HB: From earliest childhood I have seen great wonders which my tongue cannot express but which the Spirit of God has taught me I may believe.

ER: That sounds intense. What are these great wonders like? Can you tell us about one in particular?

HB: When I was forty-two years and seven months old, Heaven was opened and a fiery light of tremendous brightness emerged and filled my brain, and inflamed all my heart and all my breast. The flame was not like one that burns but one that warms, just as the sun warms whatever its rays touch. And straight away I understood the meaning of the exposition of the Scriptures.

ER: So are these visions like dreaming? Do you receive them in a trance?

HB: I did not perceive the visions I have seen in dreams, or while asleep, or in delirium, or with the eyes of my body or the ears of my outer self, or in hidden places. Rather, I received them whilst waking; I saw them with a pure mind and the eyes and ears of my inner self, in open places, as it was willed by God. It is hard for mortal beings to understand how this could be.

ER: What’s the nature of your knowing in these visions? Do instructions come through clearly, in recognizable language?

HB: In the visions, seeing, hearing, and knowing occur at once. I learn and know in the same moment. [...] And the words I hear and see in my visions are not like the words humans use in speech. They are like a blazing flame and a cloud floating through clear air. 

ER: And is this where all your wisdom and great innovations come from?

HB: Being unlearned, I do not know anything I do not see in my visions. Everything I write I have seen and heard in my visions, and I do not add any words of my own.

ER: What is the source of these visions?

HB: The Living Light.

He Who Is.

The Serene Light.

ER: Do you have any tips for those who wish to cultivate their perception?

HB: There are things that can be perceived through faith which are not visible to the eye.

ER: If you could give one piece of advice to anyone calling acts of imagination into being today, what would it be?

HB: All those who hope to complete God’s works must always remember that they are fragile vessels, because they are merely human. They must constantly remember what they are and what they will be. They must leave the things of heaven to He who is heaven, because they are exiled and ignorant of the things of heaven. When they sing the mysteries of God, they do so as nothing more than a trumpet, which can return a sound but does not work on its own, since to bring forth a sound, Another must breathe into it.