\u201cI do not hear these things either with bodily ears or with the thoughts of my heart\u00a0nor do I perceive them by any combination of my five senses but only in my soul,\u00a0while my outer eyes are open, so that I never undergo in these visions the weariness of\u00a0ecstasy. But I see them in wakefulness day and night.\u201d\u00a0This was how Hildegard of Bingen, one of the greatest Mediaeval mystics, described\u00a0her visions in a celebrated letter to Guibert of Gembloux. The idea of an \u201cinner eye\u201d\u00a0or \u201cheart\u2019s eye\u201d is found not only in the Christian Middle Ages but also in almost all\u00a0the main cultures and religious traditions. It is the means to perceiving spiritual and\u00a0divine realities, just as normal eyes perceive external reality.This idea, however, can generate paradoxes which are at the centre of much thinking\u00a0about visionary experiences. If the object of the \u201cvision\u201d by definition transcends the\u00a0level of material and visible realities, how can we know it through images? And if its\u00a0purpose is to reach and perform in some way what is beyond any form or representation\u00a0– to \u201cstrip away\u201d all visible images – how it is possible to see it, even with an inner\u00a0gaze? The problem of the relation between \u201cvisibility\u201d and \u201cinvisibility\u201d continually\u00a0recurs and has been variously addressed and resolved in the Western visionary tradition,\u00a0as in those of other cultures. It also reappears in an unexpectedly radical way in certain\u00a0expressions of philosophy and contemporary art.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
\u201cI do not hear these things either with bodily ears or with the thoughts of my heart\u00a0nor do I perceive them by any combination of my five senses but only in my soul,\u00a0while my outer eyes are open, so that I never undergo in these visions the weariness of\u00a0ecstasy. But I see them in wakefulness […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":27533,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"cini_tax_authors":[1592],"cini_tax_pub_cat":[1598],"cini_tax_collections":[],"cini_tax_institutes":[],"cini_tax_publishers":[1413],"class_list":["post-27531","cini_publications","type-cini_publications","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","cini_tax_authors-edited-by-francesco-zambon-en","cini_tax_pub_cat-essay-en","cini_tax_publishers-medusa-edizioni"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\n