Hildegard repeatedly stressed that her visions were good and experienced in a waking state, not during a trance. She described existing in ‘the shadow of the living light’, but when she entered a vision she felt it physically, ‘like a trembling flame, or a cloud stirred by the clear air’.38 It is highly probable that she was experiencing migraines. What she describes is like the sensations and auras reported by sufferers: ‘The heavens opened, and a blinding light of extreme brilliance flowed through my whole brain. And it ignited my heart and all my breast like a fire, not burning but
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