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Yarrow's avatar

St. Hildegard is also the author of my all-time favorite medical caveat: "if the righteous judgement of God does not prohibit it."

I feel this smallprint should be appended to every commercial claim. Kills 99.8% of germs, if the righteous judgement of God does not prohibit it... Cuts grease and eliminates odors, if the righteous judgement of God does not prohibit it...

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Ioannis Goldmouth's avatar

Lol yeah she uses that line a LOT in Physica. I think that's what really sets Christian "magic" apart from sorcery: there are no guarantees, everything works only when God blesses it.

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Yarrow's avatar

She does provide a truly fascinating window into the medieval mind. Reading her, you get a glimpse of just how much of modern *Christian* thought is actually just... post-enlightenment thought with a post-facto religious varnish. Everything in creation, in her world, is imbued with virtues, correspondences, and properties that may exert influences on us... which rather strongly implies that the commonly-held modern Christian (well, Protestant mostly) view that there is only inert matter, the soul awkwardly tethered to a human body, and all other life is somehow mechanical. That anything not explained by science and measured and weighed and pinned to a tray and labeled must be either an obvious divine miracle (unlikely) or it's demons. There's nothing else.

I think, on some level, the most interesting thing I got out of reading Physica, was that this view of things is a very modern innovation.

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Ioannis Goldmouth's avatar

I love this, very well said! Often times in modernity, I hear people denounce Christianity for this kind of thinking. The more I read about ancient / medieval Christianity, especially Orthodoxy, the more I realize that this is a modern Western problem and not just a Christian problem.

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Secretface2097's avatar

I have friends with an antroposophic background. One of them has a carraffe where the cover has some kind of extension into the body of the carraffe containing crystals. This is supposed to have some kind of positive impact on the fluid within the carraffe. As a good atheistic materialist I always laughed at this person. Nowadays, as I am moving towards God, I would be more open to this whole topic.

Coincidentally, I was in Bingen, the town from which Hildegard derived her name, a few weeks ago. Unfortunately, I did not have time to do any research on her while I was there.

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Ruck's avatar

have you found or recommend any reputable places to by crystal and gems?

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Ioannis Goldmouth's avatar

I usually just go to my local thrift stores and hope for the best!

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