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A few words:
The term mysticism refers to the hidden inner self that one experiences through communion with God. The mystic Mechthild of Magdeburg lived with the God in whom she believed. She had the natural gift of talking and thinking about God and also lived in a very personal, loving relationship with God. Her high-value literary work “The Flowing Light of the Godhead” is an impressive evidence for that relationship.
The quotes taken from Frank Tobin’s translation of “the Flowing Light of the Godhead” (FL) can be found under the button “The book - excerpts”.
The following text shall inspire and thus does not claim completeness.
1. Numinous experience as a preliminary
2. Mysticism from a Christian point of view
3. Taking the Bible literally
4. Difference of opinions
5. Metaphorical language
6. Prophetic skills
7. Bridal mysticism and love
8. Mechthild - the troubaritz of God
9. Bibliography (German)
Mysticism is a cross-cultural phenomenon. It describes a certain form of religiously interpreted experiences, but also literature containing the iconographic and linguistic codes of the mystics.
A mystical experience – considering the religious meaning – is the immediate experience of God, achieved by contemplative prayer and as such an exception.
1. Numinous experience as a preliminary
Occasionally there is a sort of religiously uninterpreted experiences which allow to surmise what is meant: At one distinctive point in his life a human is surprised by the sudden insight that he and his life is part of a wonderful and bigger entity. And that this incomprehensible entity carries him gently. Having this certainty, an unknown trust flows through him and he feels the “power of the good”. After this experience there is no turning back; it has a changing power. This experience is like a message from a different, deeper layer of reality. The touched human senses that his existence has a hidden meaning, and that there are answers to the questions about the where from and the where to. He feels complete and therefore can say “yes” to his existence.
Some people experience this so-called numinous moment most intensively in nature (ocean, mountain top), others when they are at rock bottom (disease, near death), which becomes the turning point in their lives, and others feel it in the moment when two lovers become one.
2. Mysticism from a Christian point of view
For religious people the “incomprehensible entity” has a name. It is called God.
The Christian answer to the question about wherefrom and whereto of human life is: The love of God is the origin of all being. And in this love lies the secret of our life, even if we have become a mystery to ourselves and to others. For the Jewish mystic, Martin Buber, God is the Eternal Thou and only because of the relationship to the Thou can a person become completely I (cp. Buber). “Only together with God is man human.” (Delp)
A person touched by God is able to see the world with new eyes; the becomes for the reality of God. Thus, mysticism can be defined as the turning away from the world of things and turning to a world as a place of God (cp. Keul). The German mystic, Meister Eckhart, differentiated between a world of purpose and a world without purpose. The world of purpose, where the human being is considered an object, always seeks for profit and purpose, which according to Meister Eckhart applies to the world of merchants. To this world belong everyone who sees humans only as an economic factor, as patients, or as evolution machines etc. In the world without purpose everything, whether human or nature, holds its dignity within itself. Christianly speaking, we are talking about God’s Creation.
3. Taking the Bible literally
Touched by the “reality of God” sounds at first presumptuous, because God is incomprehensibly bigger than everything the human mind is able to understand. Otherwise YAHWEH, the sacred name of God, biblically means exactly this: “I am who I am”, you can experience me. God created humans in his own image, therefore men can experience God. Jesus can be seen as the human face of God, whom man can meet at eye level. King Solomon as well knew that God is capable of giving away a new, “discerning heart” and he asked for it. In so far the mystics like Mechthild of Magdeburg take the Christian belief at its word.
Nevertheless, claiming to meet God in person is always presumptuous from a man’s point of view. In fact man transcends himself with such an encounter, something unspeakable remains, something that finds no equivalent, neither with a visible action nor in a word (cp. FL II, 25, end).
4. Difference of opinions
God has many ways to reach man, but how can one decide if an experience is really a mystical experience of God? Through the ages clergymen have known about the danger of subjectivism, of neurotic self-deception and of deceptions done by charlatans. A psychiatric disease has to be excluded as well. Therefore the wheat and the chaff have to be separated, but always considering that we are within the limits of human knowledge and that we do not know God’s Master Plan.
A verifying mark is the effect that this encounter causes. God, the Eternal Thou, lets man be a part of the truth behind the things: For one moment the soul is permitted to look at reality from the divine perspective. This “vision” becomes the mission of the soul. Strengthened by the touch of the divine creative power, man is called to act. Who submerges in God, will emerge with the fellow human being. The encounter with God has therefore a positive changing power (cp. FL IV, 15/2).
5. Metaphorical language
Mystics are border crossers, disregarders of borders and mediators between the “reality” of everyday life and the divine reality. But what they experience in a “mannerless way” is bigger than them; their language fails. Mechthild wrote: “Now my German fails me, I do not know Latin.” (FL II, 4) How shall she tell what her mission is?
Just like anyone who talks about something spiritually new, she uses a figure of speech – the metaphor. Already the book title “The Flowing Light of the Godhead” is a biblically influenced image. But Mechthild uses love (Minne) as her central metaphor. Is it even possible to understand erotic images metaphorically? Everyone who finds a car or a share “sexy” does it in a very simple way. Asking seriously, erotic is a topic of human life that nobody can escape from. Here men and women have to deal with their own origin and the origin of life. Superficially it has to do with satisfaction, but profoundly it has to do with aspiration and fulfillment, yes, with the ability to give birth. How painful it can be to not be a part of that, confirm couples with an unfulfilled wish for a child.
6. Prophetic skills
Mechthild’s writings have to be associated with the unknown, silent part of her history: her life for and with the poor in the slums of the medieval city of Magdeburg. Every day she was confronted with the people’s misery, diseases and death. Her writings light up in front of this dark, unspoken background. She measures the Christian ideal and bravely denounces the deviations, what is also a characteristic of many mystics.
They are – biblically speaking – prophets of the presence. They criticize heavily the Zeitgeist and the authority and face them fearlessly. Mystics are admonishers and swim against the current. They speak having a divine mission and accept the disaffirmation even on the part of their own ecclesiastical community.
Mechthild as well was a controversial personality whose life was complicated by the clergy (cp. FL II, 24).
7. Bridal mysticism and love
At the first sight Mechthild’s love writings seem to be like fervent love songs – and that’s what they are. In fact she wrote and published under the protection of two writing traditions: Ancient biblical and contemporary literary.
The bridal mysticism comes from the biblical tradition.
In the Old Testament the nation of Israel is referred to as “God’s bride” in different literary genres, especially in the books of Psalms and in the Prophetic Literature (e.g. Ezek 16, 8 and Isa 49+62). Just how bride and groom await the fulfillment of their desire and their common life, so deep is the desire of God, who is in love with humans, for the love of his people.
The image of the bride represents a promised fulfillment, “already” promised, but “not yet” fulfilled. The bride price represents the high value, the groom’s life investment. The example of famous lovers show that marriage of love did, indeed, happen in the Hebrew Bible: Jacob and Rachel, Abraham and Sarah, David and Bathsheba.
The image of the bride is used several times in the New Testament (e.g. Mk. 2, Jn 3) and in the Revelation to John. The wedding of the “bridal couple” is within reach, because the “bridegroom”, Jesus, has already arrived. He came to prepare the unification with his people – now the family of humanity – by overcoming all obstacles and paying the “bride price”. (This is how Gertrud of Helfta interprets the crucifixion.) If He leaves his bride again, returning temporarily to his “father’s house”, it is only because He will return and stay for ever. The Revelation of John refers to this eschatological “wedding of the Lamp” (Rev 19+21). With this wedding begins the reign of a merciful God, the heaven on earth, the everlasting peace. It may seem strange to us, but the iconography of the Cathedral of Magdeburg and other Gothic buildings, which arose during Mechthild’s lifetime, is difficult to understand without this “wedding scenario”. Even the wise and foolish virgins (cp. Mt 25) belong to the eschatological scenario.
The Song of Songs
God loves humans and wants to be united with them. This declaration about God and humans is the deepest secret of Jewish-Christian religion (cp. FL I, 24; II, 5). It is sort of a religious distillate, which reveals itself only to the human who has become wise. Maybe therefore the key text of bridal mysticism can be found in the wisdom literature of the Old Testament: the commonly called Song of Songs. Here it seems that an intimate dialogue of two lovers is written down using highly erotic and poetic metaphors. Although God is not mentioned with even one single word, the Jewish belief comprehended this text as a metaphor of a dialogue between God and soul.
Surprisingly, is not only that a fervent love song can be found in the Bible, but also the self-confident attitude of the lovers towards each other. Nowadays we would say they have equal rights, which seems rather modern to us. Here meet two persons truly and madly in love at eye level. This “modern“ relationship model is the well thought-out idea that we are the image of God. The deepest inner self of man contains the image of God as an image of desire within itself. Maria’s motherhood is only imaginable in front of this background. (See divine love poetry) In Jesus, the incarnate God, the profund truth became reality – the word became flesh (Jn 1). With Jesus, God showed his human face.
The human within God, the divine within human. Mechthild’s writings circulate around these theological contents. Especially when she wrote the love songs, she used the metaphorical language of the Song of Songs (cp. FL I, 11-20).
Mechthild understood her soul, viz. this part of her being, which is facing God completely as a “full-grown bride”, as a lover of God (cp. FL I, 44).
Expressing her private feelings she would have never found recipients for her writings. But she wrote in a biblical “code”, which back then everyone, who was clerically educated, could decode easily. Therefore she could end her bridal chapter saying that she wrote down the way of love and God may reveal it to you. “Dear friend of God, I have written for you this path of love. May God infuse it into your heart! Amen.” (FL I, 44)
Literary forms: “Hohe Minne” (high courtly love) and “Gottesminne” (divine love)
The Minnesang (courtly love lyric), as part of the courtly culture, had a deep impact on Mechthild’s childhood and youth. The Minnesang poetry sings about the different forms of “Minne”, which is the coeval german word for what we call today love. Just like trivial and popular songs, art songs or an aria sing about love nowadays, during the Middle Ages there were different musical forms of thematizing love depending on content and audience.
In the courtly culture, travelling minnersingers and troubadours entertained the nobility by playing different roles. There were the sensuous and cheery songs that sang about frivolous indications of sexual arousal and lovemaking. The songs of the so-called “Niedere Minne” (lower love) talk about the love of a man who loves a woman belonging to a lower social class. In general, the “Niedere Minne” also stands for the sexual oriented love.
There was love poetry where the minnersingers played the role of a vassal. He addressed his poem indeed to the noble lady praising her virtues and attractiveness, but actually refers to the feudal lord whose splendor shines even brighter by courting the beauty of his wife. These love poems of a lower nobleman which were addressed to a “frouwe” (lady) of higher rank, and therefore unreachable for him, sang about longed-for, but unrequited love, which is known as “Hohe Minne” (cp. Ehrismann). By performing the poem and expressing the love publicly, it was actually impossible to answer this love. Thus “Hohe Minne” expressed the eternal longing. The “frouwe“ became the archetype of unreachable distant beauty and virtue. The allegory of the “Frau Minne” (“Lady Love”) represents the changing for the good, refining power of the selfless love, and by being in her service (“Minnedienst”) the knight comes close to the “courtly” ideal. The ”Hohe Minne” celebrated “big emotions” as a cultural event just like the opera does today. By participating, the audience approved themselves as insiders of the courtly culture and became a cultural community because of this high-quality, common experience. The “Hohe Minne” showed therefore a quasi-liturgical trait.
A characteristic feature of the “Hohe Minne” benefits the elevation to the sacred which connects it inseparably with the “Minnedienst” (cp. Ehrismann). The poet devoted himself to the service of the high Lady, the “Frau Minne” respectively. The announced Minne explains the legal relation which is comparable with the mutual obligating service towards the liege lord. The poet betoke himself into the protection of the “frouwe Love” and was – in a voluntarily chosen dependency – at her service.
This voluntarily committed, mutual binding obligation corresponds with the “bridal” bond between God and mankind (see bridal mysticism). The literary form of the “Hohe Minne” clears the stage of the courtly elocution for a another variety of courtly love lyric - the so-called “Gottesminne” (divine love poetry).
The “Gottesminne” serves likewise to the “thrilling refinement” of the audience and thematizes the worship of “Our Lady” Mary, the mother of God. As already indicated in the context of bridal mysticism, Mary is the ideal image of all human beings, whether man or woman; who gave God space inside her, who allowed Him to grow and gave birth to God and therfore let God enter the world. This is only possible in a relationship of love between God and humans. Mary must have loved God and God Mary. The divine love poetry (“Gottesminnelyrik”) sings about the salvational love relationship. The earlier mentioned love service (“Minnedienst”) turns here into divine service (“Gottesdienst”). The transforming, changing love of God frees him from his fixations and gives him an “understanding”, thus a compassionate heart (cp. 1 Kings 3,8).
In the spirituality of the Beguines and of the Cistercians plays Mary, the God-bearer, a special role. Mechthild, too, felt a close connection between herself and Mary (e.g. FL I, 22).
Mechthild used the complete repertoire that courtly love lyric offers and she at the same time let it explode. For the soul, which is so much smaller than God, is made queen by Him (cp. FL I, 39). On the other hand, Mechthild courted God’s love with the self-confidence of the full-grown bride from the Song of Songs.
“I cry out to you in great longing,
A lonely voice;
I hope for your coming with heavy heart,
I cannot rest, I am on fire,
Unquenchable in your burning love.” (FL II, 25)
Mechthild’s soul was more than a bride, she was his wedded wife. In fact, both literary forms, the “Niedere Minne” and the “Hohe Minne” mentioned above, are onesided exaggerations. Both contradict life, which is balanced with the right moderateness. Matrimonial love, which is “even” courted, is the moderate and appropriate one (cp. Ehrismann). This love corresponds to the bride’s role in the Song of Songs.
8. Mechthild - the troubaritz of God
Shockingly new
Mechthild’s love texts turn out to be a thick web of references. Her audience were able to decipher the content; her writings were probably read out load especially in communities. New and inspiring were the combination of both literary forms.
Mechthild used for her divine love poetry the image of the bride in the Song of Songs, who confesses self-confidently her love to her bridegroom. Mechthild transferred the stylistic devices of the “Hohe Minne”, which celebrates and elevates the longing for the unreachable beloved, to the situation of the bridal soul, which screams itself hoarsely, longing for God (cp. FL II, 25):
“Lord, two things I ask you;
In your kindness instruct me:
When my eyes weep in loneliness,
And my mouth remains mute in its simplicity
And my tongue is constricted in affliction,
And my senses ask me again and again,
What is wrong with me,
Then, Lord, everything in me is directed toward you.
When my flesh wastes away,
My blood dries up,
My bones torture me,
My veins contract,
And my soul roars with the bellowings of a hungry lion,
Tell me, dearest One,
What will it be like for me then,
And where will you be?” (FL II, 25)
Troubaritz of God
There were quite a few women amongst the French troubadours, e.g. Marie de France and Comtessa de Dia (cp. 1Keul). There were practically no troubaritzes in the German-speaking part of Europe. Especially the “Hohe Minne”, as a social phenomenon, might have been a classical male role. So much more incredible and shockingly brave it was that a woman took over this literary form of expression. The minnesingers who sang about the fulfilled longing for love from the man’s perspective, used scarcely more explicit words. Thus Mechthild may be called rightly the “troubaritz of God”(cp. 1Keul). (See under the button “The book”: 4. Mother tongue as provocation)
How it will be when HE comes: Unio mystica
Mechthild knew of the insurmountable distance of God, but experienced again and again moments of overwhelming closeness. The only image that is strong enough, is the fulfilled Minne (love): The boundaries begin to flow, the attractive force towards the beloved is irresistible, until they become one (cp. FL II, 6). This harmonizing with God, this becoming one in one rhythm is the dance which God teaches the soul (cp. FL I, 44). The soul sings with God the song of live using the erotic language of the love songs: “Ah Lord, love me passionately, love me often, and love me long.” (FL I, 23).
These moments of being one with God are not an end in itself; they provoke impulses of spiritual maturing. Thus the soul is growing slowly into God with helical movements: from love (Minne) into the insight, from the insight into the pleasure. Mechthild compared this process with a dance (cp. FL I, 44).
The desert of nothing
The deeper the light togetherness, the more painful the dark parting. The downside of this great closeness to God is the “desert”, the absence of God. “You should love nothingness.” (FL I, 35) The soul learns to love into the darkness having the certainty that it is the shadow cast by the great light of God.
Suffering the night and practicing bearing the abstinence of God are the long dry spells of mystics. This ‘school of night’ teaches them not to leave others alone, if the soul darkens entering the ‘valley of the shadow of death’. Mechthild’s flowing golden vocabulary shines against this dark background.
Her words illuminate the nightside of the personhood like a spotlight full of hope. “If God’s noble love chimes through the loving heart into the noble soul. Fortunate is he to have become a human being who ever really experiences this!” (FL IV, 18/4)
Katharina Wieacker
9. Bibliography (German)
Buber, Martin: Das dialogische Prinzip. Gerlingen : Schneider, 1926
Delp, Alfred: Gesammelte Schriften. Frankfurt : Hrsg. Roman Bleistein, Josef Knecht Verlag, 1982-88
Ehrismann, Otfrid: Ehre und Mut, Aventiure und Minne – Höfische Wortgeschichten aus dem Mittelalter. München : C.H.Beck-Verlag, 1995, S. 136-147
1Keul, Hildegund: Das Hohelied der Minne: Eine Entfesselung des weiblichen Begehrens. In: Bangert, Michael; Keul, Hildegund, Vor dir steht die leere Schale meiner Sehnsucht. Die Mystik der Frauen von Helfta., Leipzig : Benno Verlag, 1998, S. 97-111, hier 109 f.
2Keul, Hildegund: Verschwiegene Gottesrede – Die Mystik der Begine Mechthild von Magdeburg. Inbrucker Theologische Studien, Insbruck, Wien : Tyrolia-Verlag, 2004
Sölle, Dorothee: Mystik und Widerstand: Du stille Geschrei. Hoffmann und Campe, 41984, 986-91, Meister Eckhart
Tobin, F.: Mechthild of Magdeburg - The flowing light of the godhead. Mahwah, New Jersey : Paulist Press, 1998
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