VISIO QUARTA, cap. XLIV
The Soul as a Mill
The soul's inner work of choosing, desiring, and reasoning is likened to a mill that grinds, burns, and turns by the forces of air, water, and fire.
The teeth too, which break up and grind down each person's food — the very sustenance by which a person is nourished — are placed in the likeness of a mill: just as the mill's wheel is turned and driven by the force of air and water, and its stone circle is made hot and burns with the fire's heat. For just as a person tempers the food by which he is restored by grinding it with his teeth, so too the soul works out, with burning zeal, whatever it has chosen according to its own will in that same process. The soul itself, through which a person receives sense and taste for accomplishing any work — whether good or evil — stirs that person up most ardently through thoughts all around, like a mill, in the manner of a fire that, fanned by the blowing of bellows, is inflamed and burns more fiercely. So too the soul, in the four elements from which a human being was created, works out whatever a person wills through the capacity of reason, turning it over through the desires of the heart, like a mill built by human art that is turned around most swiftly by waters.
Grace and Temptation at the Mill
The soul is sustained in good by God's grace, yet in evil it is urged toward delight and consent by the devil's suggestion.
And just as a mill is suitably and often reinforced by human art to preserve the momentum of its turning, so the soul, as long as it remains in a person, is helped through God's grace in what is good — yet to that same soul, on the other hand, in what is evil, an evil delight and consent are urged upon it through the suggestion of the devil.
From Body to Heavenly Clouds
The chin, throat, and neck, serving different bodily functions, signify the varied clouds in the sky and the many effects of virtues at work in the soul.
Because the chin, the throat, and the neck each serve a different function in the body, they point to the varied clouds in the sky and to the many effects of the virtues at work in the soul.
Read the original Latin
Dentes quoque, qui unumquemque cibum per cujus vires homo pascitur comminuunt et circumferunt, in similitudinem molendini positi sunt, quod cum aere aquarum circumfertur, et cujus lapidis circulus cum calore ardet. Sicut enim homo cibum quo reficitur dentibus suis conterendo temperat, sic etiam anima in ipso quidquid ipse secundum voluntatem suam elegerit, ardenti studio operatur. Ipsa quoque anima, per quam homo sensum et gustum ad perficiendum quodlibet opus sive bonum sive malum accipit, animo velut molendinum per cogitationes circumcunte, illum ardentissime instigat, in modum ignis, qui per sufflatus follium inflammatus fortius ardet. Sic anima etiam in quatuor elementis ex quibus homo creatus est, quaecunque vult homo per capacitatem rationalitatis operatur, per desideria cordis sui circumferens, sicut molendinum humana arte constructum per aquas velocissime circumfertur. Et quemadmodum ad servandam circuitus sui velocitatem per artem hominis convenienter et saepe firmatur, sic animae quandiu manet in homine per gratiam Dei in bono subvenitur, cui tamen alias in malo per suggestionem diaboli delectatio mala et consensus ingeritur.
Quia per mentum guttur et collum diversa in corpore habentium officia, et varii in mundo nubium, et multiplices in anima virtutum effectus indicentur.
Liber Divinorum Operum (Book of Divine Works) companion
Don't stop at Day 30
All 317 chapters live in the free Chosen Portion app, paced for daily reading
Hildegard's practice of daily attention to God's work in creation becomes a paced daily devotional through all ten visions in the Chosen Portion app
- One vision passage a day, readable in under 10 minutes
- The complete Book of Divine Works plus Hildegard's other major works, free
- Progress tracking so a 317-chapter classic actually gets finished