Mystical Language - Hildegard of Bingen's Lingua Ignota ( Unknown Language ) - Early Conlang
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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 18 มี.ค. 2020
- The first in a series here at Esoterica exploring esoteric languages and symbol systems! This video takes a look at the Lingua Ignota (Unknown Language) of the 12th century mystic and polymath Hildegard of Bingen.
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O Orzchis Ecclesia - • O orzchis Ecclesia
Recommended Readings:
Sarah Higley - Hildegard of Bingen’s Unknown Language: An Edition, Translation, and Discussion - ISBN-13: 978-1403976734
Hildegard's Music on TH-cam - th-cam.com/users/results?searc...
Hildegard - Hildegard of Bingen: Scivias - ISBN-13: 978-0809131303
Selected Writings: Hildegard of Bingen - ISBN-13: 978-0140436044
Fiona Maddocks - Hildegard of Bingen - ISBN-13: 978-0571302437
Illuminations of Hildegard of Bingen - Matthew Fox - ISBN-13: 978-1879181977
#hildegard #ignota #conlang
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I sometimes think that people like Hildegard von Bingen share the same intrest as someone like Tolkien. He could openly invented complete Elvish languages for fun and fiction . Maybe as a Catholic mystic of her time she had to give her feminized language a more divine flavor .
Simply wonderful. It's especially interesting to me, since I perform several Hildegard pieces regularly in our marionette concerts. She was a great composer, who was unaccountably not even mentioned in my university studies of music history.
cheers from sunny Vienna, Scott
A mysticism that speaks! Only a thousand words of Hildegard's Lingua Ignota discovered but here we are still talking about her centuries later. There is so much more to learn about her.
Yours is my favorite channel on TH-cam, Dr. Sledge. Thank you.
Thanks so much for saying so - working on the next video now - on the Greek Magical Papyri, should be out next week!
Hildegarde’s related art is fascinating! The colors & spirals especially. I had no idea she was a musician! Thank you so much for this video!
Thank you Dr. Sledge, I am currently on a Sledge binge and am loving it.
Awesome! The more I learn about this fascinating woman the more I am utterly enthralled by who she was and especially in the time she lived!
Man your channel has had a fantastic start. And the reason book of Thoth and The emerald tablet are your most watched videos is because of the movie zeitgeist spirit science and all that new age BS. Thank you for helping to undo their damage, and thank you for so much you have taught me and I haven't even gone through half of your videos yet.
Great job of getting so many diverse subjects clearly explained in such a short and delightfully narrative video!
At 4:17: prolata in this context resonates with the modern use of the word channeled. The Greeks spoke of their muses. Both uses reflect belief that the individual, here Hildegard, is only an instrument through which the information flows. Great composers are similarly known to have claimed they did not write the music but the music wrote itself through them. The sample words you gave seem to be replete with vowels, very musical. Mystics and musicians both have a long history of expressing their perception that something Other flows through them resulting in their compositions. Thank you for this series. Seems like there’s nothing like a pandemic to turn a few of us into philosophers, maybe even mystics. Blessings.
I actually got here while searching for the music project LINGUA IGNOTA by Kristin Hayter; it's some really fantastic and terrifying experimental metal. I'm definitely invested in this project too, now - love the content, your candor, and the whole presentation, Dr. Sledge.
Thanks, friend! Glad you found us!
Every time I find an influence on Kristin's work in the wild I'm astounded; the other week I heard a Greek orthodox chant that was a dead ringer for the harmonies on Sinner Get Ready. Fr a genius
In Swedish, bingen is slang for bed. Not really relevant perhaps, but still. Great video, I love both the ethos and the logos in your rhetoric.
Thanks for rhetorical compliment! Guess I need to work on the pathos and kairos :)
Här ligger jag i bingen och kollar youtube videos om von Bingen. Livet leker!
Wow! Hildegard's music is beautiful. Great job on the video. I never thought I would find a lecture about language so interesting.
Maybe you already know, but there's an experimental musician who goes by Lingua Ignota. Among many other things, her work incorporates elements of classical and sacred music of different eras. en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lingua_Ignota_(musician)
Justin Sledge, your videos are proper good. I've started watching them from the start so I've got a way to go until I'm fully up to date. I don't know how quickly you output these vids, but might I recommend you do so fast enough that I never run out of esoteric videos to watch.
After your announcement of your new video on Hildegard I was so curious and I found this! What a treat! Thank you. It’s so nice to see your improvement. You have slowed down quite a bit and become much more comfortably skilled at your presentation.
This is really eye opening. I really appreciate this one.
it seems quite obvious for me, it was a social play among the nuns from various regions, to invent their own 'secret' language trying to find the sound most' appropriate'to signified object.. it a fun among girls up to now.
Dr. Sledge I Adore all your work and you allways be the real deal®️💪🏾
I have enjoyed her music for ages, but this puts a whole new spin on her works. Thank you.
Just found out about Hildegard and she is fascinating, especially regarding linguistic capacity. Awesome video
First video watched. I will definitely be watching more. Thank you.
Thanks and welcome aboard!
Man I love your channel
It can not be duplicated wich means it is or abides by all laws of the universe wow this is fun.
St. Hildegard: "Oh look! I invented this speech! -- or did I?"
😆
*Vsauce music plays*
Super interesting! Thank you Dr. Sledge! I am really embarrassed to report that I always thought Hildegarde was male!! In my training, a few of her books were recommended, but not required reading...obviously, I didn't get to them...geez - all these years I have misidentified her gender! May have even passed her over because of it! Time to get up to speed! Your videos are overflowing with so much information, summaries and analyses on such a wide variety of esoteric topics, including where to learn more. I love it. Thank you again, and thank you especially for enlightening me regarding Hildegarde!!
Now I understand where the Hildegard Von Blingin channel gets the name.
I was aware of this Christian mystic through some of my Theological studies. But had not listened to her music. Thanks for the link!
Probably a spurious association; but I am struck by the similarities b/w the Summaria and the linguistic explorations of Jane Roberts in the 60s/70s with Sumari - both a language and a 'family of consciousness'.
I think it is probably a coincidence, here Summaria just means something like glossary. But interesting connecting!
Magnificent work, many thanks for this. M.D.P.
Well done! Your remarks about the solidarity and community of a mystical language--one that Hildegard almost certainly shared with her nuns--are wonderful. And thanks for putting a good word in for my book; I'm sorry that it's so expensive. For a while, Palgrave issued a paperback (more like rubber than paper), but I don't know if that was a productive run.
Oh wow! So Happy to see this comment! I'm going to be remaking this video soon and i'd absolutely love to interview you about the topic! Could you please get in touch with me via my website?
I've been interested in language and the conlang community for a while now so I've heard about Lingua Ignota before. However, I never looked into it any deeper. So this video was a great introduction to this interesting conlang for me. It's always good to understand the evolution of things and art forms. Especially, learning about the interesting history of its creator.
"Kinalamu! Pala Pinalu."
Meaning "Thank you, great teacher." in one of my conlangs.
Hey I'm here from a conlang background as well. Got any thorough youtube channels like this one that you recommend?
I just discovered your channel and videos today, totally subscribed and I love your videos so much thank you very very very much for posting these !!
Fascinating! I've been incredibly intrigued by her language ever since I found out about it. I admit to even being tempted in trying to translate a prayer or two in it, but the book with the dictionary is too pricey at the moment.
This collection of information, books, resources, and community needs a discord! Imagine the benefit of the sign posts and various ways to connect with one, few, or many without the presence of Facebook and Google, at least overtly..
I suspect that the idea for this conlang, and perhaps even part (but not most) of the conlang itself, were inspired by actual mystical speech or ecstatic speech. This would account for the use of the expression “unknown language,” rather than just “new language,” where “unknown language” is a New Testament phrase referring to an ecstatic or mystical utterance. At the same time, if Hildegard experienced such a mystical or ecstatic utterance, she quite likely would not have written it down or remembered that much of it in detail because she would not have been in the cognitive state to facilitate detailed memory. She might remember bits and pieces of it and then filled in the blanks with creative variations on German and Latin. this might also explain why her unknown language only had nouns. she seems to be just remembering those little snippets of ecstatic speech that she had and then trying to guess at the meaning based on whatever it was that she was feeling or thinking at the time. If one tries to follow that process it's likely that the meanings one comes up with will be substantive meanings, i.e. nouns.
I'm looking forward to reading Higley's book on the subject.
Wonderful presentation! I'm looking forward to your future videos. I was lucky enough to borrow a copy of Sarah L. Higley's book from a friend recently and have been hoping to read it alongside J.R.R. Tolkein's A Secret Vice. I'm even more excited to dig into it now after this lovely introduction. I found Scivias to be a bit of a slog as well. I much prefer her letters!
The relationship you pointed out between the words "orschibuz" and "orzchis" is fascinating and quite beautiful! To describe the church as oak-like, whether that implies "immense" or a whole web of oaky qualities ("orschi-" minus the "buz"). I also think your theory is on point. "A mysticism that speaks"! Yes!
Now I'm curious to know her word for excrement.
Thanks - I'm also pretty interested in the intersection of language and mysticism so, for me, this was a great starting point...oh yeah, it's "Manguiz"!
fascinating! i've just recently found your channel and the language stuff is very interesting to me since i'm in the process of creating my own language... just for fun 😏 keep up the great work!
I'm here from a conlang background as well. Got any interesting youtube channels like this one that you recommend? Or a link to any conlang stuff from you or others?
8:47 Zinzrinz: Spiral (had to look it up since it was not on screen, found on a forum about conlang)
Eeeeey Hildegard is my home girl.
Her theology and visions were ahead of their time.
Hildegard being a fair and just abbess, would often say to her sisters
"Let Aigonz be Aigonz"
_Zinrin_ is perfect for a spiral staircase
3:19 time stamp is she giving directions to something like the Pholishifer Stone?
every word has its weight. what language do we use when "speaking with our Self in our head", before we learn to speak?
Thank you so much for including this amazing woman. The field of medieval mysticism and magic can be pretty male dominated given that women were mostly illiterate (as were most men, of course). That added to their inferior status has meant that we have very little of the practices and thoughts of ordinary women, mystical or otherwise. Hildegarde is our bright light in all that obscurity. Maybe sometime you could do something on the Beguines. They're later, but still interesting from a mystical point of view.
I have a few episodes on the beguines
@14:10
So this is VERY interesting to me for a couple reasons that all tie together.
The first being that the word trance wouldn't see its introduction until the 14th century. The second that, when we dont have language for something, we cant describe it in a way that later audiences might recognize. The third that she uses this language in her holy music, indicating that this language was something far beyonf a randomized creation, but somrthing sacred to her - something she felt was worthy of God Himself.
I think she likely *was* in a trance state, but tue experience if it may not have been what she expected a "trance" to look like, because the nuances of defining layers of trance wouldn't have been possible without the langauge for it. And further, with regard to several witchcraft trial records from several centuries later, the accused never spoke of their experiences happening in a dream-like state. Isobel Gowdie, Agnes Sampson, Janet Breadhead, none of them ever idnicate a trance, but many occult practitioners will assume this to be the case.
Ultimately we may never know, but the possibilities here are endless. Living for St. Hildegard
Try this interesting experiment please. Search H V Bingen O Jerusalem and see how long the auto suggestions take for one of her most popular pieces.
Perhaps 'orzchis' for immensity is the root, and 'orschibuz' is immense tree, rather than the word for oak being the root? Orschibuz would then mean 'immense tree'. Maybe this is obvious and I misunderstood what you were describing.
It certainly could be. The question would be if the symphonia or the summaria come 'first.' As we have it - if I recall correctly - is that the summaria is first in the MSS with the symphonia near the end and the glosses on the symphonia being added at some point later (though it looks like the same hand). Now, that's the order of the MS and not the order of creation and we can't conclude one from the other without some other evidence, at least, it seems that way to me. At least, as it stands, we have a contemporary gloss for "orschibuz" and why Higley's gloss for "orzchis" must remain tentative. Your analysis, though, seems viable to me. The same thought had occurred to me as well given our other evidence of Hildegard producing other such compounds
@@TheEsotericaChannel Assuming the theory that the language is larger than the remaining documents, I wonder if both these pieces originate from older texts which are lost. Perhaps more will be uncovered some day, it would be fascinating to know more of what she was working on.
The last line that you mentioned you weren’t sure what it meant - “He who has the file does not neglect to polish (it) into a fit sound for men” I think that means that - he who has the understanding or knowledge [file] won’t fail [neglect] to mold or shape [polish] the language [it] into a suitable [fit] speech or dialect [sound] for humanity [men]. What do you think? Does it make sense?
Im a Hildegard fangirl.
Bedankt. (Dutch for Thanks)
Zinzerinz is a beautiful word
You probably already know this, but the sad thing about the representations of Hildegarde's visions is that they are not the originals which were moved by the Nazis to "protect" them from the war. And where did they move them? To Dresden. So, of course, they were totally lost. The ones we have now are reproductions from verbal descriptions of her visions and (I think) from descriptions of the original paintings. Very sad loss for us all.
You may want to check that - the Wiesbaden Codex survived the war.
@@TheEsotericaChannel I will. Thanks.
When letters from 1 language don't appear in the language one is attempting to adapt to, how does one make up the difference? There is no J, V, or W in her alphabet.
I would like to learn latin, any ideas on where to start or preferred materials to read?
Pick up Wheelock Latin and work through it cover to cover
@@TheEsotericaChannel Thank you Dr. Sledge
Have we considered the political context of the lingua ignota? The Holy Roman Empire was only consecrated as "holy" during this time. Latinizing German (or Germanizing Latin) may have served to bolster the legacy of the Germanic HRE as the successor of Rome.
🔮
So can I get a show of thumbs on how many people as kids created like a replacement script and like gave it specific letters for Th or sh? And did you ever get to the point to trying to make new words?
Alas my house has no “Zendrind” (sp?). Perhaps one day.
PS thanks in mega kalpas for your channel
I always get sucked into the romanticism of the past so for me my reaction is to always reach for impossibilities or unlikelihoods. But I sort’ve wonder if a language such as this could relate to the fall of babel.
I'm fascinated by the confusion of tongues story as well. Searching for the ideal language...
🙏🏽🔥🔥🔥❤🔥🔥🔥🙏🏽
What do people here make of Oliver Sacks postulation that Hildegard's visions were precipitated by migraines? This is not to say that they were not mystical necessarily, but that her "antenna" was tuned to a different frequency that of God? (Please excuse the Engineering analogies! :).
Who taught the Eastern slavics their language and who came up with their current script.?? Russian and many of the Eastern European countries have really artistic and made up of really interesting shaped lettering and similarly the script used in #SouthEastAsia like Vietnam and Thailand??
Elder futarch is a good to use because not knowing the whole meaning of the image allows it to be cast as an archetype and say as you're being taken to the third heaven and told you can't say everything you can maybe write some stuff down and then a cigarette wrapper becomes as big as the New testament in 3 hours what a Time Trip Man
My first exposure to Hidegard von Bingen was an album called "A feather on the breath of God" (th-cam.com/video/_NGTsdL2YzE/w-d-xo.html). A wonderful album that fueled an interest in one of the few composers of this era that we actually know something about. A bit of an oddity in the world of medieval music.
You know I have that exact record - it's great....and weird.
@@TheEsotericaChannel I have fond memories of watching "Battleship Potempkin" while listening to it. But . . .
Question… Was she, per chance, Romani?
That floating signifier PM stuff is such a bore (so 2D). I like George Steiner's take on it in "Real Presences" where he says ...I won't quote...a wager on meaning is wager on transcendence! Or words to that effect? Love this channel, so erudite!
I don't know about that, you know. It seems to me that it's difficult to transcend (as in move beyond the scope of) absolute meaning; that, furthermore, the rejection of objectivity itself is an act of transcendence of those boundaries. I freely admit to a bit of a bias in favour of the postmodern which might be flavouring my interpretation there, though.
I second your opinion on the channel! I've only just discovered it, and it's fast becoming one of my favourite parts of TH-cam.
Let's create a language from her words for a sci Fi movie.
This man is speaking in albanian and hi even do not know this. Love to all.
You'd think that the best reason for inventing a language would be to enable one to express things that couldn't be expressed in the vernacular. So I'm puzzled that the Lingua isn't like that. As far as I understand, the Lingua just renames things already named, and so really isn't creative in a semantic sense.
Sometimes language isn't about creation, it's about the opposite: concealment. It's probably more common now for systems of symbols to be obfuscated or completely cryptic so that only the intended recipient can understand them fully (or at all) than it is for systems to be developed to be completely open for everyone.
We encrypt private communications like sensitive internet traffic. Communities develop dense internal lore that creates referential meaning that outsiders cannot grasp. Memes carry hidden intentions, implications, and dogwhistles that the uninitiated miss, by design.
so sorry about the speedy speak not all of us are Native English
Go to settings and slow the audio down to .75 or .50. Works great. Edit: Settings is that gear-like object at the upper right corner of the video.
e x c e l l e n t
Qui la lingua ignota trasformata in una canzone. th-cam.com/video/EbWn9voZyBE/w-d-xo.html
Its talking about the union of Masculine and Feminine as well as Sexual Alchemy and the creation of like which I believe she was trying explain the individuality of the practitioner so that it holds and keeps place with the older idea and infuses the user with some unwaveringly truths wich are in no way a fetter or a chain contract ext. Now magic has to be an individual creation because when a group agrees to things that is the contract and the control panel in wich we are slaves what she has created is the map of what Thoth was saying in take the curves not the angels
The fundamental element makes up a great woman leader is through pure miracle
what a woman
one of the brightest lights of the medieval world. unfortunate that she hated the Cathars
Sure enough - and no one's perfect, I suppose!
Roman numericals
I think it’s v intuitive to think the word/sound *is* (ontologically) the thing in itself, and not a mere arbitrary connection.... even though I know it’s arbitrary, it’s nevertheless that ‘dog’ (the sounds or shapes on the page) really, really FEELS like it is a dog!
See what she is saying is that the relationship between the God or who ever and the entity so the Key is just that this is a key the co creation between 1+1=1{1+1+1}=3
Oh oh it's the High Elven she is Frey the Vanir or Varin I only cought that because I was born a Varin which in trying to find my roots it brought me to the conclusion that Freya is Mary and all other names she is the ancient one really one could assume she was Jesus but we know that she is his lover and so a second race of nehalem are born which I believe creates or represents the sons of light and sons of dark she is the daughter of light or she is simply nothing wich is everything
Lol
This is a leap, but could Hildegard's language have anything to do with the Voynich Manuscript? I realize it was dated to have been made much later though.
Ignota can be sound sigils, can't be?
Didn't she need a secret language to be able to express herself and communicate with the other without the patriarchy of the Church finding out?
Nah she was officially backed by the church