The story of the manuscript is almost as interesting as the book itself. The mainstream view generally accepts the completion of the original Rupertsberg manuscript around 1175, before her death in 1179. There is some disagreement about whether the images were completed during Hildegard’s lifetime or after her death. The specific origin and nature of the thumbnail illustrations remains unknown. The images have become, perhaps, more popular than the actual narrative contained within Scivias. Scivias is renowned for its 35 images, or Illuminations, accompanying the descriptions of Hildegard’s visions as part of the original illuminated Rupertsberg manuscript. Hundreds of years after Scivias, Hildegard’s mandala images would be a reference point for Jung’s process of individuation, described in his Red Book. Hildegard’s descriptive, visionary recitation of her visions framed a powerful and compelling perspective of existence and divinity that impressed many who would discover her work, including Carl Jung, who drew much from Scivias to inform his thinking.
Through Scivias, Hildegard of Bingen described a mystic philosophy full of archetypal images and a hero’s journey, wherein the soul predates the body and persists beyond experience on earth. The book deals with the interconnectivity of man in the universe the concept that man represents a microcosm of the cosmic macrocosm, in other words, the belief that the universe exists simultaneously within each of us, while also encompassing everything else externally. Scivias, (“Know the Ways”) describes 26 of Hildegard’s most vivid visions. rich in historical and social contexts.Scivias, an illustrated tome, was Hildegard of Bingen’s first, and perhaps the most famous of her writings. “A vivid, thoroughly detailed biography of the Winston Churchill nobody knows.” - Boston Herald Churchill and Manchester were clearly made for each other.” - Chicago Tribune pulls together the multitudinous facets of one of the richest lives ever to be chronicled.
One cannot do better than this book.” -The Philadelphia Inquirer “Manchester has read further, thought harder, and told with considerable verve what is mesmerizing in drama.
one of those books you devour line by line and word by word and finally hate to see end.” -Russell Baker Praise for The Last Lion: Visions of Glory From master biographer William Manchester, The Last Lion: Visions of Glory reveals the first fifty-eight years of the life of an adventurer, aristocrat, soldier, and statesman whose courageous leadership guided the destiny of his darkly troubled times-and who is remembered as one of the greatest figures of the twentieth century. Against this backdrop, a remarkable man began to build his legacy. Yet within a few years the Empire would hover on the brink of catastrophe. When Winston Churchill was born in Blenheim Palace in 1874, Imperial Britain stood at the splendid pinnacle of her power. The heroic Churchill is in these pages, but so is the little boy writing forlorn letters to the father who all but ignored him.” - People “An altogether absorbing popular biography.