She often saw a brilliant light - more brilliant than a cloud over the sun. This made her lose all sadness and anxiety. And I consider myself as nothing. One of her visions was of falling stars turning black as they plunge into the ocean. Hildegard interpreted this as the rebel angels falling from heaven.
Singer reads it as showers of phosphenes across the visual field, followed by a negative blind spot.
Her concentric mandalas and her light with the light are seen as another visual symptom of migraine. But this interpretation, whether accurate or not, takes nothing away from the meaning she or we attribute to her visions. Hildegard has been canonized by the Creation Spirituality movement of Matthew Fox, a former Dominican priest, now excommunicated. Fox sees her as a precursor of feminism, of acceptance of the body, and of environmentalism. Certainly she believed that God was present, through the Holy Spirit, in everything.