Letter XVIII.
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Now understand the deepest essence of your soul, what 'soul' is. Soul is a being that can be beheld by God and by which, again, God can be beheld. Soul is also a being that wishes to content God … The soul is a bottomless abyss in which God suffices to himself; and his own self-sufficiency ever finds fruition to the full in this soul, as the soul, for its part, ever does in him. Soul is a way for the passage of God from his depths to his liberty; and God is a way for the passage of the soul into its liberty, that is, into his inmost depths, which cannot be touched except by the soul's abyss.

— Hadewijch

What It Means

This is a placeholder explanation generated by the low-overhead model. It interprets "Now understand the deepest essence of your soul, what 'soul' is. Soul is a being that can be beheld by God and by which, again, God can be beheld. Soul is also a being that wishes to content God … The soul is a bottomless abyss in which God suffices to himself; and his own self-sufficiency ever finds fruition to the full in this soul, as the soul, for its part, ever does in him. Soul is a way for the passage of God from his depths to his liberty; and God is a way for the passage of the soul into its liberty, that is, into his inmost depths, which cannot be touched except by the soul's abyss." in the context of "Letter XVIII." to mean that wisdom is timeless.

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Source: Wikiquote: "Hadewijch" (Quotes, Letters: The Classics of Western Spirituality series) The 'What it means' explanation text was generated by Google Gemini Flash (accessed January 18, 2026). https://gemini.google.com/app
Hadewijch

About Hadewijch

Hadewijch, also known as Hadewijch of Antwerp or Hadewijch of Brabant, was a 13th century Flemish Beguine, poet and mystic of the Catholic Church.