Prologue

Love has seven names,
Which as you know, are appropriate to her:
Chain, Light, Live coal, and Fire—
These four names designate the awe Love inspires.
The other three names are great and strong—
Forever insufficient, but resonant in eternity.
They are Dew, Living spring and Hell.
If I mention these names to you,
It is because they are found in Scripture:
In order to say enough of their nature,
And what they bear witness to and show forth.
That I am not deceiving you,
And that Love does behave as I say
Is known by everyone who lives, wholly for Love,
This life full of wonders
I have told you about.

— Hadewijch

Words of Welcome

We’re all here because we have problems with love.
Her gifts are bondage that you cannot break.
She brings you to confront the ugliest parts of yourself.
She wants to be your whole world and leave room for nothing else.
She makes you do the stupidest shit you would not do otherwise.
She invades your boundaries and makes you invade the boundaries of others.
She makes you lose balance and sense of direction as caught in a whirlpool.
And yet, the biggest torment of all is the thought of losing her.
Yes, we must admit:
All of us are here because we have problems with love.

How to experience this work

The app is open for seven days, up to and including St. Valentine’s Day (February 8 - February 14th). During this time, you may take the pilgrimage at any pace, going from the first to the last name in the order given. You can explore one name each day or however else you like.

Under each name, you find an excerpt from the poem, Love’s Seven Names, composed by the Flemish mystic Hadeiwjch sometime in the early 1200s - see ‘About and Credits’ to learn more about Hadewijch, her use of the word ‘Love’ and about the concept of ‘virtual pilgrimages’. Along with each except, you will find two exercises: an ECHO meant for your body and senses, and a WORD, meant for writing and reflecting. Though we suspect the body, the senses and language will move, work and dance together as you go along.

We advise you to take at least 15 minutes for each name unless instructed otherwise. You can decide if you want to do the writing digitally or with pen and paper - we ourselves found that we prefer the latter, using a notebook.

Each name comes with a small song to listen to. We advise headphones for the best listening experience.

Chain

Love is truly a chain, because she binds
And grasps everything in her power.
Her chains, when learned of, are fully welcome,
As anyone who has experienced them well knows.
For Love, midway, withdraws our consolation
But comforts us again in our worst griefs.
Her chains encircle me within so tightly
That I think I shall die of pain;
But her chains conjoin all things
In a single fruition and a single delight.
This is the chain that binds all in union
So that each knows the other through and through
In the anguish or the repose or the madness of Love,
And eats his flesh and drinks his blood:
The heart of each devours the other's heart,
One soul assaults the other and invades it completely,
As he who is Love itself showed us
When he gave us himself to eat,
Disconcerting all the thoughts of man.
By this he made known to us
That love's most intimate union
Is through eating, tasting, and seeing interiorly.
He eats us; we think we eat him,
And we do eat him, of this we can be certain.
But because he remains so undevoured,
And so untouched, and so undesired,
Each of us remains uneaten by him
And separated so far from each other.
But let him who is held captive by these chains
Not cease to eat his fill,
If he wishes to know and taste beyond his dreams
The Godhead and the Manhood!
The chains of Love explain these words:
I to my Beloved, and my Beloved to me

ECHO

The first four names of Love, are her inspirations: the way she binds us, illuminates us, grounds us day after day, and how this inspiration can enflame us and the ones around us, like wildfire.

In preparation for the writing exercise, find an object to wrap around a part of you as gently or tightly as you wish. alternatively, you may hold something in your grip as gently or tightly as you wish. Once you have the wrap or the grip, breathe into it gently, feeling your body tense and release against the object.

WORD

Love once gifted you, but this gift also held you back your freedom.
What was the gift love gave to you?
What freedom did this gift hold you back from?

Light

Light is a name of Love that reveals
What most offends the Beloved,
And what is most in accord with Love,
Or what things Love principally condemns.
In this light we can learn
How we shall love the God-Man
In his Godhead and in his Manhood:
This is an infinitely rich fief.

ECHO

Find a strong source of light: It could be the Sun, a lamp in your home, or even your phone’s flashlight. Try not to hold the light you choose, so you can leave your arms relaxed. With your eyes closed, let the light gently wash over your face. Notice how the light washes over you, its waves brushing your skin. As you gently move, remember how the light reveals parts of you more brightly, while casting shadows on parts of you it can’t reach. Explore this for a few minutes and see what thoughts, and sensations reveal themselves to you.

WORD

Love once revealed some unpleasant truth about you to yourself. What was it?

Coal

Live coal is another name for Love. Judge with me
What it symbolizes in Scripture
The live coal is a wonderful present
That God gives interiorly to the soul,
It consists in all the soul receives or is deprived of
In conciliation, in threats, in punishment,
In consolation, joy, and work,
And in all the contradictory behavior I spoke of.
This live coal is a swift messenger
That serves Love admirably;
Its mission is never broken off
And is indispensable to Love.
This live coal inflames him who was cold;
It makes the proud man timid;
It bids the horseman go afoot;
It fills the vassal with pride;
It places the pauper in a kingdom
Where he is second to none.
And all these contraries-falling, getting up again,
Taking, giving, receiving—
This name, the coal, sets afire and extinguishes
By the madness of Love. Now apply your mind
To this question, and judge
The unheard-of wonders the live coal works
Until it comes back again to the fire
In which it wholly damns,
Burns to death, engulfs, and consumes
Man's desire and God's refusal.

ECHO

Find an object, or a piece of architecture and let it give you weight. Feel the volume of the object against your volume. After some time, change roles and give your weight to the object - let it take you. Who is supporting who? And when? Try and remain in contact just a little longer than you’d like to. Take about 15 minutes to explore this.

WORD

Love was for you, supporting and nurturing when nothing and no one else was. After some time, however, this exclusivity became a problem.
Why? What happened?

Fire

Fire is a name of Love by which she burns to death
Good fortune, success, and adversity:
All manners of being are the same to fire.
Anyone whom this fire has thus touched
Finds nothing too wide, and nothing too narrow.
But once this Fire gains control,
It is all the same to him what it devours:
Someone we love or someone we hate, refusal or desire,
Winnings or forfeits, convenience or hindrance,
Gain or loss, honor or shame,
Consolation at being with God in heaven
Or in the torture of hell:
This Fire makes no distinction.
It burns to death everything it ever touches
Damnation or blessing no longer matters,
This I can confess.

ECHO

We provide no soundtrack for this name. Instead, find a song that you like and it reminds you of Love at her most intense, most loud and most dramatic! Put on the song with your headphones on and sing along to its melodies with as much emotion as possible. IMPORTANT: do not sing the actual lyrics of the song! Instead, just sing along the main vocal or instrumental melody, or beat as if you’re doing gibberish-acapella. If people look at you strangely for doing this, tell them you’re doing it for the sake of Love.

WORD

In the height and heat of Love, you made a promise or decision that you would not do otherwise. What was it?

Dew

Dew is a name under which Love works:
When that Fire has burned up all in its violence,
The dew falls, imparting moisture everywhere
Like a strong windh of unheard-of sweetness.
It calls forth the kiss of noble natures
And gives them constancy in the midst of changes.
Love's zeal engulfs her gifts to such an extent
That the dew's gentle action must always be present.
Then are appeased all the storms
That previously arose in the soul;
Calm reigns at last,
When the loved one receives from her Beloved
The kisses that truly pertain to love.
When he takes possession of the loved soul in every way,
Love drinks in these kisses and tastes them to the end.
As soon as Love thus touches the soul,
She eats its flesh and drinks its blood.
Love that thus dissolves the loved soul
Sweetly leads them both
To the indivisible kiss—
That same kiss which fully unites
The Three Persons in one sole Being.
Thus the noble dew appeases the conflagration
That had been raging in the land of Love.

ECHO

The last three names of Love draw closer to her secret, interior heart. Leaving behind four names of inspiration, we plunge into her more intimate depths to challenge our boundaries, give life to our life, and ultimately face the unspeakable.

For the name Dew, take a piece of slightly wet cloth or fabric and place it on your skin. Gently, with your breathing giving tempo, explore how the wetness from the cloth enters your skin, opening its pores, inviting its surface to expand towards the fabric. After some time, remove the fabric from the touch. Notice the echo of your encounter lingering on your skin. After some time, the wetness will either completely seep in, or dry up into the air.

WORD

Love has made you invade the boundaries of others. What happened?

Living Spring

Living spring, her sixth name,
Is truly appropriate to Love after that of dew.
This flowing forth and this reflux
Of one into the other, and this growth in God,
Surpass the mind and understanding,
The intelligence and capacity
Of human creatures.
But still we have it in our nature:
The hidden waysi where Love makes us walk
And where she lets us receive, amid blows, that sweet kiss
Here it is that we receive that sweet living life,
So that Life shall give life in our life.
This name is living spring because this spring nourishes
And preserves in man a living soul:
The spring gushes forth, living itself, from life
And, from this life, brings new life to our life.
The living spring flows at all times,
In long-standing virtues and in new ardor.
As the river pours forth its waves
And receives them back again into itself,
So Love engulfs all her gifts.
This is why Love is named spring and life.

ECHO

Rave to the soundtrack.

WORD

Love has moved you so you could move others, love moved others and they could move you - their life gave life to your life; your life gave life to their life. At one point, Love made your life impossible to imagine without one another. How was this?

Hell

Hell is the seventh name
Of this Love wherein I suffer.
For there is nothing Love does not engulf and damn,
And no one who falls into her
And whom she seizes comes out again,
Because no grace exists there.
As Hell turns everything to ruin,
In Love nothing else is acquired
But disquiet and torture without pity;
Forever to be in unrest,
Forever assault and new persecution;
To be wholly devoured and engulfed
In her unfathomable essence,
To founder unceasingly in heat and cold,
In the deep, insurmountable darkness of Love.
This outdoes the torments of hell.
He who knows Love and her comings and goings
Has experienced and can understand
Why it is truly appropriate
That Hell should be the highest name of Love.

ECHO

Read the question under WORD and stay with it for the whole day. If you’re reading this in the evening, stay with the question overnight. Using what you experienced with the previous name, notice how the question of HELL writes itself onto your body.

WORD

You wanted to abandon Love, but could not bring yourself to do it. How was this experience?

Epilogue

Now judge how these names contain
All the essence and the modes of true Love.
No heart is so wise that its thoughts
Can reveal the thousandth part
Of the chain of Love, though it were to leave
The other six names aside.
By the chain we are assured of this,
That there is no separation from Love,
Either by miracle or by power.
Such is the might of the gift of wisdom.
The human heart by itself cannot bear it,
But by this very chain it suffers the chains of Love.
By light we learn the customs of Love
And know her well under all its forms:
Why we must love and attain knowledge
Of the Humanity like the Divinity.
By the live coal, Love sets the two aflame;
By the fire, she burns them in the Unity,
Just as in the fire of the salamander
The phoenix burns to ashes and metamorphoses itself.
By the dew the conflagration is appeased,
And balm is poured out, a unitive strong wind.
The bliss and the madness of Love
Then cast them into the abysmal Flood,
Unfathomable, ever living,
Which with life receives, in the Unity of the Trinity,
God and man in one single love:
Such is the Trinity above all thought.
The seventh name, just and sublime,
Calls Love hell,
As she is indeed according to her nature.
For she ruins the soul and the mind
To such a degree that they never recover;
They who love no longer have virtues to do anything
But wander in the storms of Love,
Body and soul, heart and thought—
Lovers lost in this hell.
If anyone wishes to face this, he must be on his guard,
Since for Love nothing succeeds
But the constant acceptance of caresses and blows.
The offering of veritable Love must be sought
In the depths of the heart possessed of fidelity.
If we act thus, we must conquer.
Though we are far off, we shall reach knowledge.