Jean-Philippe Blondel was born in Troyes, France, in 1964. His mother was a schoolteacher and his father worked for the National Railways. Jean-Philippe still lives in Troyes today after attending university in Paris and travelling around the world, including South and Central America, Nepal, India, and most of Europe.
Writing has always been Jean-Philippe’s way of expressing himself. He started writing poems when he was seven, then moved on to short stories as a teen. He wrote his first novel when he was 19. One book that had a profound effect on him as a child was Alice in Wonderland: he tended to identify with the White Rabbit…
Jean-Philippe’s favorite subjects at school were languages: French, English, and Spanish. He remembers telling hi
Mechthild (or Mechtild) of Magdeburg (c. 1207 – c. 1282/1294), a Beguine, was a medieval mystic, whose book Das fließende Licht der Gottheit (The Flowing Light of Divinity) described her visions of God.
Definite biographical information about Mechthild is scarce; what is known of her life comes largely from scattered hints in her work. She was probably born to a noble Saxon family, and claimed to have had her first vision of the Holy Spirit at the age of twelve. In 1230 she left her home to become a Beguine at Magdeburg. There, like Hadewijch of Antwerp, she seems to have exercised a position of authority in a beguine community. In Magdeburg she became acquainted with the Dominicans and became a Dominican tertiary. It seems clear that she re
