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Abstract

Mirabai, a sixteenth century bhakta, wrote passionate songs of her desire for God. Burning for him, she employed the genre of viraha-bhakti, a mystical eroticism of longing from the Vaiṣṇava tradition, as she begged for him to “[c]ome and extinguish the fire of separation.” Hadewijch, a thirteenth-century Beguine from low-country Europe, wrote poems, letters, and prose that tell of her longing to become Love itself—to be “God with God.” Despite their myriad differences across traditions, miles, and years, Hadewijch and Mirabai can each be said to practice love-longing as her primary contemplative mode.

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