Spirit Alchemy | Divine Feminine Mystic
A Renaissance Mystic Who Spoke Truth to Power with the Passion of Veriditas.
The Divine Feminine and Green Man Speak through St. Hildegard of Bingen
“Every creature is a glittering, glistening mirror of Divinity.” — Hildegard of Bingen
I make a point of hanging out with women mystics.
Some of the ones who lived a long time ago have the biggest impact on my life. Like Julian of Norwich. And St. Hildegard of Bingen — a woman clearly ahead of her time. Way ahead.
Dr. Victoria Sweet first turned me on to her.
Several years ago, I checked out her medical memoir, God’s Hotel, at our local library. In it, she shares her journey as a young doctor at San Francisco’s huge public Rehab and Skilled Nursing Hospital, Laguna Honda.
At the time, I was working at Fairmont Hospital, a comparable facility on the other side of the bay. The patients she served, befriended, and wrote about sounded just like the patients I had the honor of getting to know and helping in my occupational therapy job.
The changes in medical care delivery she wrote about — the onset of Medicare rules and regs limiting patient days by diagnosis regardless of individual need — were the same as well. Under them, we witnessed genuine health care turn into a one-size-fits-all sped-up conveyor belt.
It was uncanny.
The wit and wisdom of people most folks wouldn’t give a second glance came out in her stories with warmth and humor. Not only couldn’t I put it down, but when I finished reading the last page, I turned back to the beginning and read it again.
No other book ever had that effect on me.
While practicing at Laguna Honda, Dr. Sweet did her doctoral thesis on St. Hildeguard’s effective healing work with diet, plants, and non-invasive modalities like abdominal binders. As an abbess, she founded a hospital and trained nuns and monks in her methods.
Dr. Sweet was impressed. She applied these modalities to her patients with marked success. She became a fan, follower, and advocate, traveling to Switzerland to further her research on Hildegard’s life and teachings.
St. Hildegard was far more than a healer.
Today we might even call her a badass — affectionately, of course.
She spoke her mind. And there was a lot on it.
Clearly, her focus on the Feminine as well as the healthy Masculine nature of divinity touched raw nerves in high places. She learned reverence for the earth and concepts like the web of all creation from the Celtic monastery she was raised in. These she taught in the Benedictine order she served as an adult.
We shall awaken from our dullness and rise vigorously toward justice. If we fall in love with creation deeper and deeper, we will respond to its endangerment with passion. ~Hildegard of Bingen
Her feminine-centered cosmology butted up against the church patriarchy.
Hildegard never spoke about original sin and the dominance of humans over all other life forms. Her starting framework was the holiness of the Universe and the earth itself.
She taught that God is present in every creature — that they all have interior lives. Therefore, we must respect all life forms. If we overextend our presence, Creation will punish humanity. And this in the twelfth century!
Hildegard spoke her mind to archbishops, popes, and even the emperor. This petite woman wielded a lot of power. No wonder she was excommunicated and not canonized until 2013.
The Passion of Revolutionary Reverence
Hildegard was a prolific composer-musician. The passion she put into her chants created a new musical genre — erotic Gregorian. Similarly, she likened the relationship between God and creation to that of lovers. And she was a celibate nun!
Not Just a Color
It’s no surprise Hildequard taught about the Green Man, given her Celtic roots. This pre-Christian archetype exudes a healing form of masculinity we sure could use more of today.
Have you seen images of him? Perhaps at Christmas time or Winter Solstice?
A long beard winds around his head like a wreath. Birds and other creatures make their nests in it. Naturally, the Green Man is a protector of the earth and all her life forms.
Green, Hildegard taught, is more than the color nature wraps herself in.
Green power represents the life-giving energy of the Holy Spirit in all of us. That which turns leaves and plants green in the spring also runs in our blood and in our hearts. A life force not unlike the sap of a tree. A life force she called veriditas.
When I was in college, The Greening of America by Charles A. Reich inspired many late-night reveries — sometimes with the help of a green weed.
Maybe we’ll make more headway in how we care for the earth once we practice the greening of our hearts. Would this understanding empower us to make these sea — and air — and soil — changes Mother GAIA so desperately needs.
“The earth which sustains humanity must not be injured. It must not be destroyed!” -Hildegard of Bingen
Sacred Music, Sacred Art
In addition to her erotic Gregorian chants St. Hildegard wrote one of the first ever operas. Her nuns had the singing parts, and she tapped a male secretary to portray the Devil.
He didn’t get to sing.
Hildegard’s vision of hell is a place where there is no music. While of course, heaven resounds with joyous, celebratory, erotic song. The Holy Spirit is fully alive in everything, but most especially in music. Give hers a listen and prepare to be transported.
“When the words come, they are merely empty shells without the music. They live as they are sung, for the words are the body and the music the spirit.” ~Hildegard of Bingen
The words of her songs lyrically reflect her cosmological wisdom.
Here’s one entitled, Item de Virginibus (Praising Virgins):
O most noble Greenness, rooted in the sun, Shining forth in streaming splendor upon the wheel of Earth. No earthly sense of being can comprehend you. You are encircled by the very arms of Divine Mysteries. You are radiant like the red of dawn! You glow like the incandescence of the sun!
Legacy of Luminous Light and Heart
St. Hildegard didn’t just teach, preach, write, and sing this amazing vision of hers. She painted it as well. First in egg shapes and then in circular mandalas. With images of animals as well as humans.
God as a continuous circle without beginning or end is one of the ways she depicted the feminine nature of the divine on canvas. Given she considered Mary, mother of God, the Ground of All being, it’s no wonder the powers that be wanted her gone from the church.
But excommunication didn’t silence her prophetic vision, and renaissance genius as a masterful teacher, healer, musician, artist, and wise leader. It lived on to influence many of us, just not the Catholic hierarchy which only recently saw fit to canonize her.
For the rest of us, her legacy is a no-brainer.
Plunging into St. Hildegard of Bingen’s prolific gifts may just be the greening we all need in our hearts. Now. Namaste.
Marilyn Flower is a sacred fool who writes every day — fiction, poetry, and blogs — inspired by a process called SoulCollage®. She’s the author of Creative Blogging and Bucket Listers, Get Your Brave On. Follow her Sacred Foolishness or SoulCollage® for Writers, and Stay in touch!