06/05/2025
Hildegard von Bingen was a mystical polymath, and a rare woman who ticks a lot of relatable boxes for just about every woman. She considered herself a simple, uneducated woman who spent most of her life battling illness and at times had to be carried room to room because she was so weak. She was also a woman living in an age where women were not highly considered, rarely educated and not allowed to teach new doctrine or even speak in a church. She was no stranger to dependency, weakness or being marginalized. She intimately knew what it was to suffer. Yet in her life, she founded her own abbey, created her own language, and wrote one of the first musical plays. She wrote nine books, seventy poems, seventy-two songs, and a play. She was an abbess, healer, writer, musician, visionary, counselor, preacher, linguist, naturalist, poet and an adviser to kings, bishops and princes. Her books are heavily referenced by scholars and theologians, and still in print.
And she didn’t even begin writing until the age of 43.
She was a true outlier, believing passionately in the power of both plants and gemstones to heal. She regularly had visions, She often used the feminine form “Sapienta Dei” which translates loosely as “God the Mother”. Yet, to read her work - to merely experience her presence in her words, her art, her music is to find a kindred spirit, a woman made of earth and salt. She celebrated her own wild spirit, often walking through Nature for hours and wearing her down - and encouraging other women to as well. She celebrated sexuality despite living a celebrate life, and the sensual aspect of spirituality in a time when the flesh was considered to be evil and an abomination - and especially for women.
She was not a confident woman despite her many successes in her own lifetime - and she tenaciously held to her faith to accomplish all that she did in spite of her circumstances, state of health or even just how she felt, and by that faith was unstoppable. She is what it is to push through the darkness, even when it seems to swallow you whole, and fiercely holding on to the faintest glimmer of light. And this is why I created her, and why I keep her image close.
She reminds me that hardship and challenges are more than just words, and may even seem insurmountable - but that we are called to deepen our faith and push through, despite whatever odds, despite how we may be feeling. She underscores that the real enemies are our doubt, hesitation and procrastination, and that every seeming failure is a lesson. Showing up and doing is what is critical.
In her I ask the question, am I doing all that I can to be of service in this moment? Is the center of my being rooted in love?
In this, I have depicted her as older, in her abbess attire, with her hair loose and flowing representing her wild, sensuous nature, communing with the Beloved and drawing her strength through faith despite her feelings. She is surrounded by spiritual helpers, in the form of birds, blooms and other things not immediately apparent to the naked eye. She is holding a mirror to reflect back my own hesitation or frustration of the moment, and reminding me of who and I really am. And she is illumined with a heavenly, goldenlight reminding me that I am never alone.
Despite my doubt. Despite my aching joints or brain fog, vanity, low mood or feeling engulfed by gloom or the darkness of the age. “Just be and do,” she murmurs sweetly through the ages.
“You are enough.
You are loved.
Be and do.”
“Hildegard von Bingen”
Mixed Media
2023
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