Tag: St. Hildegard of Bingen

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St. Hildegard of Bingen: Mystic, Maker, Medicine Woman

St. Hildegard of Bingen (1098–1179) was a German mystic, composer, writer, healer, and abbess, one of the most remarkable women of the Middle Ages. A visionary and Doctor of the Church, she integrated spiritual insight with music, natural medicine, and ecological wisdom.

She authored major theological works based on her visions, composed over 70 original chants (writing both music and lyrics), and produced texts on healing, botany, and natural history. Hildegard’s holistic approach saw the body, mind, and spirit as deeply interconnected, and her remedies drew from plants, food, and elements of nature.

Lately, I’ve been immersing myself in her world listening to her celestial chants, reading her herbal remedies, testing her recipes, and studying her illuminations. Her work is more than historical, it feels like a living lineage, a call to remember the sacred intelligence of the body, the earth and spirit.

A fierce intellect and spiritual force, Hildegard spoke truth to power and left behind a body of work that still inspires mystics, artists, and healers like me today.

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Illuminations and New Sight

Ever since I got my new reading glasses, I’ve been powering through my reading list with fresh eyes, literally and spiritually. This morning, I finished Illuminations by Mary Sharratt, a luminous novel about Saint Hildegard von Bingen, the 12th-century mystic, composer, healer, and visionary.

Magical vocal arrangements

Her story is so inspiring. Hildegard’s fierce devotion to divine creativity, her bold voice in a patriarchal world, and her communion with the natural world, echo so much of what I’ve been reaching for in my own practice. Her visions, wild, vivid, unapologetically feminine, remind me that there is sacred power in speaking what only you can see.

Hildegard’s legacy is a radiant thread in the life I’m building now, of ritual, plant medicine, and ancestral memory. I didn’t expect a book to shift my inner tempo, but Illuminations has done just that. More soon. There’s work to do in the garden.

Theda