The Living Light Itself

Eknath Easwaran, Hildegard of Bingen

Hildegard of Bingen (1098-1179) was a Benedictine abbess and mystic of medieval Germany. After entering religious life at age eight and receiving a rudimentary education, she lived quietly, confiding her visions to one or two close companions. Then, at forty-two, she experienced an overpowering revelation which illumined the meaning of spiritual texts and enjoined her to record and explain her inner experience. Inspired works of theology, poetry, musical composition, painting, natural science, and public service flowed from her from then on. In a rare personal comment, she described the light she experienced continually within:

“From my infancy up to the present time, I now being over seventy years of age, I have always seen this light, in my spirit and not with external eyes, and I name it ‘the cloud of the living light.’ But sometimes I behold within this light another light which I name ‘the living light itself.’ And when I look upon it, every sadness and pain vanishes from my memory, so that I am again as a simple maid and not as an old woman.”

—Hildegard of Bingen, Vita Hildegard II.2, 71

—Eknath Easwaran, God Makes the Rivers to Flow, Nilgiri Press. [Ford-Grabowsky, Mary. Prayers for All People. Hildegard of Bingen. Doubleday, 1995].

Richard Rohr, Hildegard of Bingen, Scivias [Excerpted from his commentary]

Throughout the ages, the mystics have kept alive the awareness of our union with God and thus with everything. What some now call creation spirituality, deep salvation, or the holistic Gospel was voiced long ago by the Desert Fathers and Mothers, some Eastern Fathers, in the spirituality of the ancient Celts, by many of the Rhineland mystics, and surely by Francis of Assisi. Many women mystics were not even noticed, I am sorry to say.
Julian of Norwich (c. 1343-c. 1416) and Hildegard of Bingen (1098-1179) would be two major exceptions (though even they have often been overlooked).

Hildegard of Bingen communicated creation spirituality through music, art, poetry, medicine, gardening, and reflections on nature. She wrote in her famous book, Scivias: “You understand so little of what is around you because you do not use what is within you.” This is key to understanding Hildegard and is very similar to Teresa of Ávila’s view of the soul. Without using the word, Hildegard recognized that the human person is a microcosm with a natural affinity for or resonance with the macrocosm, which many of us would call God. Our little world reflects the big world. The key word here is resonance. Contemplative prayer allows your mind to resonate with what is visible and right in front of you.

—Adapted from Richard Rohr with John Feister, Hope Against Darkness: The Transforming Vision of Saint Francis in an Age of Anxiety (Franciscan Media:2001), 135; and unpublished “Rhine” talks (2015) [the Center for Action and Contemplation].

Visionary theology [Excerpt]

Hildegard’s most significant works were her three volumes of visionary theology: Scivias (“Know the Ways”, composed 1142–1151), Liber Vitae Meritorum (“Book of Life’s Merits” or “Book of the Rewards of Life”, composed 1158–1163); and Liber Divinorum Operum (“Book of Divine Works”, also known as De operatione Dei, “On God’s Activity”, composed 1163/4–1172 or 1174). In these volumes, the last of which was completed when she was well into her seventies, Hildegard first describes each vision, whose details are often strange and enigmatic, and then interprets their theological contents in the words of the “voice of the Living Light.”

—Wikipedia [Hildegard of Bingen].

Additional Hildegard of Bingen Quotes

“Humanity, take a good look at yourself. Inside, you’ve got heaven and earth, and all of creation. You’re a world—everything is hidden in you.”

—Hildegard of Bingen, Scivias.

“Divinity is in its omniscience and omnipotence like a wheel, a circle, a whole, that can neither be understood, nor divided, nor begun nor ended.”

—Hildegard of Bingen

“All the arts serving human desires and needs are derived from the breath that God sent into the human body.”

—Hildegard of Bingen