Hildegard of Bingen (1098-1179) was canonized as a Saint in 2012. Her Feast Day in the Catholic church is September 17th, but her acceptance as a saint is not what leads our organization to her. A closer look reveals a woman who embodied the wisdom of the ages and her example leads us in a time where the world is awakening from hibernation.

Abbess of a Benedictine monastery, Hildegard was a Christian mystic and polymath (genius) skilled in musical composition, theology & philosophy, biology & medicine along natural history and artistic vision.

She refused to be defined by the patriarchal hierarchy of the church and, although she abided by its structures, pushed the established boundaries for women almost past their limits. — Joshua J. Mark

 

Hildegard of Bingen inhabited that legendary line between genius and madness. Her inner world was a luminous web of visions and voices, scientific breakthroughs, artistic epiphanies, and emotional obsessions. This is a dance that has always intrigued me: the interplay of brokenness and brilliance, that numinous zone where chemical imbalance meets spiritual giftedness.
Halfway through her life, Hildegard finally came to peace with her uncommon mind and spirit. Only then was her true genius able to flower with such potency that her wisdom ripples across nine centuries. In the midst of the equivalent stage of my own life’s journey as I was compiling this collection, I sat at Hildegard’s feet in awe, alert to the many clues she offers for cultivating an authentic life.
Hildegard’s interests and talents were so diverse that it was impossible to fit them into tidy topical compartments. Following the mode of understanding Hildegard herself models, I (in writing ) relied on an ineffable intuition of those themes I felt were most important to her: praising the Creator; claiming our birthright as wisdom beings; navigating the human experience; the wild holiness of Nature; and the feminine face of the Divine.  — Mirabai Starr