Hildegard von Bingen - Alleluia-verse for the Virgin
Ivan M. Granger May 14th, 2008
O virga mediatrix / Alleluia-verse for the Virgin
by Hildegard of Bingen
English version by Barbara Newman
Alleluia! light
burst from your untouched
womb like a flower
on the farther side
of death. The world-tree
is blossoming. Two
realms become one.
— from Symphonia: A Critical Edition of the Symphonia armonie celstium revelationum, by Hildegard of Bingen / Translated by Barbara Newman
/ Photo by watchsmart /
Let’s continue this week’s exploration of the maternal aspect of the Divine, by contemplating the Christian image of the Virgin Mary.
Many westerners who were raised in the Christian tradition but who have gone on to explore other spiritual traditions often shy away from a figure like Mary. The emphasis on her virginity sounds to modern secular thinkers like questionable biology, and a religious disdain for normal human sexuality. Frequent references to her womb can, at times, sound as if religious thinkers only value women as vehicles through which children are born. Those notions are certainly serious social concerns, but we can understand this same imagery as carrying profound spiritual meaning, as well.
One way to understand the figure of Mary is that she represents the heart or the soul. Joseph represents the intellect. From this perspective, the gospel story of the virgin birth takes on ever deeper dimensions.
In the mystical tradition, the soul must first stop attempting to take false lovers in every outer experience (represented in the Christian tradition by the figure of Mary Magdalene), and yearn so deeply for the true Beloved within that she (the soul) becomes restored to her natural “untouched” state (represented by the Virgin Mary). That is, the soul must become purified, inward focused, unattached, “untouched” by the experiences of the outer world. Mary’s virginity is a virginity of awareness, what the Buddhist tradition might call “original mind”.
When this happens deeply enough, the divine touch comes, and a new life is formed within you (the Christ child in Christian tradition). You experience an overwhelming sense of joy that is felt as a new presence in the body. And your heart is warmed; it opens with an immense love.
But the father of this new life is not Joseph. The heart does not conceive by the intellect, but by direct communion with the Eternal. At this stage, the intellect has a choice: Retreat into cold denial, proclaiming, ‘I do not know that child” and reject the heart and the life it carries; or it can recognize that something deeply sacred is taking place, something not of its own making, and then take responsibility and provide for the growth and maturation of that inner illumination.
In this way, the Christian gospel drama is played out in you and me and in all devout mystics.
Carrying our esoteric understanding of Mother Mary to a broader level, Mary’s womb is the primal womb, the womb of creation. The womb is the empty space in which life takes form. It is emptiness, formlessness, night, void, nirvana. Mary is all these things in Christian symbolism, just as are all world images of the Divine Feminine. Mary represents the formless void, which burst forth in “light” and form and manifestation.
Let’s talk about the light imagery for a moment. For genuine mystics, this light is not a mere concept; it is directly experienced. This sense of light is more than a brightness one might experience on a sunny afternoon. This light is perceived as being a living radiance that permeates everything, everywhere, always.
Christian mystics often identify this foundational light with Christ. This is the light Hildegard says has burst from the Virgin’s “untouched womb.”
The light is seen to be ever expanding, radiating out from a central point, “like a flower.” It is immediately understood to be the true source of all things, the foundation on which the physicality of the material world is built. This is why the Gospel of John declares that “all things were made through him and without him was not anything made.”
This light of the mystic is eternal and whole. Its sum is always complete with no loss and no end. And, when the mystic truly bathes in the outpouring of this light, the sense of death itself seems to be washed away. There seems to be no small sense of self apart from that light, there is nothing left that is vulnerable to death. The light is “on the farther side / of death.”
And this living light is the medium that bridges the heavenly and the earthly levels of reality, “Two / realms become one.” Speaking as this bridge, Christ in the Gospels states simply, “I am the way.” — a statement sadly misconstrued by literalist Christians for millennia as an assertion that Christianity is the one and only way to reach God. This light is a reality for deep mystics of all world traditions. Christians name it Christ. Hindus may name it Shiva or Ishwara or another face of the Divine. A Muslim may recognize it as the smile of the Beloved, a glimmering angel that leads one nearer to Allah. Or why name it at all? Better to witness it, be carried in its current to a place beyond names, a place where the world-tree (primal maternal nature and earthly manifestation) is blossoming…
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Hildegard of Bingen |
Hildegard was born in Bermersheim, not far from Mainz, Germany to a noble family. She was the tenth and last child to be born to the family. At the age of eight, Hildegard was “given to God as a tithe” by placing her in the care of Jutta, a woman who had chosen a life of solitary seclusion. Hildegard would later describe Jutta as “uneducated,” yet she taught the girl the basic skills of reading, as well as the religous life.
Hildegard’s health was always fragile, but she had a rich interior life, by her own account receiving visions since early childhood. Hildegard describes one vision she had at the age of three of witnessing “a brightness so great that [her] soul trembled.” This was a light that remained a part of her perception throughout her life. Even in her seventies, Hildegard described it as a light that seemed to permeate everything without hindering her ability to see normally, as well.
She also apparently had a natural gift of clairvoyance and the ability predict the future.
Illness was intimately linked with Hildegard’s mystical life. Bouts of illness seemed to be brought on by the tensions that existed between her divine promptings and the limitations of the roles allowed to her as a woman and a nun. She had especially severe illnesses occur prior to the major decisions in her life.
Hildegard’s early life was relatively quiet. A small community of women gathered around Jutta, that eventually joined the Benedictine order. Hildegard herself took monastic vows in her teens. When Jutta died in 1136, Hildegard was elected to lead the monastic community.
It wasn’t until she was in her forties, however, that Hildegard began to gain notoriety for her visions. She was surprised to receive an inner prompting to “tell and write” her visions. She initially resisted and was soon bedridden as the inner conflict played out. Eventually she relented and began to dictate her visions.
The first work she produced was Scivias, a description of a cycle of visions about the relationship of humanity and nature with God. She also composed a collection of music and poetry called the Symphonia. She also wrote extensively about medicine and herbs.
Hildegard’s fame quickly spread, bringing pilgrims and the curious, eventually overwhelming the capacity of the small community. A new, larger monastery was built between 1148 and 1150 in Rupertsberg near Bingen.
Throughout the 1150’s, Hildegard made several teaching tours through the Rhineland.
Although Hildegard had received blessings from Church authorities through most of her work, toward the end of her life she ran into conflicts for, among other things, allowing an excommunicated man who had died to be buried in consecrated ground. She refused to have the body dug up and, as a result, she was not allowed to take the eucharist — a deep wound for a devout Catholic. This ban was eventually lifted, but she died only a few months later.
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That was really beautiful - both the poem and the meditation on it.
It helps to see the story in a mystical light, it really does.