Hildegard’s life (1098-1183) spanned most of the 12th century, a period that historian M.D. Chenu called “the only renaissance that worked in the West.”

She was an integral part of that renaissance, which was characterized by the return of the Divine Feminine — and was herself a “renaissance woman” in every sense of the term.

In this opening session, Matthew will share Hildegard’s basic life story and the most foundational influences on her work as she taught a creation-centered view of the world.

These influences include the Celtic tradition (she was raised in a Celtic monastery in Germany), and the wisdom literature of the Hebrew Bible, including cosmology in Genesis 1.

Hildegard came from the Benedictine tradition — and, as you’ll discover, stories of Native American traditions seem to have influenced her too.

In every session, Matthew will guide you to meditate on Hildegard’s paintings, mandalas, or music (both instrumental and vocal compositions) — depending on what best fits the theme of the class.

In this module, you’ll:

• Learn how acknowledging the Divine Feminine impacted Hildegard’s culture, and impacts our culture as we move beyond patriarchy as a philosophy
• Learn about the Green Man, an essential archetype for recovering the Sacred Masculine and for defending Mother Earth
• Place our modern-day relations with Indigenous people in the context of Hildegard’s paintings of “the red man” and “the red-headed divinity” — and the paintings’ messages of replacing anthropocentrism with cosmology
• Discover Creation Spirituality and how it can connect you to nature’s sacred elements
• Move through a guided meditation on Hildegard’s self-portrait and her paintings of Indigenous peoples — together, they tell the story of her awakening experience at the age of 42

Inspired by many different Indigenous philosophies, Hildegard’s worldview does not begin and end with the human. Even her psychology is set within the context of cosmology — microcosm (human) and macrocosm (universe).

Matthew will guide you to explore Hildegard’s worldview and how she believed humanity fit into the universe. The concept of humanity’s role in the universe is common to both Indigenous and premodern consciousness, and it grounds a society’s ethics. Hildegard’s paintings expressed her views on these issues, and Matthew will guide you to meditate on them.

Hildegard declares that “all science comes from God.” Matthew will share about Hildegard’s many books featuring scientific topics.

Hildegard also talks about the “original wisdom” all humans are born with — and how life’s journey is to set up the “tent of wisdom” that comes folded into us as babies.

In this module, you’ll explore:

• How Hildegard’s teachings on holistic health and healing are relevant for us today
• What Hildegard and Einstein have in common, how Hildegard’s science is, in certain ways, a harbinger of our postmodern science — and how it urges us to integrate today’s science into our religious consciousness
• How Hildegard’s eagerness to evolve and grow intellectually and spiritually — and her take on individuation — can help you overcome obstacles as you embrace your work in the world
• How Hildegard was inspired by the archetype of the Cosmic Christ (also known as “Buddha Nature” or “Image of God”), and how this can help you understand yourself
• How Mary Oliver and Hildegard see eye-to-eye on the sacredness of the world all around us
• An experiential exercise where you’ll consider some of Hildegard’s praise poems to the Earth and the universe, and her paintings that depicted the universe as an egg, and later the universe as a circle
• How to create your own “I am” poem as an echo of Hildegard’s, exploring the divinity within yourself

Hildegard was both a mystic and a prophet. Philosopher William Hocking called the prophet “the mystic in action.” Jewish theologian Rabbi Heschel said the primary work of the prophet is “to interfere.”

In this session, Matthew will share how Hildegard interfered with patriarchy and other elements of her culture. She wrote letters to popes, emperors, bishops, abbots, and others — all telling them what to do.

When she was 81 years old, Hildegard and her sisters were all interdicted (in effect, excommunicated as a group) for disobeying the bishop. They didn’t back down and were reinstated one year later.

Art expands the heart and teaches trust, which lies at the heart of courage and spiritual warriorhood. Matthew will encourage you to consider the artistic dimensions of Hildegard’s teachings — her music, painting, gardening, and poetry.

Matthew will also share about Hildegard’s work in the healing arts and her experiences with what we call shamanism today.

In this module, you’ll explore:

• Joy and ecstasy, and how to expand your courage
• Strength and the Sacred Masculine, and how you can stay grounded in your own prophetic and mystical vocations
• The virtues’ powerful positive impact on education and society
• Art as meditation (“the way of the prophets”) and how you can shake up and reform education by bringing wisdom into our knowledge factories — including intuitive ways of knowing alongside analytical ways of knowing
• Shaking up education — and by extension — transforming every profession
• The 3 rings of humans’ relationship with nature and divinity — experienced through a guided meditation on Hildegard’s painting of the 3 rings

This week Matthew will be joined by Mirabai Starr, a mother, grandmother, translator, and lover and student of the mystics. She’ll share what Hildegard means to her and how Hildegard has impacted her life.

Mirabai will also share short passages from Hildegard of Bingen: Devotions, Prayers & Living Wisdom, a book she compiled featuring Hildegard’s writings and her own poetic reflections.

Matthew and Mirabai will also discuss Hildegard’s relationship to the spiritual sisters that came after her — such as Julian of Norwich and Mechtild of Magdeburg.

In this module, you’ll discover:

• How Hildegard’s amazing development of the feminine side of God serves as a model for women — and men — in the 21st century by inspiring gender balance
• Mirabai’s guided group prayer to Hildegard, and how you can compose your own prayers to wisdom beings who inspire you — accessing them as living allies on your path
• The importance of the creative arts in Hildegard’s life, and concrete examples for enhancing your own spiritual journey through the creative arts
• A dialogue between Matthew and Mirabai to illuminate Hildegard’s important role in developing a 21st-century spirituality

An essential part of recovering the Goddess and the Divine Feminine, as Hildegard did, is cultivating a healthy, nontoxic masculinity.

Matthew will explain how this is important for both men and women. After all, women have many men in their lives! And whatever our gender, we each carry both masculine and feminine energies.

As Matthew will share, the feminine soul has a masculine and feminine side, just as men have a goddess within them.

Hildegard led the way by acknowledging the Sacred Masculine within herself — as well as by critiquing unhealthy patriarchal versions of masculinity.

In our current cultural climate — where gender identity and gender relationships are in flux and we need to move from a patriarchal consciousness to an inclusive one if our species is to survive — Hildegard’s teachings hold powerful wisdom for both men and women.

In this module, you’ll discover:

• How to find inner strength from Hildegard’s paintings
• The Blue Man, an archetype of compassion and creativity that we all carry within ourselves
• How to develop the imagination and strength to defend Mother Earth as the Green Man does — and birth a new version of humanity
• How Hildegard’s call that “the Earth should not be injured, the Earth must not be destroyed” can wake us up to our vocation — combatting our current eco and climate crises
• A guided meditation on Hildegard’s images of the healthy masculine — found in women and men

When Matthew first shared some of Hildegard’s paintings with a Jungian therapist on his faculty 43 years ago, the therapist called Hildegard “the most mature person he’d ever seen” — because she deals so explicitly with the shadow in many of her paintings.

Matthew will guide you to meditate on several of Hildegard’s paintings of the shadow, observing what they have to say about evil.

You’ll explore Hildegard’s teachings about facing evil and not running from it, and preparing the warrior energy to combat evil. Matthew will share Hildegard’s prophetic teachings and the prophetic letters she wrote to emperors, popes, abbots, bishops, and more.

For Hildegard, strong feminine energy comes from the lower chakras and from the Earth. Matthew will guide you to meditate on Hildegard’s paintings that share these powerful truths. You’ll also consider lessons from her poetry, which celebrates the ecstasy we find in nature.

In this module, you’ll explore:

• Hildegard’s teaching that failures in eros and in justice-making are the primary faults of humans — and how you can advance both in yourself and your culture
• What Hildegard teaches about the shadow, helping us address our shadows by facing the violence in our culture instead of repressing it
• Hildegard’s paintings of the Christ who comes from below to combat evil forces, and how redemption comes from the Earth and from below
• A guided meditation on Hildegard’s paintings of the shadow and demons — including violence and war images

In this module, you’ll explore Hildegard’s deep understanding of angels.

For example, angels delight in ritual, good human work, and helping humans in art, creativity, music, and more.

Matthew will explain the angels’ presence and how they help humans transition to the next phase after death. As you’ll discover, angels move at the pace at which human thoughts travel.

Matthew will also share how a shaman is (among many things) one who’s undergone deep initiation and emerges to serve and heal the community — as Matthew will explain, this description fits Hildegard perfectly.

In this module, you’ll discover:

• How to follow Hildegard’s example and teachings to integrate the Divine Feminine and the Sacred Masculine into your life and community
• Matthew’s (and co-author Rupert Sheldrake’s) discussion of Hildegard’s perspectives on angels, as laid out in their book The Physics of Angels
• How to call in spirits and angels who are eager to assist you
• How Hildegard’s shamanic work can inspire you to access your own inner shaman
• A guided meditation on Hildegard’s paintings that depict community and the Divine Feminine

This session offers you an opportunity to participate in an hour-long live Q&A with Matthew.

Is there anything more pressing than the continued emergence of the Divine Feminine? It offers a counterbalance to an out-of-control toxic masculinity in our culture today.

Would we be so involved in matricide, the killing of Mother Earth, if we were less hostile to Earth, matter, mother (mater)?

Matthew will explain how we’re all called to redefine masculinity. To move from masculinity as patriarchy, control, and power over to a more partnership relationship with self, body, others (male and female), and Earth herself.

In many ways, Hildegard leads the way in incorporating both feminine and healthy masculine dimensions into her ways of seeing and working in the world.

In this module, you’ll discover:

• How honoring both Father Sky and Mother Earth is part of Hilegard’s journey — and yours
• Why we’re called to develop the Sacred Masculine with us — and in our institutions and professions — whatever our gender
• How to develop your feminine and masculine sides to be a more balanced and energized person
• Ways to recognize the toxic masculine (patriarchy) and develop the healthy masculine — whatever your gender
• How honoring the archetypes of Father Sky and Mother Earth assist our process of cultivating a deeper commitment to saving Mother Earth
• A Divine Feminine and Sacred Masculine guided practice

You may already know that Hildegard was raised in a Celtic monastery named after a seventh-century Celtic monk, St. Disibod, whom she greatly admired.

The Celts settled all along the Rhine, and the spirituality of the Rhineland mystics is deeply Celtic.

This class will include a presentation by Celtic scholar and practitioner John Philip Newell, whose new book, Sacred Earth, Sacred Soul: Celtic Wisdom for Reawakening What Our Souls Know and Healing the World, offers a profound and workable summary of Celtic consciousness. Newell was “warden,” or abbot, of the Iona community for many years.

Newell’s study puts meat on the bones of the Celtic tradition. He’ll focus on Pelagius (whom history has wrongly berated), John Scotus Eriugena — and St. Brigid of Kildare, an archetype of the strong feminine.

As you’ll discover, Hildegard carries in her work many of the characteristics and teachings of these great Celtic figures.

In this module, you’ll:

• Listen in on Matthew’s fascinating dialogue with John via video
• Learn about the often-forgotten, often-maligned tradition of Celtic spirituality that grounded Hildegard
• Discover an alternative to St. Augustine’s human-centered and original sin-centered religious worldview in favor of a more cosmic consciousness
• Recognize the many dimensions of Hildegard’s life and work — and teachings that are grounded in Celtic consciousness and practice
• Move through a guided spiritual practice in the Celtic tradition

The 4 Paths of Creation Spirituality name the deep inner and outer journey that’s both mystical and prophetic.

Starting in this module, Matthew will lead you to explore these four paths of creation in light of Hildegard’s teachings in back-to-back classes.

As Matthew will explain, the first two paths of creation, Via Positiva and Via Negativa, refer to the in-depth inner journey of mysticism.

You’ll discover how Mary Oliver’s poem “At the River Clarion,” one of many poems on the Via Positiva, truly captures the experience of the Cosmic Christ and what it teaches us.

Mary Oliver was a praise poet and a keen observer of nature who wrote about the disciplines “prayer” and “devotion” — and continues to invite us into them. She and Hildegard express similar perspectives in their many praise poems to nature and the Earth.

Hildegard is regularly calling for “joy,” “celebration,” and “passion” and is a keen observer of the beauty in nature.

Matthew will encourage you to analyze Hildegard’s teachings about emptying and silence-making, letting go, and how to handle suffering and grief.

In this module, Matthew will guide you to:

• Explore the similar ideas Mary Oliver and Hildegard expressed in their poetry
• Develop your own capacity forsavoring and appreciating beauty
• Cultivate deeper awe, wonder, and gratitude
• Reflect on concepts like emptying, silence, letting go, suffering, and grief through the lens of Via Negativa and Hildegard
• Develop your aptitude for letting go, letting it be, and grieving
• Participate in a guided practice based on the Via Positiva to help heal grief

You’ll learn about the two remaining paths of creation — the Via Creativa and the Via Transformativa, which describe the path of creativity and of taking your wisdom into the world — your outer journey of prophetic work and service.

Hildegard explains this as “working God’s work with God” or “co-creating.” You’ll also explore in greater depth Hildegard’s teachings about evil.

As you’ll discover, the seven main chakras represent your own inner doors of strength or, if they remain underdeveloped, of weakness — whereby evil or shadow energy enters your being if you allow it. Matthew will also explain how the entrance of the shadow or misdirected chakra corresponds to the seven capital sins.

You’ll also discover how focusing on the seven main chakras on the one hand and the corresponding seven capital sins on the other helps you name your inner powers — and employ them in your struggle with evil.

In this module, you’ll discover:

• The concept of Via Creativa, or co-creating with God
• How the competing concepts of virtues (energies, habits) and vices (wrestling with evil) reveal the meaning of true strength
• The importance of art as meditation, also known as the way of the prophets
• A deeper dive into the concepts of Via Transformativa, eco-justice, eco-spirituality, and the battle with patriarchy
• Ways to develop your capacity for co-creating with Spirit and your inner self
• How to bring the 7 chakras alive in us — to stand up to the 7 capital sins, or shadow energies, that come at us from all sides as well as from within
• Practices for developing the co-creator within

In this session, Matthew will welcome Sister Joan, a Benedictine prioress of Hildegard’s tradition whose community is alive and well in Erie, Pennsylvania.

Sister Joan lectures and writes extensively and authored the forward to Matthew’s most recent book on Hildegard, Hildegard of Bingen: A Saint for Our Times.

Her most recent book isThe Monastic Heart, which brings forth her and Hildegard’s Benedictine lineage with over 50 meditations on dimensions their lineage addresses, such as Silence and Beauty, Community and Solitude, Bells (on remembering), Manual Labor and the Purpose of Work, and Perseverance and Peacemaking.

Sister Joan will lead the class and address such questions as: What does Hildegard bring to today’s spiritual crises? And how does Hildegard speak to us today?

In this module, you’ll be prompted to explore questions including:

• What elements are there in the 1500+ years of the Benedictine tradition that speak deeply to us today — and that we can use in our everyday lives?
• How did these practices play out in Hildegard’s life and teachings — and how can they play out in our own?
• In what ways did Hildegard resist patriarchy in her day?
• Which lessons from Hildegard’s ahead-of-her-time philosophies can you apply to your own life?

When Matthew and British scientist Rupert Sheldrake sat down together to dialogue on angels and their role in the cosmos for the book The Physics of Angels, the two chose to interact around three major teachers of angels — Denis the Areopagite, Thomas Aquinas, and Hildegard of Bingen.

Much of what Hildegard teaches resonates with the teachings of Lorna Byrne of Ireland, present-day teacher and encounterer of angels. For instance, Hildegard believed that angels don’t have wings like birds, but are more “like flames hovering in the power of God... their nature is a glowing burning.”

Here are a few examples of Hildegard’s angel teachings:

• Angels admire human work and workers
• Angels are eager to help humans at this time, but because humans are not asking them for help, there are many unemployed angels in the world today
• You can make contact with angels through intuition and creative work

Matthew will also guide you to explore more of the shamanism of Hildegard’s Wild Woman teachings that emanate from her and from Dr. Clarissa Pinkola Estés.

In this module, you’ll also discover:

• How modern-day angels are alive and well — and how a live cosmology is displacing a mechanical view of the Universe
• The ways angels play an important role in evolutionary history and in our own creativity as our muses
• How you can use creative work, insight, and intuition to call on angels for assistance
• The ways Hildegard’s shamanic roots contributed to her work, and how they can contribute to your work today
• What you can learn from Thomas Berry’s observation that if the human species is to survive in this time of climate change and more, we need fewer priests and professors — and more shamans
• A guided practice to invoke the angels

There are many practices that allow you to ingest Hildegard’s teachings more fully in mind, soul, and body. Matthew will guide you to explore and implement some of them in class. For example, you’ll meditate and journal on succinct images from Hildegard’s writings.

Hildegard’s writings are full of these fresh and profound namings — and Matthew will guide you to explore them in the intuitive manner in which Hildegard shares them.

You’ll also chant or create a mantra from Hildegard’s words, allowing her music to roll over you. Perhaps you’ll write a poem to her, or simply be inspired by her to work through a current life issue.

In this module, you’ll:

• Journey deeper into the poetic teachings Hildegard shares with us to give birth to what she awakens in us
• Awaken to your own capacity to create new images and namings of your journeys
• Explore practices to use and develop future soul-making, including creating your own “I am” poem based on Hildegard and the Celtic tradition

Hildegard was once again ahead of her time in believing that healing the body begins with self-healing of spirit.

This week, Matthew will share the work of Dr. Wighard Strehlow, author of Hildegard of Bingen’s Spiritual Remedies, which presents many of Hildegard’s teachings on healings. He also co-authored Hildegard of Bingen’s Medicine with Dr. Gottfried Hertzka.

Together, Dr. Hertzka and Dr. Strehlow worked at the Hildegard Center in Allensbach on Lake Constance in southern Germany, a clinic of holistic healing based on Hildegard’s remedies that successfully treated thousands of patients for over 40 years.

Dr. Strehlow gathered 35 spiritual forces of the human soul from Hildegard’s writings meant to cure the soul within. He believes that recovering Hildegard’s insights into cultivating the health of body and spirit may provide solutions to many challenges that currently frustrate Western medical science.

In this class, you’ll explore some of these teachings from both Hildegard and Dr. Strehlow.

Matthew will also address the charge that Hildegard was anti-Semitic, largely based on some anti-Semitism sentiments in her first book, Scivias. Did her anti-Semitism persist or did she outgrow it as she matured? Matthew will guide you to discuss this question and the healing Hildegard herself underwent.

As Matthew often says, we should not put our ancestors on pedestals by ignoring their clay feet, but name them so we do not go down the same path.

In this module, you’ll explore:

• How Hildegard instructs us to address psychological trauma, emotional distress, and other maladies of the soul that often lead to illness and chronic diseases
• Maladies — such as pre-cancer — through the lens of Hildegard’s medicines
• The fact that the gospels themselves have some anti-Semitism in them (especially John’s gospel, the last gospel written)
• Why a critical eye for anti-Semitism is required of all Christians at all times
• An appropriate practice that will be shared

Matthew calls Hildegard the “grandmother of the Rhineland mystics.”

In this final module, you’ll discover why Hildegard told her sisters near her death, “please don’t forget me.”

Unfortunately, Hildegard’s work was not liberally disseminated after she died. It seems her sisters put more emphasis on preserving her letters and talks, books and healing remedies, than on spreading them abroad. Of course, there was no printing press then.

Nevertheless, Hildegard represents a high point of Creation Spirituality’s return to the West after the dualism of Platonists like St. Augustine and others. Such spiritual ancestors as Francis of Assisi, Thomas Aquinas, Mechthild of Magdeburg, Meister Eckhart, Julian of Norwich, and Nicholas of Cusa all developed the Creation Spirituality tradition of Hildegard, whether or not they were conscious of her writings and teachings.

Matthew will guide you to explore these nondualistic and creation-centered mystics who came after Hildegard. This lineage thrived until the bubonic plague of the 14th century — when Julian of Norwich fought tooth and nail to keep it alive, but was ignored for hundreds of years.

You’ll discover wisdom passed on to us through the Creation Spirituality lineage, all in the spirit of Hildegard of Bingen, by luminaries including:

• Francis of Assisi, Thomas Aquinas, Mechthild of Magdeburg
• Meister Eckhart and Julian of Norwich
• Nicholas of Cusa
• Plus, you’ll meditate while contemplating contemporary Creation Spirituality mystics, including Thomas Merton and Mary Oliver

This session offers you an opportunity to participate in a final hour-long live Q&A with Matthew.