Hildegard: Prophet of the Cosmic Christ (Crossroad Spiritual Legacy Series)

Rating:
Summary: Hyperanalysis, of little real world use
Review: I got into Hildegard some time ago through her music of which I have several hours on CD. Then I read of her history. Interesting. Very young into the convent, correspondence with popes, anti-popes, etc. and lived to a ripe old age.

Next, I sometimes read items with which I disagree (as you can see from perusal of the Amazon.com pages.) Indeed, despite my hearty disagreement with some of it, I won't put the book down until I've completed it. After all, maybe in the final chapter, there'll be something I missed.

This however is among the rare books that I could not finish. Everything Hildegard did is hyperanalyzed, in Jungian psychobabble, to the point that I wouldn't recommend to any Hildegard fans that they waste their time with it; if you liked her before you read it, you won't once you've completed it. Then there's the "Cosmic Christ" concept which is a disguise for a New Age fantasyland.

There may be some good books on Hildegard from which you can come to your own conclusions as to the good woman's intents, objectives, and spirituality. This book reaches those conclusions for you, again in pretty vacuous pseudoscience. Read one of the others, not this one.

Rating:
Summary: A new, important window to the vision of a great mystic.
Review: Renate Craine's Hildegard is inspiring and really, a work of art in itself. Recognizing that Hildegard's descriptions of her visions and their meaning are both historically and culturally conditioned in the depths of the 12th century, and that reading her texts straight-on can be strange and confusing, Renate's commentary is truly a masterful translation for the modern western ear and idiom. Renate has the rare gift of timeless empathy that seems to easily transcend the centuries, opening up Hildegard's complex symbolic language and making new connections to things that I care about. I am especially grateful for her exposition of one central concept in Hildegard's writings, the Latin word "viriditas" (fecundity or "greening power"). Renate, a wise psychologist and spiritual director, shows how this ever-present divine gift and power of viriditas bridges the deepest levels of our psyche with the whole of creation and the cosmos. Renate explains Hildegard's vision of the cosmic Christ in plain language that suddenly reveals important connections to the Jungian archetypal world, to traditional Christian symbols, and to current, critically important ecological concerns. After reading Renate's book, I can't say enough about the importance of Hildegard's vision of God who is working everything out through Love in an interdependent cosmos, one that, at the limits of our human understanding, is always appearing as healing, celebrating, and revealing itself in the midst of suffering, death, Nature, and the paradoxical, eternal play of Shadow and Light.

Rating:
Summary: A new, important window to the vision of a great mystic.
Review: Renate Craine's Hildegard is inspiring and really, a work of art in itself. Recognizing that Hildegard's descriptions of her visions and their meaning are both historically and culturally conditioned in the depths of the 12th century, and that reading her texts straight-on can be strange and confusing, Renate's commentary is truly a masterful translation for the modern western ear and idiom. Renate has the rare gift of timeless empathy that seems to easily transcend the centuries, opening up Hildegard's complex symbolic language and making new connections to things that I care about. I am especially grateful for her exposition of one central concept in Hildegard's writings, the Latin word "viriditas" (fecundity or "greening power"). Renate, a wise psychologist and spiritual director, shows how this ever-present divine gift and power of viriditas bridges the deepest levels of our psyche with the whole of creation and the cosmos. Renate explains Hildegard's vision of the cosmic Christ in plain language that suddenly reveals important connections to the Jungian archetypal world, to traditional Christian symbols, and to current, critically important ecological concerns. After reading Renate's book, I can't say enough about the importance of Hildegard's vision of God who is working everything out through Love in an interdependent cosmos, one that, at the limits of our human understanding, is always appearing as healing, celebrating, and revealing itself in the midst of suffering, death, Nature, and the paradoxical, eternal play of Shadow and Light.