Hildegard: the Key to Creativity

Teri Degler • August 3, 2020

After more than 800 years in obscurity, Hildegard of Bingen has in recent years caught the modern imagination. Back Lane Studios has featured the 12thcentury abbess in our Extraordinary Women Series at the Revue Cinema, and on each occasion, audience members expressed the wish to learn more about this remarkable polymath and her work. After a mystical experience in her 40s, she embarked on one of the most creative outpourings in history – composing music, poetry and the first known morality play. She wrote theological books and was the only medieval woman to preach openly to a mixed audience; she also explored the sciences – medicine, botany and cosmology.

In a series of three Sunday afternoon lectures at Back Lane Studios at 9 Neepawa Ave. in Toronto, we will look more closely at her life, the art in her manuscripts and her music. Space is limited. Tickets for all three lectures: $40 In advance on Eventbrite.  Buy tickets to the first lecture only: $15 on Eventbrite. Tickets at the door, if available: $20 each lecture. Coffee or tea are included.

Hildgard’s Life, Mysticism, & Creativity with author Teri Degler:

 Sunday, Sept. 15, 3 p.m.

Hildegard wrote extensively about the Sophia as the divine feminine

Following a screening of the documentary In the Symphony of the World: A Portrait of Hildegard of Bingen, Teri will lead an in-depth discussion of the film, exploring Hildegard’s profound mystical experience, the transformation in consciousness it triggered and creative output it sparked, rivaled only by Leonardo Da Vinci’s.

The afternoon’s discussion will also explore what we can learn from Hildegard’s experience and how we can use it to enrich our daily lives. Teri has been writing about extraordinarily creative women saints and mystics for over three decades. Hildegard has long been her favorite.

Hildgard’s Art with Manuscript-scholar Rebecca Golding:

Sunday, Sept. 29, 3 pm.

The first page of the original 12th-century copy of Hildegard’s work, Scivias

The first page of the original 12th-century copy of Hildegard’s work, Scivias, doesn’t include words but instead displays an image. Adorning the page is a self-portrait of Hildegard composing her visions on a wax tablet (the scrap paper of the Middle Ages) and, perhaps shockingly for an enclosed nun, a male monastic sits beside her. This is only the first of many unprecedented illustrations in her works —unprecedented for their composition, iconography and abundant images of woman.

Emerging in these illustrations are ideas that resonate today: Hildegard’s unusual views on the position and role of women, the importance of the environment, and an original and holistic approach to medicine, the body and the cosmos. In this talk, Rebecca will help uncover Hildegard’s visual language by placing her illustrations in the context of 12th-century art and, in particular, art produced by or for women.

Hildgard’s Music with the Trio Cordium Voces (Voices from the Heart): Sunday, Oct. 6, 3 p.m.

Three medieval music specialists, Krystina Lewicki (voice, plucked strings featuring the bandura, and hand drums), Linda Falvy (voice, bells, and drones) and Rebecca Enkin (voice, recorder and drones) will discuss and perform a selection of Hildegard’s compositions.

Krystina Lewicki with her bandura

Their program will include poetry readings and sample writings, and highlight a number mystical chants from Hildegard’s 70-song cycle known as the Celestial Harmonies. Cordium Voce has created special arrangements of these pieces, featuring solos, trios and instrumental music. The trio met singing with Cantores Celestes choir several years ago, and share a love of chant, especially the mystical compositions of Hildegard


 

New book on Gopi Krishna launched

By Teri Degler • June 21, 2023
Gopi Krishna—A Biography: Kundalini, Consciousness and Our Evolution to Enlightenment

Blast the Rubble

By Teri Degler • July 27, 2022
Blast the Rubble from the Pathway to Joy Yesterday a young woman was talking to me about her boyfriend breaking up with her. She was hurt and sad about the break-up but it seemed to me she was even sadder about how this was going to affect her in the future. “I’m afraid,” she said, “that I am going to start putting up walls.” Up to this point in her life she said, “I have gone into every relationship with a completely open heart – no holds barred; just absolutely open to exploring all the possibilities….” She was not, she thought, going to be able to do that anymore. “That’s what happens, you know,” she said as only a 20-something can say to a seemingly clueless 60-something, “people reach a point where they put up walls. They do it to protect themselves.” This probably doesn’t seem to be a particularly startling insight to most of us. But what I think was truly insightful about this young woman’s observation was that she was truly and deeply lamenting it. These carefully constructed, impenetrable rock and mortar constructions were going to limit her: close off her openness; curtail her spontaneous joy. As long as these walls existed she would not be able to feel love, to experience it, to be awash in it the way she once had. And even if a time might come when she’d feel safe enough to tear them down, she would find rubble strewn over pathways that once would have been free and easy traveling… We all know that erecting walls doesn’t just keep us from feeling hurt; it does to our emotions exactly what chopping off the red from one end of a rainbow and violet from the other would do to our vision. But we might not think about the fact that it also restricts our creative ability. It’s like one of those laws you had to memorize in high school chemistry class: The degree to which you suppress your emotions is inversely proportional to the degree to which you are able to express yourself. In my workshops I sometimes say, “There’s no art without heart”. Corny as this saying may be, it remains true. So let us examine ourselves. Ask a hard question: “Do I truly feel with the intensity that I once did?” If the answer is no, be brave, seek out old hidden walls, tear them down, and clear the rubble from the pathways to your heart. Then take up paintbrush, pen, drum, or dancing shoes and express your Self.

Body Love

By Teri Degler • July 27, 2022
Body Love, Oh Body Love I’ve been going to the same gym for many, many years. In the women’s section there is a large, wide-rimmed whirlpool. Women loll about, stretch out, submerge themselves, or just dangle their feet in the hot, bubbling water. Almost everyone is naked. Some are towel-less; some are towel-wrapped. This distinction does not blur over time. The women who are happy naked, remain happily naked. The women who are not, are not. I am among the latter. For many women there is not any great significance to being in this group. Some are just naturally modest; for others it’s cultural or just a way of being raised. There is, however, a great significance to being in the other group. All of these women are, to one degree or another, comfortable with their bodies. Some are trim, fit, and slim. There are even a few who preen a bit – not in any sexual way – but as if to say, “Hey, I’ve busted my butt to get this butt, and I’m proud of it!” Others are frankly, honestly, openly, unashamedly obese – and, as I slip up my towel and slide my body down in a move so carefully orchestrated that it leaves not an inch of naked flesh exposed – how I envy them. Once submerged, the tune of that old Supreme’s song “Baby Love” often comes to me. Only the words aren’t baby love; they are body love, oh body love, I need you, oh how I need you. The irony of the fact that I still don’t completely accept my physical self is that I have spent the last three decades of my life working at being in my body. The idea that the body is a temple is fundamental to my spiritual practice. It is based on the ancient yoga philosophy that says the human body is a microcosm of the cosmos and, as such, is being propelled along its spiritual path by the Divine – known, in this tradition, as Shakti. The human body is, in this sense, a container for creative force of the cosmos. A spiritual path like this shouts out the need for being able to be in and thus experience the body. I have come to believe that this is true, not just for my path, but for all spiritual paths. Elements of Christianity, Judaism, and many other traditions teach the idea that the Holy Spirit – call it prāna, chi, ruach ha-kodesh – is the power of the divine that is with us, the power that calls us, moves us…. Clearly the more comfortable we are with our bodies, the more easily we can be in them – feeling and responding to this holy force.
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