Let your eye live and grow in God,
and your soul will never shrivel.
You can count on it to keep you alive . . . awake . . . tender.
—Hildegard, Letter to Archbishop Arnold of Mainz
Humanity, take a good look at yourself.
Inside, you’ve got heaven and earth, and all of creation.
You’re a world—everything is hidden in you.
—Hildegard, Causes and Cures
When a person does something wrong and the soul realizes this, the deed is like poison in the soul. Conversely, a good deed is as sweet to the soul as delicious food is to the body. The soul circulates through the body like sap through a tree, maturing a person the way sap helps a tree turn green and grow flowers and fruit. —Hildegard, Scivias
Don’t let yourself forget that God’s grace rewards not only those who never slip, but also those who bend and fall. So sing! The song of rejoicing softens hard hearts. It makes tears of godly sorrow flow from them. Singing summons the Holy Spirit. Happy praises offered in simplicity and love lead the faithful to complete harmony, without discord. Don’t stop singing. —Hildegard, Scivias
O most honored Greening Force,
You who are rooted in the Sun;
You who lights up, in shining serenity, within a wheel
that earthly excellence fails to comprehend.
You are enfolded in the weaving of divine mysteries.
You redden like the dawn
and you burn: flame of the Sun.”
“Like blood, viriditas moves through human veins and without it, humans become weak and tired and they lack spirituality. It is restored only through eating; fortunately, she spells out which foods are harmful or useful. For example, feverfew has good viriditas and thus creates clear understanding, augments good blood,and aids digestion.”
The menstrual flow of a woman is her generating viriditas, her flowering, because, just like a tree by its viriditas produces flowers and leaves and fruits, so a woman by the viriditas of menstruation brings forth flowers and leaves as the fruit of her womb. (Transl. from Causae et Curae, in: 7)
Once a man is bald, no medicine can help because both the moisture and the viriditas that were in the skin of the scalp have dried up, and can never come back, whence the hair cannot regrow. (Transl. from Causae et Curae, in: 7)
When a woman is making love with a man, a sense of heat in her brain, which brings with it sensual delight, communicates the taste of that delight during the act and summons forth the emission of the man's seed. And when the seed has fallen into its place, that vehement heat descending from her brain draws the seed to itself and holds it, and soon the woman's sexual organs contract, and all the parts that are ready to open up during the time of menstruation now close, in the same way as a strong man can hold something enclosed in his fist.