hi there!
I’m so glad you’re here with me today to learn about the medieval world — and hopefully, to do a little reflection on yourself as well. Today, we’re doing four things:
- First, we’re going to learn a little about Hildegard of Bingen, a medieval nun.
- Second, we’re going to look at some art.
- Third, and most importantly, we’re going to make some art of our own.
- Finally, we’re going to think about how the process made us feel.
Every activity from In Every Sense focuses on one or more specific sensory experiences — this one mostly deals with sight and vision, but we’re also going to be making some art of our own, which is kinesthetic since we’ll be moving our hands and bodies to do so. You can even vary the level of touch involved in this project — while the examples here will mostly be geared towards drawing with pen and paper or your favorite digital medium, you can also try some other things out like:
- making your mandala out of modeling clay
- drawing it in sand with your finger or a stylus
- using needle and thread to sew it on fabric
If that sounds good to you, let’s dive in.
A small and gentle reminder: as always, these activities are more about how the act of creation makes you feel (especially since these are the “creation” mandalas) and less about the thing you’re making. Together, let’s try to focus more on the act of creating something new and less about whether or not it looks “good” or “right.” I’ll get into why I want us to focus on this a little bit more in just a moment, but first, let’s get started.
part 1: learn a little
Hildegard of Bingen (1098-1179) was a nun and later abbess living in what is now western Germany, along the Rhine. She wrote a number of very important religious works during her lifetime, many based on the visions she said she received from God. Yet she had a lot to say about a lot of other topics — she was a musical composer and wrote an entire musical play as well as quite a bit of liturgical music for use in religious services. She also wrote a number of treatises on medical topics, ranging from explanations of the human body to a catalogue of herbs to be used to treat various illnesses and maladies. She even invented her own constructed language with its own alphabet.
The big text we’ll be taking a look at today is Hildegard’s Scivias, a book she wrote detailing many of her visions. It is perhaps her most famous work and was written down in a number of manuscripts that are all beautifully illustrated. The most elaborate one was lost in World War II, but the photographs of it taken before its disappearance are good enough in quality that scholars were able to make color facsimiles that we can now study.
Scivias is a book of both creation and destruction — it details both the birth of the universe and the apocalypse, as well as a narrative of the death of Jesus in the middle. There are also a number of songs that later became part of the Ordo Virtutum, the musical play that Hildegard wrote. Today, we’ll be focusing on creation, hence the name of the activity. Scivias describes the creation of the universe in really inventive terms, and the writing is very image-based. The illustrations that accompany the text are really interesting as well. Scholars aren’t quite sure whether Hildegard was directly involved in making them — some of the manuscripts date from right around the time of her death — or to what extent she would have been involved in making them. The images could have been based on drawings she made, or maybe on drawings some nuns in her abbey made based on her instructions. Or, they might be based solely on the text, and she wasn’t involved at all. Either way, these images are really quite beautiful and honestly sort of mesmerizing. Let’s take a look at some of them together.
part 2: look at some art
Our first picture from Scivias depicts the creation of the universe — it’s often called “the cosmic egg,” based on Hildegard’s description of it in the text. The funky-looking picture you see on the home page is based on this, actually — it’s one of my favorites. I think the cosmic egg is pretty neat for a couple of reasons — first, the image of an egg gives us this sense of incubation and birth, but also a sense of fragility. That gives us a lot to think about when we imagine how Hildegard thought about the world. The other thing I like is all the different layers — the flames, the little red urchin-like things, the stars, the swirly bits in the middle. I’m not sure what to make of it all, to be honest, but I sure think it looks neat, and it makes me think about what I think the start of the universe looked like. What could the Big Bang have looked like? Could it have had swirly bits and stars? Maybe! OK, let’s hold on to those thoughts for a moment, and take a look at the next image.
Our next picture is of Hildegard’s vision of the choirs of angels. In many visions of the Christian heaven, the angels are in many different orders in a hierarchy, with all different names. There are nine kinds, including: angels, archangels, seraphim, and cherubim. Here they are in concentric circles — not so different from the layers of the cosmic egg — all looking different from each other. Some look like the modern idea of an angel — a person with wings — but some, closer to the middle, seem to be all covered with wings and eyes, which is more in line with some biblical descriptions in which they certainly don’t look much like people at all. I like that progression from the familiar to the unfamiliar which is shown here — it reminds me of the act of creation. Creating things sometimes brings us into unfamiliar territory — after all, we’re making something that wasn’t there before. Let’s keep that progression in mind as well as we keep looking.
part 3: make some art
First, let’s grab whatever you like to draw with — paper and pencil or pen or marker, a tablet and stylus, your phone and your finger, MS Paint, anything. Or, like I mentioned above, you could figure out another medium that works best for you — so long as you feel like you can create simple shapes in concentric circles.
Now, think of a moment of creation, whatever that means to you. It could be the world, like Hildegard did, it could be an idea, an emotion, anything — like the moment you had a great idea, the moment you realized what you wanted to do with your day today, the moment you met someone you really like being around, anything. Just a moment in which something new happened that hadn’t happened before.
We’re going to draw that moment, mandala-style, like Hildegard. That is to say: we’ll draw concentric layers of repeating shapes and patterns to depict this. Mandalas usually have some kind of radial symmetry, but if it doesn’t feel right to you, you don’t have to abide by that. To keep it easy, we’ll use simple shapes — I’ll put some of them here below to give you a place to start. You definitely don’t have to use these shapes, though!
You can move through your layers sequentially or in order of importance, and there can be as many layers as you like. I think I’m going to make five layers for mine.
While you’re drawing, try to focus more on the act of drawing the shapes rather than how good it looks. I want us to kind of use this as a meditative moment — so that we can really connect with the moment we’re thinking of. What did that moment feel like? How did you feel before? After? Right now, thinking about it, getting ready to draw, are you feeling some of those same feelings again?
If you think you’re ready, let’s draw. Clear your head, clear your workspace, take a deep breath, maybe turn on some relaxing music or at least shut the rest of the world out, and let’s explore your moment of creation. I’ll see you back here again when you’re done.
part 4: think it over
OK, we’re back. How was it? How did you feel? (I know I’m asking these questions rhetorically, but if you want to let me know how you felt — and I do want to know! — you can drop me a line here.)
Did you feel relaxed, or not so much? Were you able to focus less on the looks and more on the feeling? Do you feel like you got in touch with yourself a little bit more? Do you feel like you got in touch with the “moment” you drew? Take a moment and think about that.
Neat. Great thinking, and great art-making! We’re going to unpack one more level of this, now that we’ve done the thinking and the making. While doing this, you might have felt more in touch with the moment you were drawing. You might have even relived some of the emotions of that moment. And I bet you learned a little something new about that moment and about yourself — about how you felt in that moment and how you feel about it now.
The thing is, I think that many religious women of the Middle Ages actually felt really similar to the way you’re feeling right now when they made their art. And Hildegard is just one of those women — there were a lot of religious women in the Middle Ages in Europe, and they made an awful lot of art. And it seems to me that a lot of times they made it, not so that they would have something really pretty to look at, but because the act of making art can be a really spiritual one. That doesn’t mean that making this art in this way means that you have to think of yourself as “religious” or even “spiritual” — it means that when you make this art, you access something a little bit bigger than yourself. That’s all. Making art about a topic makes you think about that topic more deeply and engage with it — I hope you’ve felt that today. And I want you to know that by doing this today you are participating in a tradition that reaches back centuries — that’s pretty neat. And other people, from all kinds of spiritual traditions in all kinds of places, are doing this today with you as well. If you want to take a look at what some other people have made doing this activity, click here to see our gallery.
Thanks for spending time today with me, with Hildegard, and most of all, with yourself. I’ll see you next time.
If you tried out this activity, we’d love to see how it went. Click here to submit your art to our gallery.
P.S. If you enjoyed the cosmic egg image as much as I do, check out the Cosmic Embroidery activity. If you think you might want to explore ideas of creation and fragility a little bit more, head on over to the Guided Meditation activity. If you’re intrigued by what music Hildegard made, we’ll explore that in the Plainchant Together activity. If you want to spend a little more time with the images of Scivias, you might like the Coloring Pages activity. And finally, if you want to learn more about my research into how religious women in the Middle Ages felt about their art, click here.
