The Woman Who Heard the Music of Another Realm: Hildegard of Bingen and the Song Beneath Creation (Part 3)
Imagine standing in a stone chapel lit only by candles. Outside, darkness settles over the forests of the Rhine. Inside, the first clear note rises from a circle of Benedictine women, echoing upward through vaulted ceilings until the entire room seems to vibrate with sound. For a fleeting moment, the music feels almost too beautiful to belong to this world. It seems to come from somewhere beyond it. Hildegard of Bingen believed that was exactly what was happening.
Over the past two weeks, we have followed Hildegard from her earliest childhood visions of the Living Light through her extraordinary understanding of creation as a living reflection of the Creator's wisdom. We explored her conviction that the visible and unseen worlds continually overlap, that forests, herbs, gemstones, rivers, and even the human body participate in a Divine order sustained from moment to moment by the Creator. We also examined her careful approach to healing, spiritual discernment, and the ancient Christian understanding that the material world can become an instrument of grace without ever becoming an object of worship.
Yet perhaps Hildegard's greatest gift was not what she saw, nor even what she wrote. It was what she heard. If her visions revealed the unseen world to her eyes, her music sought to give it a voice. Through melody, poetry, and worship, she sought to express realities that ordinary language could scarcely contain.
Hildegard’s Music
One of the most remarkable features of Hildegard's testimony is that she did not regard her music as the product of extraordinary musical talent alone. Like her theological writings, she believed her compositions arose within the Living Light itself. During her visions, she described receiving not only symbolic images and profound understanding, but also words and melodies that seemed to arrive already complete. Rather than laboriously constructing hymns note by note, she often portrayed herself as receiving them much as a scribe receives a dictated text. Her task was not primarily to invent, but to faithfully record what she believed had been revealed.
Interestingly, this experience bears some resemblance to certain forms of inspired or automatic writing reported across other cultures, in that the recipient experiences ideas or words as received rather than consciously composed (Chinese fuji spirit writing, Spanish Kabbalistic traditions, and modern Spiritualism). The similarity, however, largely ends there. Hildegard remained fully awake and self-aware, consistently attributing everything to the Creator rather than to independent spirits or altered states of consciousness. More on all that in a later post!
Hildegard insisted that these experiences did not occur while she was asleep, in ecstatic trances, or in a state of separation from ordinary awareness. She repeatedly emphasized that she remained fully conscious, seeing and hearing with what she called "the eyes and ears of the inner person" while remaining aware of the physical world around her. The melodies, like the visions themselves, appeared within the Living Light, carrying with them an immediate understanding of their spiritual meaning. To Hildegard, music was not merely a decoration for worship. It was one more language through which Divine realities could become audible within the created world.
Ancient Christianity has long spoken of heavenly worship in musical terms. The prophet Isaiah heard the seraphim crying, "Holy, holy, holy." The Book of Revelation describes the songs of angels and saints surrounding the throne of the Creator. The Church Fathers frequently portrayed earthly liturgy as a participation in that eternal worship rather than a human performance offered in isolation. Hildegard's own descriptions fit naturally within this ancient tradition. She did not claim to compose music that competed with heaven. She believed she was catching faint echoes of music that had always been there.
If Hildegard's visions made her one of history's great mystics, her music may be the most overlooked aspect of her extraordinary gifts. Even among people who are familiar with her writings, relatively few realize that she composed more surviving music than almost any other medieval composer whose work has reached us intact. More than seventy liturgical songs, along with what is widely regarded as the first surviving morality play set entirely to music, still exist nearly nine centuries after the women of her convent first performed them. That accomplishment alone is remarkable.
What makes it even more remarkable is why Hildegard said she composed them. She never claimed to be a musical genius in the modern sense of the word. She did not describe herself as an exceptionally talented composer who simply possessed a rare artistic gift. Instead, she consistently portrayed herself as someone who was listening. The melodies, she believed, were not inventions springing from her own imagination. They were echoes of a greater harmony that already existed within the unseen realms. For Hildegard, music was not entertainment. It was a revelation.
She believed that before humanity fell from communion with the Creator, all of creation existed in perfect harmony. Human beings, Divine beings, and the natural world participated together in a cosmic song that reflected the order, beauty, and joy of the Divine. Although that harmony had been fractured, traces of it remained. Sacred music offered fleeting moments in which human beings could once again perceive, however imperfectly, the music of the unseen world. That may sound poetic to modern ears. To Hildegard, it was literal.
She believed music could awaken something within the human soul that had nearly been forgotten. Singing was not simply an act of worship. It was a participation in a reality that already existed beyond ordinary perception. When the sisters of her convent raised their voices together, Hildegard believed they were joining a song that had never ceased, one already resounding throughout the invisible dimensions of creation.
One of my favorite stories from her life beautifully illustrates how deeply she held this conviction. Near the end of her life, Hildegard became involved in a conflict with Church authorities after she permitted the burial of a nobleman in the cemetery at her convent. Other religious leaders believed the man had died under excommunication and therefore should not receive a Christian burial. Hildegard, however, was convinced that he had sincerely reconciled with the Creator before his death.
Refusing to exhume his body, she accepted the consequences. Those consequences were severe. An interdict was placed upon her convent, prohibiting the sisters from publicly celebrating parts of the liturgy and, most painfully for Hildegard, forbidding them from singing their sacred music. To many people, that punishment might seem relatively minor. To Hildegard, it was devastating.
She wrote passionate letters defending sacred music, arguing that to silence song was to obscure one of humanity's greatest gifts. Music, she insisted, was not ornamental. It reminded humanity of its true origin and destiny. It reflected the harmony of the unseen realms and helped restore what had been fractured within the human soul. Eventually, the punishment was lifted, but the episode reveals just how profoundly she understood music's spiritual significance.
There is something deeply moving about that story. A woman who claimed to spend her life glimpsing the invisible world considered the loss of music almost unbearable. That alone should make us pause to consider the importance of music.
Interestingly, modern neuroscience has also begun uncovering remarkable insights into music's effects on the human brain. It influences memory, reduces stress hormones, improves mood, strengthens social bonds, and even reaches patients who have advanced dementia who no longer respond to ordinary conversation. Music appears capable of accessing regions of human consciousness that almost nothing else does. Hildegard would not have found those discoveries surprising. She believed music reached places that words alone could never touch.
It is equally fascinating to compare her descriptions with reports from many contemporary paranormal experiencers. People who have undergone near-death experiences frequently describe hearing music unlike anything found on Earth. They struggle to explain it, often saying it seemed alive, multidimensional, and infinitely beautiful. Others speak of choirs that appeared to surround them without any visible source, harmonies that conveyed meaning beyond language, or tones that seemed to resonate through their entire being rather than simply entering through their ears.
Individuals who report profound mystical experiences sometimes describe experiences remarkably similar. During deep contemplative prayer, moments of spontaneous spiritual awakening, or unexplained paranormal encounters, they occasionally report hearing music with no identifiable physical origin. Sometimes it resembles distant singing. Sometimes it consists of tones that seem simultaneously simple and impossibly complex. Others describe what feels less like hearing music and more like becoming aware that reality itself is somehow musical.
Those accounts immediately bring Hildegard to mind. It is impossible to conclude with any certainty that every such experience shares the same source; however, the recurring theme of transcendent music appearing across centuries, cultures, and religious backgrounds is hard to dismiss. Whether these experiences reflect glimpses into spiritual reality, extraordinary states of consciousness, or some combination of factors we do not yet understand, they raise fascinating questions worthy of thoughtful exploration.
Hildegard herself might encourage that exploration, provided it remained rooted in humility. She never pursued visions for their own sake. She never chased extraordinary experiences. She never suggested that people should seek altered states of consciousness or supernatural manifestations simply because they were unusual. Instead, she understood every genuine encounter with the unseen as drawing attention away from itself and toward the Creator.
That distinction remains just as important today. Our culture often encourages us to collect experiences. We chase bucket lists, paranormal investigations, retreats, workshops, and ever more extraordinary moments that promise to transform us. There is nothing inherently wrong with curiosity, and I certainly would not be writing this blog if I believed there was no value in exploring the mysteries of the unseen world. But Hildegard gently reminds us that mystery is never an end in itself. Its purpose is transformation. Perhaps that is why her music still moves listeners nearly nine hundred years later.
Modern people, even those with little interest in medieval history, often describe her compositions as haunting, luminous, strangely timeless, and unlike anything they have heard before. The melodies rise and fall with an almost otherworldly freedom, refusing the predictable patterns our ears expect. Listening to them can feel less like hearing a performance and more like standing at the edge of another world, catching faint echoes drifting across a veil we cannot quite cross. Whether that impression arises from musical genius, profound spirituality, or some combination of both is ultimately for each listener to decide. For Hildegard, however, there would have been no separation between those possibilities. Beauty itself was evidence. Harmony itself was a sign. Music itself was one more reminder that the visible world is not the only world. Sometimes, if we become still enough to listen, another song can almost be heard beneath our own.
Why Hildegard Matters Today
Modern society often sorts extraordinary experience into narrow categories that leave very little room for mystery to remain intact. If someone reports visions, they are quickly labeled either psychologically unstable or spiritually gifted. If someone describes unexplained healing, it must be either a coincidence or a miracle. If someone senses an unseen presence, they are either imagining things or perceiving something beyond ordinary perception. The instinct is always to resolve ambiguity, to assign a label, to close the question as quickly as possible so that the world feels orderly again.
Hildegard of Bingen resists all of those tidy conclusions. She lived in a world that did not separate the physical and spiritual as sharply as we often do. Yet, she also did not treat every unusual experience as equally trustworthy or equally meaningful. Her life sits in a rare middle space that feels increasingly unfamiliar in contemporary culture. She neither dismissed the unseen realm nor romanticized it, and she certainly did not attempt to reduce it into a system that could be controlled through technique or desire.
Instead, she lived as though reality itself was layered, alive, and constantly communicating, while also insisting that every message must be weighed carefully against truth, humility, and its fruit in the human soul. That balance is precisely why she still matters.
In both modern Christianity and modern paranormal culture, people often find themselves pulled toward extremes without realizing it. On one side is a purely material worldview that reduces all extraordinary experience to brain chemistry, coincidence, suggestion, or imagination. On the other side is an uncritical openness that treats every unexplained phenomenon as meaningful, benevolent, or spiritually authoritative simply because it feels powerful or emotionally compelling. Both approaches can leave people in danger in different ways. One strips the human experience of meaning entirely. The other assigns meaning without discernment, leaving us open to destructive entities.
Hildegard offers a third path. She assumes the unseen world is real. She assumes it is active. She assumes it intersects with human life in ways that can be deeply beautiful, profoundly healing, and occasionally unsettling. But she also assumes that not everything encountered in that realm is trustworthy, and not every experience is meant to be pursued. That tension runs through everything she wrote.
It is present in her visions, where symbolic imagery unfolds within the Living Light, yet always points beyond itself toward the Creator rather than toward the spectacle of the vision. It is present in her medicine, where plants, stones, and natural substances are used carefully within an ordered understanding of creation rather than as tools of control. It is present in her music, where harmony becomes a bridge between realms rather than a means of manipulating unseen forces. It is present even in her conflicts with authority, where her confidence in what she believed she had received never translated into arrogance toward others.
Perhaps most importantly, it is present in her understanding of the human person. Hildegard did not reduce people to bodies alone, nor did she dissolve them into purely spiritual beings detached from material existence. She saw human life as an integrated whole, where body, soul, and spirit were intimately connected, and where disruption in one dimension inevitably affected the others. Illness was not merely a mechanical failure. Suffering was not meaningless. Healing was not simply the removal of symptoms. Everything belonged within a larger moral and spiritual framework that involved a relationship with the Creator and alignment with Divine order. In this sense, she feels unexpectedly modern. Not because she anticipated contemporary science, but because she refused to fragment reality in ways that often feel artificial when we are confronted with profound experiences of meaning, crisis, beauty, or mystery.
There is another reason Hildegard continues to resonate, especially for readers interested in paranormal phenomena. She does not treat extraordinary experiences as entertainment. She treats them as a responsibility.
In many modern contexts, encounters with the unexplained are discussed with fascination but not necessarily with consequence. People share stories of apparitions, strange coincidences, prophetic dreams, or unexplained sensations as intriguing experiences that may or may not be connected to anything larger. Hildegard’s worldview is more serious. If the unseen realm is real, then it is not merely something to observe. It is something that forms and shapes human beings over time. This is why discernment is central to her perspective - not fear, not obsession, but discernment.
She consistently measures her experiences by their fruits (as the Scripture tells us to), asking whether they lead toward clarity or confusion, humility or pride, compassion or self-centeredness, order or disintegration. These are not abstract theological questions in her writing. They are practical tests for navigating a world where the boundary between visible and invisible is porous. That approach may be one of her most valuable contributions to our time.
We live in an era of unprecedented access to information about paranormal phenomena, mystical traditions, altered states of consciousness, and spiritual experiences across cultures. Yet with that access has come a kind of interpretive overload. Everything feels possible, significant, and potentially true. Without a framework for discernment, openness to these ideas can easily become overwhelming.
Hildegard offers structure without shutting down mystery. She affirms the reality of the unseen while insisting that reality has order. This may be what makes her writings so compelling today. They mirror a deep human need that has not changed across centuries. People continue to report experiences that feel meaningful but resist easy explanation. They continue to encounter moments when another layer of reality briefly becomes visible. They continue to sense that the physical world is not exhaustive. Hildegard does not resolve all of these questions, but she offers a way to hold them without collapsing into either dismissal or credulity.
There is also something quietly grounding in the way she lived her life. She did not withdraw from the world to chase visions. She did not use visions to escape the world. Instead, she allowed her experiences, whatever their ultimate source, to deepen her engagement with ordinary life. She advised rulers, corresponded with political leaders, cared for the sick, oversaw communities of women, wrote music, traveled to preach, and engaged deeply with the practical realities of her time. The extraordinary did not remove her from reality. It intensified her participation in it. That is perhaps the most important point of all. In Hildegard’s world, the unseen was never an escape from the seen. It was what gave the seen realm its meaning.
When modern readers encounter her today, whether through her visions, music, writings on nature, or accounts of the Living Light, they are not simply encountering a medieval mystic. They are encountering a worldview in which reality is larger, more layered, and more responsive than we are accustomed to. Whether one accepts her interpretations or not, she raises questions that remain difficult to ignore.
She asks:
What if the world is more alive than we perceive?
What if meaning is not something we impose, but something we learn to perceive?
What if the boundary between physical and spiritual reality is thinner than we have been taught to believe?
Hildegard does not answer those questions for us. But she insists they are worth asking. And in a cultural moment where so much of the unseen is either dismissed or sensationalized, that alone makes her voice worth hearing again.
Closing Thoughts on Hildegard
When we step back from Hildegard's life as a whole, something remarkable emerges beneath the details of history, theology, and biography. Her visions, her music, her healing work, her letters to emperors, her monastery gardens, her fascination with gemstones, and even the long illnesses that marked her life all belong to a single, coherent vision of reality. They are not isolated accomplishments. They are different expressions of the same way of seeing.
For Hildegard, creation was never silent. It spoke continuously in a language most people had forgotten how to hear. In her visions, that language appeared as the Living Light, radiant with meaning beyond words. In viriditas, it became the greening vitality flowing through forests, fields, bodies, and souls. In her medicine, it appeared in herbs, waters, and gemstones, each reflecting something of the Creator's wisdom. In her music, it became harmony itself, as though melody was not invented but remembered. And in her understanding of the unseen world, it revealed that everything visible rests within a far greater spiritual reality.
Taken together, these threads describe far more than a medieval mystic. They reveal a way of inhabiting the world, one in which matter and spirit are not rivals, but partners in a creation sustained from moment to moment by its Creator.
Whether one interprets Hildegard's experiences as mystical revelation, heightened consciousness, psychological phenomena, or something science has not yet learned to describe, her testimony gently challenges the modern assumption that reality is defined by what can be measured. She does not reject science or diminish the physical world. Instead, she invites us to wonder whether the universe may be richer, more symbolic, and more alive than we have imagined.
This is why her voice still matters to those of us drawn to questions of the paranormal and the unseen. Hildegard neither dismisses extraordinary experiences nor pursues them for their own sake. She approaches them with humility, discernment, and reverence, insisting that every vision, every insight, and every mystery must ultimately be measured by its fruits and oriented toward the Creator. The unseen, in her understanding, is not a realm to be mastered but a reality in which we already live.
That balance feels remarkably relevant today. We live in an age fascinated by near-death experiences, UFO/UAP encounters, hauntings, psychic phenomena, and altered states of consciousness. Hildegard reminds us that the most important question is not simply whether an experience is extraordinary, but whether it leads us toward truth, humility, compassion, and the One from whom all truth ultimately flows.
So, imagine, for a moment, that you are walking alone through the woods on an early autumn morning, as this Missouri girl often does. The air is cool, the leaves shimmer in shades of gold and crimson, and sunlight filters through the branches in long shafts. Everything appears perfectly ordinary. Then something changes. Not the forest itself, but your perception of it. For the briefest instant, the world seems almost impossibly alive. The trees no longer feel like scenery. The wind carries a depth you cannot explain. You become aware, if only for a heartbeat, that the visible world may be only the surface of something immeasurably deeper. No voice speaks. No vision appears. Yet you leave with the quiet conviction that reality is larger than it seemed only moments before.
Hildegard would not have found that experience unusual. She would simply have said that, for a moment, you became aware of what had always been there. And perhaps that is her greatest gift to us. Not that she teaches us to chase visions, collect crystals, or seek mystical experiences, but that she teaches us to see, to listen, and to recognize that creation is not empty but filled with meaning, sustained by the Creator, and quietly singing a song that began long before we were born.
Sometimes, if we become still enough, we may even hear an echo of that music ourselves. And once heard, it is very difficult to forget.
Grace and light to you all.