Hildegard of Bingen — viriditas, the green force that binds plant and soul

What is viriditas? The green force. Life that grows. What Hildegard of Bingen names thus in the eleventh century is not a botanical concept — it is an ontology. The vital greenness that runs through the plant, the animal, the human, the cosmos. The sap that rises is the same force as the soul that seeks. To cut the plant from its mystery is to cut the care from its source.

Who Hildegard of Bingen is

Born in 1098 in the Rhineland Rheingau, the tenth child of a noble family, Hildegard was entrusted from the age of eight to the hermit Jutta of Sponheim. She entered the orders, became abbess of the convent of Rupertsberg near Bingen, and received throughout her life visions she called the 'living light'. She did not hide them — she dictated them. Two great works came out of this: the Scivias (the knowledge of the ways, cosmological visions) and the Physica, a treatise of natural medicine that classifies 230 plants, 60 trees, 36 stones, 30 metals, 30 animals, according to their temperament, their savor, their warmth, their bond with the humors.

Hildegard never separates the body from the soul, nor the plant from its cosmos. For her, illness arises from an imbalance of viriditas — vital greenness withdraws, dryness sets in, black bile invades. To care is to restore the greenness. And the plant is the principal mediator: it carries within itself viriditas in concentrated form.

The Physica — 230 plants classified by temperament

The Physica, written between roughly 1150 and 1160, is the first great treatise of medicinal botany in a vernacular language (German) and Latin at once. In it Hildegard describes each plant along four axes: warmth (warm/cold), moisture (moist/dry), savor (bitter, sweet, acrid, astringent), and force (fortis/mollis — powerful or gentle).

A few examples from her system:

— Lavender: warm and dry, a purifier of the air and of the heart. It 'knows few illnesses' but strengthens understanding (intellectum hominis sublevat). — Noble chamomile: warm and moist, antispasmodic, 'warms the cold belly'. — Fennel: very warm and slightly moist, a digestive, a clarifier of vision. — Angelica: very warm, a protection against the miasmas of the plague. — St John's Wort: dry and warm, 'drives off black melancholy'.

What sets Hildegard apart from the Arabic or Greek herbals translated in her day (Dioscorides, Ibn Sina): she folds in a contemplative dimension. The plant is not a mere pharmacological tool — it is a being that carries a cosmic intention. Healing is collaboration, not extraction.

Viriditas in modern medicine

Victoria Sweet, an American physician, studied Hildegard's system for two decades. In her work Rooted in the Earth, Rooted in the Sky (2006), she shows that viriditas is functionally close to what modern biology calls anabolism — the body's capacity to build, to repair, to regenerate. When viriditas is strong, the body repairs itself. When it weakens, illness sets in.

This reading lets us reconcile Hildegard with contemporary medicine without reducing her thought. The Physica contains precise botanical observations — some prefigure modern findings (the antispasmodic action of chamomile, the antimicrobial properties of lavender, the effect of St John's Wort on mild depression).

But Hildegard refuses reduction. Her medicine is whole, or it is nothing. It is this integrity that makes her still readable today — not as a historical curiosity, but as a course-correction for a medicine that has forgotten the mystery.

Hildegard and spagyrics — the Paracelsus connection

Three centuries after Hildegard, Paracelsus would reread her work and recognize a kinship in it. He too refuses to cut the plant from its cosmos. He too classifies by temperament — but he adds the alchemical chemistry: the extraction of Salt, Sulphur, Mercury (the soul, spirit and body of the plant). Spagyrics is in part the heir of Hildegard, translated into hermetic language.

This thread — Hildegard → Paracelsus → modern spagyrics — is one of the least known lines of force in the Western tradition of plants. INFUSE looks to it in its posture: to take the whole plant, to honor its full retinue of constituents, to refuse the isolate that cuts the molecule from its context.

Contraindications and precautions

Hildegard's system is not a modern medical protocol. It does not replace a contemporary medical diagnosis. The dosages and preparations described in the Physica are historical indications — to be read as a testimony of tradition, not as a prescription.

Certain plants recommended by Hildegard can interact with modern medications (e.g. St John's Wort and SSRIs, lavender and anesthetics). Always consult a health professional before any course.