At Play in Creation: Merton's Awakening to the Feminine Divine. By Christopher Pramuk. Collegeville, MN: Liturgical Press, 2015. xii + 138 pages. $17.95 (paper).

Horizons ◽  
2016 ◽  
Vol 43 (1) ◽  
pp. 231-233
Author(s):  
Marc Lavallee
Keyword(s):  
The Feminine ◽  
Feminine Divine

scholarly journals For hendes ansigt skinnede som solen

1997 ◽  
Author(s):  
Britt Istoft
Keyword(s):  
Virgin Mary ◽  
Hildegard Of Bingen ◽  
Central Figure ◽  
Spiritual World ◽  
The Feminine ◽  
The World ◽  
Anima Mundi ◽  
Feminine Divine

The Gernman abbess and mystic Hildegard of Bingen (1098-1179) developped a richly nuanced theology of the feminine. At the heart of her spiritual world stands the numinous figure she called Sapientia or Caritas: Wisdom or Love, a theophany of the feminine aspect of the divine. In Hildegard's visionary work De operatione Dei, "The Book of Divine Works", written between 1163-1173, Caritas/Sapientia plays an important part. She is the central figure in five out of the ten visions, that comprises De operatione Dei. The first two visions picture Caritas as Anima Mundi, the world soul - the divine presense in the cosmos - and Creatrix, who creates the world by existing in it as an eternal, circling motion. The eighth vision presents Caritas/Sapienta as the "living fountain", that both quickens and reflects all creatures, and inspires the prophets, including Hildegard herself. The theme of the ninth vision is "Wisdom's vesture". Because Wisdom is both a cosmic and a microcosmic figure, her garb can represent the workmanship og either God or man. In the tenth vision Caritas rests in the center of the wheel of eternity and history, and is presented as the eternal archetype of the Virgin Mary. Besides being a theological necessity as mediator of creation, incarnation and salvation Hildegard's feminine divine also serves as a model for women, particularly consecrated virgins, who represent the feminine divine on earth.

scholarly journals "Imago expandit splendorem suum". Hildegard of Bingen’s Visio-Theological Designs in the Rupertsberg Scivias Manuscript

Eikon / Imago ◽  
2013 ◽  
Vol 2 (2) ◽  
pp. 1-68
Author(s):  
Nathaniel M. Campbell
Keyword(s):  
Hildegard Of Bingen ◽  
Salvation History ◽  
Visual Markers ◽  
Original Manuscript ◽  
The Feminine ◽  
Theological Discourse ◽  
Color Scheme ◽  
Feminine Divine ◽  
The Church ◽  
Significant Point

A significant point of  contention within  studies of  the twelfth-century visionary saint and Doctor of the Church, Hildegard of Bingen, is the question of her role in the production of the illuminated Scivias manuscript known as the Rupertsberg Codex. While current German scholarship has tended to preclude Hildegard’s hand, pre-war German scholars, who had access to the original manuscript before it was lost, and most modern Anglophone scholars have argued more or less strongly for  Hildegard’s influence on the design. This paper argues for Hildegard’s direction of the images based on their function as a theological discourse refracting the text. The images are not ancillary to or derivative of the work; they are integral to it. A key area of the manuscript design that reveals these authorial interventions is the color scheme. The use of certain colors, such as green and red, that have particular meanings in Hildegard’s symbolic vocabulary—even when at odds with the colors described in the recorded vision text—reveals the theological place of each image within Hildegard’s perception of salvation history. Furthermore, the extensive use of silver, gold, and blue in the manuscript can be understood both through Hildegard’s likely use of actual jewelry that contained enamel work and those metals, and through the theological meanings with which Hildegard imbues the metallic pigments. Such visual markers invested with theological significance thus argue for Hildegard’s design of the manuscript and aid the viewer- reader in interpreting the complex visual allegories at work in  Hildegard’s  often  enigmatic  visions. Finally, they reveal the dynamic ways in which Hildegard used the images to emphasize her theological insights into the feminine divine and its connection especially to her and her community  as  virgin members of a virgin Church.

scholarly journals The Aquatic Woman: The Role of Water and the Feminine Divine in Mia Couto’s Terra Sonâmbula

2017 ◽  
Vol 2 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Maisha Mitchell
Keyword(s):  
Civil War ◽  
National History ◽  
Daily Experience ◽  
Alternate Form ◽  
The Feminine ◽  
Women And Children ◽  
Fantastic Realism ◽  
Feminine Divine

Mia Couto's 1992 novel, Terra Sonâmbula, is known for its use of fantastic realism to convey the horrors of the Mozambican civil war and their effects. The supernatural invades the daily experience of the novel’s characters, and these move from the known world into a frequently aqueous and spiritual one. In this essay, I examine Couto's use of water, the supernatural, and the feminine and link these to African religious and cosmological origins. I see Couto's use of the black feminine aqueous divine as an alternate form of national history that gives voice to those who often go unheard in the chaos of war, particularly women and children.

Ponds, the Feminine Divine, and a Shift in Moral Register

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Coralynn V. Davis
Keyword(s):  
Women Characters ◽  
Female Characters ◽  
The Feminine ◽  
Bodies Of Water ◽  
Women's Knowledge ◽  
Feminine Divine ◽  
Women’S Knowledge

This chapter explores the meaning of ponds in Maithil women's tales. In many stories featuring ponds and occasionally, by extension, other bodies of water, female characters demonstrate special capacities. In Maithil women's folktales, ponds are often sites for the articulation of women's insights, as well as social and metaphysical agency in plots featuring male protagonists. Frequently, the trope of ponds shifts the imaginative register toward women's perspectives and to the importance of women's knowledge and influence in shaping their world. The tales in which such register shifts occur can be called “pond-woman tales” and the insightful women characters found in them “pond women.”

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