Hildegard on the Anti-Christ, continued

We are meditating on Hildegard’s painting of the antichrist.  She paints an ugly head breaking loose from a mother figure and the head is topped with human dung.  

A monstrous and very black head appeared, having fiery eyes and ears like the ears of an ass and nostrils and mouth like the nostrils and mouth of a lion, crunching with a great jaw and cutting horribly like horrible iron teeth. 

Moving with “monstrous ugliness, it spreads a foul odor on the mountain” and “tears the institutions of the church to pieces with the crudest greediness” and causes bloody wounds on the thighs of mother church.  Who is this figure?

It is “the Antichrist, the son of injustice, the cursed one of the cursed ones.”  With it, death rushes into human institutions whether church, the supreme court or government.  SCOTUS is capable of becoming an antichrist, a source of chaos and corruption and injustice. Hildegard addresses the monster:

O you cave of injustice… your works seek the pit of hell.  You will live absorbed in your gluttony there and that hellish place will vomit forth stink.  The world will recognize in this stench the bitterness of death.

Hildegard presents an exaggerated and aggressive penis in the institution which signifies the toxic masculine of a one-sided and dominating patriarchy. 

Since the reptilian brain operates our sexuality, she is picturing the reptilian brain at work. Fascism is born of the reptilian brain for it is all about control, “I win, you lose.” Power for power’s sake.  Institutional violence.

She names the monster the “worst of beasts” who joins up with kings, dukes, leaders, and those with money and prestige.  It sounds like a presidential election.  This monster or antichrist steals land, destroys insight, and covers up the powers of the inner person to see truth.  This “devil has no power in good things, but only in evil things of eternal death.”

Hildegard is naming how humans can deliberately destroy institutions and spread chaos into human history.  Elections have consequences that spread far beyond our own private sphere.  Our interconnectivity applies to the sharing of grace and joy, but also to the sharing of rupture and evil. 

In this blunt and shocking and x-rated painting, Hildegard paints a powerful picture of the antichrist and in her fury calls it the “worst of beasts.”

Adapted from Matthew Fox, Trump & MAGA as Antichrist: A Handbook for the 2024 Election, pp. 81-84.

See Fox, Illuminations of Hildegard of Bingen, pp. 122-126.

And Fox, Sins of the Spirit, Blessings of the Flesh: Transforming Evil in Soul and Society.

Banner Image: Image of the Antichrist by Hildegard of Bingen. Found in Matthew Fox’s Illuminations of Hildegard of Bingen book.

Queries for Contemplation

Do you recognize today’s SCOTUS as a “cave of injustice” giving forth the “stench of the bitterness of death”?  If this can happen to the church in Hildegard’s day, she is telling us, it can happen to courts, congresses, politics and powerful institutions in our day.

Recommended Reading

Trump & The MAGA Movement as Anti-Christ: A Handbook for the 2024 Election

Matthew Fox tells us that he had always shied away from using the term “Anti-Christ” because it was so often used to spread control and fear. However, given today’s rise of authoritarianism and forces of democracide, ecocide, and christofascism, he turns the tables in this book employing the archetype for the cause of justice, democracy, and a renewed Earth and humanity.
From the Foreword: If there was ever a time, a moment, for examining the archetype of the Antichrist, it is now…Read this book with an open mind. Good and evil are real forces in our world. ~~ Caroline Myss, author of Anatomy of the Spirit and Conversations with the Divine.
For immediate access to Trump & The MAGA Movement as Anti-Christ: A Handbook for the 2024 Election, order the e-book with 10 full-color prints from Amazon HERE. 
To get a print-on-demand paperback copy with black & white images, order from Amazon HERE or IUniverse HERE. 
To receive a limited-edition, full-color paperback copy, order from MatthewFox.org HERE.
Order the audiobook HERE for immediate download.

Illuminations of Hildegard of Bingen

An introduction to the life and work of Hildegard of Bingen, Illuminations reveals the life and teachings of one of the greatest female artists and intellectuals of the Western Mystical Tradition.  At the age of 42, she began to have visions; these were captured as 36 illuminations–24 of which are recorded in this book along with her commentaries on them.
“If one person deserves credit for the great Hildegard renaissance in our time, it is Matthew Fox.”  – Dr Mary Ford-Grabowsky, author of Sacred Voices.

Sins of the Spirit, Blessings of the Flesh: Transforming Evil in Soul and Society

Visionary theologian and best-selling author Matthew Fox offers a new theology of evil that fundamentally changes the traditional perception of good and evil and points the way to a more enlightened treatment of ourselves, one another, and all of nature. In comparing the Eastern tradition of the 7 chakras to the Western tradition of the 7 capital sins, Fox allows us to think creatively about our capacity for personal and institutional evil and what we can do about them. 
“A scholarly masterpiece embodying a better vision and depth of perception far beyond the grasp of any one single science.  A breath-taking analysis.” — Diarmuid O’Murchu, author of Quantum Theology: Spiritual Implications of the New Physics