As the month of November rolls on, some of us living in the Northern hemisphere experience mental suffering more than usual. Contemporary medicine has coined the term Seasonal Affective Disorder. The acronym, very appropriately, is SAD.
I am in love with the month of November, with its bright foliage, the wood stove chirping away again, chestnuts and hot chocolate reappearing on my menu, the fog rising in the evening among the hills. So when SAD strikes I am always surprised and angry at it, that is, at the mood itself, even though I should know better.
Hildegard of Bingen (1098 – 1179) knew about November as a month which brings with itself some risks of imbalance. She describes the rising of sadness in this way: When the soul of the person feels something harmful to herself or her body, her heart, liver and blood vessels contract. Consequently, the harm rises like a cloud that overshadows the heart, and the person becomes sad.
Hildegard loved the image of the cloud, and she used it copiously. Her description of the rising of sadness as a cloud resonates very well with my own experience and understanding. It is medically sound that the cold weather creates a contraction in muscles and blood vessels, and I can assure you that when you are experiencing SAD you really feel that a dark cloud has come to take charge of you.
For the onset of the cold season, Hildegard suggests a diet with warm food, even overcooked, such as soups with spelt or einkorn. She also suggests eating chestnuts and drinking fennel tea, accompanied with the right kind of spices—those which dry the organs of the body, rather than inducing an excessive production of fluids inside it. Cheeses are not a good idea at this time of the year.
While I cannot judge on my own the medical value of Hildegard’s suggestions, I would like to point out their theological implications. For Hildegard, the mind and the body are profoundly interconnected, and it is completely obvious that the events pertaining to the body influence the mind. Thus, there is no point in trying to cure the mind without curing the body also, and there is equally no point in attributing the mood of sadness to some mistakes (“sins”) that one might have made, before analyzing the bodily circumstances.
Moreover, Hildegard found viriditas (greening power) and subtilitas (subtle power) in all creatures, each potentially instrumental for human health. Her notion of viriditas is incredibly close to the notion of the Holy Spirit as the immanent presence of the divine in the world. I wonder if she was ever accused of heresy on this point. It seems, in fact, that the various subtilitas are simply subdivisions of the one viriditas pervading the universe.
I can hardly avoid the impression that, in her understanding, God the universal healer is always at work, not as a master dictating exceptions to natural laws, but in and through the natural powers of creatures.
Researchers have shown that, in many cases, Hildegard was right on target about the curative properties of certain plants. The root of galangal, for example, which is a plant originating in the Malaysian peninsula, was known to Hildegard as a very costly spice which she used to contrast inner contractions and spasms — very helpful therefore in November — and this notion bears out with modern scientific research.
Let us take care of ourselves, friends, by letting God take care of us through so many creatures. It is too dangerous to live in a state of constant upset which harms the body – for example, because of political news. Balance should rather be always present to our mind as our guiding mantra. My fennel tea and boiled chestnuts wait for me now.
Banner image: A misty November day. Photo by BĀBI on Unsplash
Queries for Contemplation
How do you take care of yourself, bodily and mentally, at this time of the year?
Related Readings by Matthew Fox
Hildegard of Bingen, A Saint for Our Times: Unleashing Her Power in the 21st Century
Meditations with Hildegard of Bingen
Illuminations of Hildegard of Bingen
Hildegard of Bingen’s Book of Divine Works: With Letters & Songs
Original Blessing: A Primer in Creation Spirituality
Creation Spirituality: Liberating Gifts for the Peoples of the Earth
4 thoughts on “November: Sadness and Its Remedies”
To me, living in the northern hemisphere, November is the cruellest month despite the roasted chestnuts, the steel-cut oats porridge and Eliot’s opinion that “April is. . .” [https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/47311/the-waste-land]
However, spiritually, the sliding down into darkness of the Via Negativa is so perfectly in tune with the season and the spirit of Advent that, cruellest or not, November has already lost : Light will prevail.
Continued centering prayer (contemplativeoutreach.org) one to two times a day.
I have a loving family I contact, especially one daughter I talk to (text) twice a day. (I’m almost deaf, so texting is essential).
Also, I take Vitamin D-3, 2000 IU, once a day. (Check with your doctor to make sure that’s ok first).
And I have the continual reassurance of Mysticism, both direct and learned, as fundamental support.
Thanks for this. I really enjoyed your posts about the Beguines, too. I feel this November feeling like arthritis and cold, foggy weather. I like ginger and lemon tea, and extra omega 3s. (In the old days, cod liver oil, which has some omega 3s and vitamin D was recommended. Good especially if you cannot get into sunshine! Now there are vegetable alternatives.
Thanks for the way you keep addressing “wholeness”!