A 12th-century German mystic and philosopher, Hildegard is being rediscovered as a musical composer and as a prophet of the environmental movement. In her visions, she saw God in all living things; she believed that human beings can only find inner peace if they recognize their spiritual unity with animals and plants. Today, Hildegard's insights into the human psyche seem remarkably modern.

Born to a wealthy family in 1098, tithed to the Church and delivered into the life of an anchorite at age seven, Hildegard was uniquely gifted with visual and auditory experiences of God for perhaps all of her 87 years. But not until a riveting command at the age of 42 did she gradually and reluctantly accept God's invitation to speak, challenge, and console in God's name. The result - a rich legacy of books, music, arts, holistic healing, and theology - is thriving today.

A vivid description of Hildegard's visions. She wrote, or dictated, descriptions of what she saw along with explanations of what it meant. These texts are covered at some length, and they are interesting for what appears to have been an almost surrealistic gap between the visionary's highly fantastic, sharply described images and the lucid, humane religious principles she derived from them. There is no trace of the skeptic in the author's treatment of Hildegard.