Greetings Kindred - Tomorrow starts my 2-week All-Souls road-trip – 1st to TX for MA Temple work - then to Camphill Kimberton to engage with Pychosophy. I cherish spending quality time with these dedicated communitites. I haven’t seen my MA folk since the Eclipse Convergence, so I look forward to being together with my beloved Soror & Fraters in the heart of Texas - The Homebase of The American Misraim - Our humble Grand Lodge of the United States of America. Many folks ask what is The Mysteria Mystica Americana? I see it as a Ritual Order of the New Mysteries of Anthroposophy, a source of Spiritual Wisdom & a Practice of Inner Development - A free Initiative cultivating Art, Science & Spirituality in the human soul, in service to the ‘eternal goals of the gods.’ Thru this work I strive to become a worthy collaborator for our highest cosmic evolution - That I may serve in the Temple, in Community, in the World, in all ways, in relationship with Spirit.
All Souls are Welcome to join us for our ~All Souls Festival~ A Hybrid In-person (in Texas) & on-line (zoom) Community Gathering w/ Mysteria Mystica Americana (MA) w/ special Guests Jeffrey Levy of the Louisville Waldorf School & CRC member; & Russell Blackstone Biodynamic Planting Calendar Primer for The Josephine Porter Institute Friday 1 November 2024 – New Moon/All Saints Day 7 pm Central Time (US and Canada) Go to the MA web site for the zoom code
And so it is that I will not be contributing here on Substack until I return on Martinmas 11-11-24 - & then only after the proper digestion. I leave you with this essay in honor of the birthday anniversary of the amazing spiritual artist: Hilma af Klint born 26 October in 1862:
Hilma af Klint was a Swedish artist, mystic, Theosophist turned Anthroposophist, whose esoteric work called forth new forms from the spiritual worlds. There was a similar interest in spirituality by other artists during this same period, including Wassily Kandinsky, Piet Mondrian, Kasimir Malevitch, & the French Nabis, in which many, like Hilma af Klint, were inspired by the Theosophical Movement. However, the artistic transition to the symbolic painting of Hilma af Klint came thru her without any contact with these contemporary modern movements. She was truly the first Western ‘Modern Artist’.
The works of Hilma af Klint are deeply esoteric, & her artistic work is a consequence of this. She became interested in the Theosophy of Madame Blavatsky & the philosophy of Christian Rosenkreutz. “No form can come into objective existence — from the highest to the lowest — before the imaginal ideal of this form — or, as Aristotle would call it, the privation of this form — is called forth. Before an artist paints a picture every feature of it exists already in his imagination; to have enabled us to discern a watch, this particular watch must have existed in its imaginal form in the watchmaker’s mind. So with future men”. (Blavatsky, Isis Unveiled 1:310) In 1908 she met Rudolf Steiner, the founder of the Anthroposophical Society, who was on a visit to Stockholm. Steiner introduced her to Spiritual Scientific practices regarding the Arts, which had an influence on her paintings later in life. In 1920, she met him again at the Goetheanum in Dornach. Between 1921 & 1930 she spent long periods working at the Goetheanum.
Until recently very little was known about Hilma af Klint & her mystical paintings. She was born outside of Stockholm in 1862 to an upper-middle-class family. After the death of her younger sister, an 18-year-old Hilma turned to esoteric spiritual movements like Theosophy & Rosicrucianism, bringing Christianity & Eastern philosophies into a commingling, with science & religion.
She regularly began to host séances to communicate with the dead. All the while she studied at the Academy of Fine Arts in Stockholm & became an accomplished landscape & portrait artist in her early years. This was her public art & how she earned her living. She was successful & talented enough to graduate from the academy with honors, & the school provided her with a shared studio right in the heart of the city’s art scene. The building also housed a salon, which, later in 1894, exhibited works by up-and-coming artist Edvard Munch.
It was sometime after the death of her sister in 1880, that Hilma af Klint formed a group called “The Five” or “The Friday Group.” This was an occult gathering of women who had ‘spirit world’ leaders, or ‘High Masters,’ called ‘Gregor, Clemens, Ameliel, Ananda & Esther’ among others inspiring their art. According to Hilma, in 1904, ‘Ananda’ told her to begin producing paintings from the Astral Plane. This, she was informed, would follow a period of preparing to mediate a message. Many of Hilma af Klint’s works were the expression of these sessions in which she said she channeled symbolic messages from the Masters.
“The pictures were painted directly through me, without any preliminary drawings and with great force. I had no idea what the paintings were supposed to depict; nevertheless, I worked swiftly and surely, without changing a single brushstroke”. ‘The Masters‘ tasked the women with a special mission that would ultimately transform the trajectory & very purpose of Hilma af Klint’s life: to convey the spiritual world through painting, & to design a temple to house the resulting works. The other members of the group declined the charge, cautioning that such a prolonged, intense engagement with the spirit realm could lead to madness. But on January 1, 1906, af Klint promised the ‘Master Amaliel‘ that she would undertake this “great commission.” In 1888 Hilma af Klint joined the Theosophical Society & became interested in the work of Annie Besant & Charles Leadbeater, & read Thought Forms, their ground-breaking book that discussed how thoughts could be seen as colored forms carrying the intent of the sender. She also met Rudolf Steiner & studied his Rosicrucian, Theosophical, & later Anthroposophical teachings, though Steiner was concerned about Hilma af Klint’s involvement with mediumship, warning her to at least take dietary precautions to ensure her health. All of these encounters informed her spiritual development & influenced her esoteric practices.
Hilma af Klint’s early works were direct translations of what she saw on the spiritual plane; later she took charge of interpreting her messages. This evolution in her approach could be considered as the progression of an initiate to that of an advanced pupil or adept who learned how to manage her spiritual teachings. “Mediumship is the opposite of adeptship; the medium is the passive instrument of foreign influences, the adept actively controls himself and all inferior potencies” (Isis Unveiled 2:588). Hilma af Klint considered the works she produced during her mediumship experiences as a “commission,” the fundamental idea being “to convey knowledge about the unity of all existence, which lies hidden behind the polarized, dual world in which we live” (Hilma af Klint: A Pioneer of Abstraction). Her first painting series of the commission, was called The Temple (1907-1915)
Always Before she started she underwent rituals of purification. For about 10 months, Hilma af Klint prepared for her artistic task by adopting a vegetarian diet & working on her self-discipline. She began “The Paintings for the Temple” in 1906, &, even with several periods of rest (as mandated by the spirit guides), by 1908, she had completed the first 111 pieces in a monumental cycle that would come to encompass 193 works on canvas & paper by 1915. She also kept obsessively detailed notebooks about her working processes with notes & sketches, giving clues to the symbolism & spiritual ideals she embedded in her works. As she noted in her journals, “It was not the case that I was to blindly obey the High Lords of the Mysteries but that I was to imagine that they were always standing by my side.”
Spirals & snails depict the spiral of evolution, & the tendril, as seen in plant growth, represents the consciousness that embodies life & seeks to grow. Inspired by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe’s Theory of Colours (1810) She wrote: “white is the ‘holiest of all colours’, blue ‘the colour scale of powerful, real nature, the faithful’, and yellow, ‘the splendid colour of light, of the foundation of knowledge’.” Yellow also represents the masculine, blue the feminine, & green the merging of the two. Words & letters also have significance in her work. The letters AO & WU respectively represent spiritual evolution & the duality of spirit & matter. The word avonwener written across the top of one of her paintings means “those who try to shed light on the earthlings” (Hilma af Klint, p. 42).
Many of Hilma af Klint’s paintings (specifically in the Swan series) were the result of her study of polarities, as shown in her use of color, male & female figures, & the dual concepts of above & below (the connection between humanity & the universe), the stages of life, & the evolution humanity.
The last group of paintings in The Temple series consists of three large paintings that are called altar pieces. They were painted at the end of 1915. These works depict Anthroposophical concepts of spirit descending into matter (involution) & matter ascending into spirit (evolution) — an unending cycle, the universal dimensions of time & space without beginning or end represented by the circle. The first painting, Altar Piece No. 1, may also depict the teachings of the seven rays as discussed in Blavatsky’s, Isis Unveiled (1:514): “The Rosicrucian theory, that the whole universe is a musical instrument, is the Pythagorean doctrine of the music of the spheres. Sounds and colors are all spiritual numerals; as the seven prismatic rays proceed from one spot in heaven, so the seven powers of nature, each of them a number, are the seven radiations of the Unity, the central, spiritual SUN.”
When Hilma af Klint had completed the works for the Temple, the spiritual guidance ended.
Following The Temple series, Hilma af Klint’s work became very geometric through the years 1916-1920. At the tail end of the 19th century, a string of scientific developments were radically altering prevailing ideas about the world. Darwin’s evolutionary theories, while not yet entirely accepted in academic circles, matriculated into almost every sphere of popular culture. The discovery of subatomic particles, radioactivity, & the X-ray confirmed for spiritualists that there was, in fact, a godly, invisible realm of existence. Yet there was another compelling reason for Hilma af Klint to seek out these groups. While mainstream art circles were wary of female talent & participation, movements like Theosophy & Anthroposophy were very heavily run by women. These were areas of society where women were leaders. During this time she painted the Parsifal & Atom series, & a set of paintings on the great religions of the world.
After meeting with Rudolf Steiner again in 1920, Hilma af Klint joined the Anthroposophical society & became deeply immersed in Spiritual Science. These teachings influenced her to move on from geometric abstraction, & she started to paint watercolors. These later works focused on showing the unconscious life of plants in a soft, flowing veil of colors. Her later paintings are significantly smaller in size. She painted among others, a series depicting the stand-points of different religions at various stages in history, as well as representations of the duality between the physical being & its equivalence on an esoteric level. As Hilma af Klint pursued her artistic & esoteric research, we can clearly perceive the inspiration she gathered from the artistic theories developed thru Anthroposophical study.
Through her life, Hilma af Klint would seek to understand the mysteries that she had come in contact with through her work. She produced more than 150 notebooks with her thoughts and studies.
Hilma af Klint never felt called to show her more esoteric work to her contemporaries. Hilma af Klint drew the conclusion that her contemparies were not yet ready to understand them. Rudolf Steiner revealed that, her major works, dedicated to the Temple, would negatively affect her health if shown to the public too soon, a pearls before swine - scenario, that would cause the occult seal when broken to turn to a revesal & do harm in the world, since humanity was not yet ready to receive such high works due to an immature morality that hung over society at that time. More than 1200 paintings & drawings were carefully stored away in her atelier, waiting for the future.
Hilma af Klint died in Djursholm, Sweden in 1944, nearly 82 years old, in the aftermath of a traffic accident, having only exhibited her works a handful of times, mainly at spiritual conferences & gatherings. Her works were given in trust to her nephew, requesting that they not be publicly revealed until at least 20 years after her passing. She said: ‘the world is often not ready to accept what pioneers working on the spiritual plane have discovered in their lifetime, & some things must wait to be revealed’.
In 1986, 42 years after her death, a small collection of Hilma af Klint’s remarkable paintings were publicly shown in “The Spiritual in Art,” Maurice Tuchman’s ground breaking exhibit held at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art.
It was not until 2013 that the first major exhibition of her work was shown at the Moderna Museet in Stockholm (they rejected her work for many years) The museum curated more than 1000 paintings & 125 notebooks. These works were unpacked from mysterious trunks, some of which had never been opened, & included her thoughts, mediumship experiences, & notes about her paintings.
And of course the 2019 exhibit “Hilma af Klint: Paintings for the Future,” at the Guggenheim, broke world records for attendance. Anthroposophers even staged a eurythmy flash mob on the spiral stairs to honor her work.
Hilma af Klint’s last known paintings were completed in 1932. They were visionary maps foretelling the London blitz & the naval battle in the Mediterranean during World War II. On October 9, 1944, she wrote her last journal entry which seems to tell us that her work on earth was done, but would carry on elsewhere: “You have mystery service ahead, and will soon enough realize what is expected of you” (Hilma af Klint: A Pioneer of Abstraction, p. 279)
Save the date for the Fellowship of Preparation Makers' annual gathering, to be held this winter in Viroqua, WI. Registration and further info will be posted on their page as it becomes available: https://www.biodynamics.com/content/fellowship-preparation-makers .
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Saturday, 26 October 2024
Hilma af Klint: Embodied Symbol
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