53: Hilma af Klint • Painting the Unseen • Part 2: For The Temple

It’s so rare for one artist to change the course of history. And rarer still, for an artist to be discovered after-the-fact, to be rescued from the dustbin of history—long after their passing—and then elevated to a place of prestige. And how impossibly rare then for historians to admit they were wrong and for curators to welcome a ghost into their halls.

Such a person that changes the world from a century away must be a visionary. A mind so out of place in her own time that those who discover her in the future feel some penance must be paid. That humanity itself has committed some wrong by not recognizing the genius of her work in its time.

Hilma af Klint was such a visionary. And after spending decades of her life trying to find an audience for her art in her time, she decided that it would be best to launch it into the future—much like Emily Dickinson. Hilma wrote that her artworks should not be shared with the public until 20 years after her death. The promise of the future gave her hope that one day her paintings would reach a safe harbor. And the people of that land would be ready for the artistic innovations and the spiritual vision of her work.

In the last few decades, the art world has had to contend with the reality that the canonical history of art is deeply flawed. That the names which populate all of our old art history textbooks only tell one side of the story: the male side. It’s a history of movements dominated by men in public spaces. But what the recent discovery of Hilma af Klint and her 1,500 artworks confirms is that there has always been an undercurrent in art culture. That while men were accomplishing great art in the public square, with a vast audience and a market for their work, women were accomplishing great art in private, among close knit circles of friends and social groups. Such as the Association of Swedish Women Artists, founded in 1910, of which Hilma was a member.

The question we are now faced with is: who writes art history? And who is excluded from that history and why? Because no matter how impartial you may be there comes a point where you must draw a line, and you must say these we shall include and these we will exclude.

Is art history the study of noteworthy creative accomplishments across time or is it simply the study of art capitalism? Does the flow of money from art collectors coronate who deserves a place in the catalogue? If you read the art textbooks of the last century it would seem that way.

In my research for this episode I found a copy of one of the standard art textbooks which colleges use for art history courses—it’s called Gardner’s Art Through the Ages. I have the second edition, published in 2009. Out of curiosity I looked for Hilma af Klint. And there was not a single word on her in 600 pages. But let’s give Gardner the benefit of the doubt here, perhaps Hilma’s art had not yet been known to historians in 2009. The major exhibit which made her a household name was in 2018 at the Guggenheim, and before that in Stockholm in 2013.

But upon closer examination, Hilma was shown in one other exhibition in 1986 at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, at an exhibit called The Spiritual in Art: Abstract Painting 1890-1985.

This marked the first time since her death, 42 years prior, that her paintings were shown to the public. Why did it take another 27 years after that exhibit before her works were shown again? Perhaps the world wasn’t ready yet. Hilma had overestimated us.

But going back to Gardner’s Art Through the Ages we do see the mention of other abstract artists, such as Piet Mondrian, Kazimir Malevich, and most notably Wassily Kandinsky. Of Kandinsky, Gardner writes: “…Kandinsky was one of the first artists to explore complete abstraction as in Improvisation 28.” Gardner mentions Kandinsky six times in the textbook’s 600 pages. We know Kandinsky spent much of his art career touting the claim that he was the first abstract artist, and that we could then give Improvisation 28 the blue ribbon for first abstract painting—completed in 1912.

But what Mr. Kandinsky (and Mr. Gardner) didn’t know is that there was a woman 2,000km away in Sweden, painting monumental abstract works five years before him. And her name doesn’t appear in the textbooks. But it will now. Hilma af Klint.

Welcome to Creative Codex.

I am your host, MJDorian.

This is Part 2 of my Hilma af Klint • Painting the Unseen series. If you haven’t yet listened to Part 1, I recommend you pause this episode and scroll down to episode 52. That lays the groundwork for understanding Hilma’s early years, her first formal art studies, and her introduction to séances, spiritualism and the formation of The Five.

On this episode we will venture ahead to the pivotal moment that Hilma receives the commissions from the spirit world and begins the all consuming work of the Paintings for the Temple. We will also examine these works and ask what makes them so remarkable?

This is Codex 53, Hilma af Klint • Painting the Unseen • Part 2: For The Temple.

Let’s begin.

Chapter 3: Invisible Friends

From the moment Hilma af Klint graduates from grade school her life becomes guided by two passions: esoteric spirituality and art.

For example: Hilma begins attending séances when she is seventeen years old. Around the same time, in 1879, she is taking formal classes in painting through the women-only workshops of Kerstin Cardon.

She travels these two paths in tandem. And as one develops, so does the other.

At the age of 20, Hilma begins her studies at the Royal Academy of Arts in Stockholm, where she meets her best friend and fellow artist, Anna Cassel. Around the same time she continues to attend spiritualist meetings, often held in small social circles not open to the public. It’s not clear how many meetings she attends throughout her younger years, but it’s safe to say that spiritualist circles are a defining activity of her life.

In a notebook, Hilma writes a passage about her first experience as a medium at the age of 29. It states:

“My first experience with mediumship occurred in fall 1891, when the painter Valborg Hällström was using a psychograph in her studio and my interest was aroused. I asked if a few words could be said to me through the instrument. It was said immediately: ‘Go calmly on your way’ and when I wanted further explanations they continued ‘through life’.”

She also becomes friends with the artist and spirit medium Bertha Valerius. Valerius gifts Hilma a notebook of her séance sessions, clearly favoriting her in some regard. In that notebook we find the session notes channeled from a spirit named Charles who spoke of a new epoch in art. The text reads:

“The priests and priestesses of art need no materials other than the fine waves that surround them, which resemble the air around them. To create works of genius they must only develop the strength that lies in the pure will…To paint is to let the light shine that the artist forms in his own spirit.”

And it would go on like this for years—making advances in her art studies, showing her classical paintings in exhibitions alongside her peers, all the while learning everything she could about esoteric spiritual traditions. It is no wonder that when she meets Anna Cassel at the Royal Academy of Art that they become best friends for life—as Cassel shares a passion for both of these same interests—art & esoteric spirituality.

They are divergent but complimentary pursuits—both deal with the unseen. Esoteric spirituality studies the unseen spiritual forces at play under the fabric of reality. While art brings the unseen outward—from the inner world of the artist—onto the canvas. Whether you are painting your inner world or spiritual visions you are painting the unseen.

When Hilma is 34, she joins the Edelweiss Society with Anna Cassel in 1896. This is a Christian spiritualist group with its own rituals that regularly meets for séances. The teachings and lessons are obtained through mediumship. Among the first mediums of the group are its founder, Huldine Beamish and Mathilda Nilsson—future member of The Five.

The meetings are conducted like a salon where guests are welcome. This openness to outsiders was likely one of the reasons that five of the members of the Edelweiss Society choose to branch off and start their own group—this includes Hilma, Anna, Mathilda Nilsson, Cornelia Cederberg, and Sigrid Hedman. Their new group, which could be described as a kind of mini-secret society, is called The Five.

We spoke about The Five at length in the last episode, exploring their meetings and their methods in full detail. We even spend a good amount of energy trying to decipher some of their sketches, if you’re intrigued by that definitely check out Part 1 of this series.

But in doing all this research I still had some questions about Hilma and The Five. I couldn’t shake the feeling that it was Hilma’s experiences in The Five that inspired her toward this dramatic shift in her art: to go from formal classical style painting to full on abstract art. Remember this is five years before Kandinsky. At this time period, just past the tail end of the 1800’s, if you’re an artist making nonrepresentational work you may as well be an alien.

There wasn’t even a name for the art Hilma decided to create. People would see it and just have no words—no frame of reference for how to understand it. Quite literally, it was like looking into a different world.

And so I felt I needed to know more about Hilma’s time in The Five. Was there a hierarchy to the group? When did Hilma become a drawing medium? And why did the group fall apart after ten years?

The best thing would be to view the notebooks of The Five’s sessions as well as Hilma’s personal notebooks. Both of these together contain all of the answers to what was happening in these sessions and what effect it had on Hilma spiritually and artistically.

One problem, these notebooks—which amount to thousands of pages—are in the possession of the Hilma af Klint Foundation in Sweden—and they are all written in Swedish—Uy, Fan i helvete!

So I decided to reach out the preeminent Hilma af Klint scholar, Julia Voss, in the hope that she could answer my burning questions. Julia wrote the best and only full biography of Hilma’s life. It’s titled Hilma af Klint: A Biography. And to accomplish it she needed to learn Swedish to read those precious notebooks.

To my delight, Ms. Voss was kind enough to take my call. Throughout the rest of this episode I will include some of her insights to these Hilma mysteries.

For starters, I wanted to know: Since Sigrid Hedman had the most experience, was she the leader and primary medium of The Five?

[play first interview clip]

So for the first five years of The Five’s activities Sigrid Hedman served as the primary spirit medium. This confirms my theory from the last episode that the signatures indicate Sigrid first in the first few years, and then her placement shifts.

Next I wanted to know: What was the dynamic of the group? Was there a hierarchy to the members?

[play second interview clip]

After hearing about these group dynamics, it all started to make sense. I could now better see the progress of the group’s history. In its early years, from 1896 to 1901, Sigrid Hedman served as the spiritual leader and primary medium of the group. As the work continued, Sigrid would sometimes tire of the channeling process, which required long periods of concentrated effort—at times the messages or imagery would come through in a trance and at other times in a dream during the session. Other members were then encouraged to attempt the role of spirit medium.

What caught my ear in Julia’s statement was that Hilma would sometimes fail at the channeling. This is very interesting because it implies there is something distinct about the channeling state—like tuning to a particular frequency of consciousness. And shows us that their attempts were honest. This was one of the benefits of keeping The Five as a private circle, there would be no pressure to succeed in a channeling and hence no encouragement to fake the results—these were experiments done among friends.

[play third interview clip]

Hilma was not only an observer, as time progressed she became a participant and a student—under the tutelage of women already experienced in channeling. It’s important here to point out that this wasn’t what we would consider divination.

In the case of divination there is the intent to receive knowledge about the material world, most often knowledge about future events. But what The Five were focusing on was messages and spiritual guidance from what they called the High Ones. This is a concept we spoke about in the last episode which is often first credited to Madame Blavatsky’s school of thought and Theosophy—where she calls them the Higher Masters or Ascended Masters.

Now, there are no doubt skeptical minds in the audience—gods bless you—who may try to play the reductionist game and say ‘all of this is just imaginative play, at best it is communication with the unconscious’. Okay, perhaps. In one way you’re right, we will never truly know if The Five established connection with higher beings. But what we can confirm is that for ten years—in private, with no desire for recognition—the members of The Five practiced rituals together with the intent to contact higher beings.

And once they achieved this contact they continued communication with several such figures across the span of years. These entities names are Gregor, Amaliel, Ananda, Georg, and Clemens. Each with their own personalities and histories of their former lives on earth.

There are hundreds of pages of their notebooks which confirm that something was happening. What confirms this is that sometimes the séance failed and the woman serving as medium could not establish a connection—or a shift in her consciousness. Putting spiritual beings aside, if nothing else, we could say that the goal of these practices was to achieve some trancelike state within which the channeler appeared to receive spontaneous imagery and dialogue. And whether that’s from the unconscious or from higher beings or somewhere else, that’s up to you to decide. But the fact remains, something out-of-the-ordinary was happening which gave a tremendous amount of meaning to the women present.

And it went like this for ten years…until the group fell apart.

This occurred because as Ms. Voss noted, once Hilma and Anna became more active in the group, they began to interpret the messages from the High Ones differently than the other three members. So much so that it drove a wedge in their once peaceful hierarchy. 

It seemingly started with communications Hilma received from the spirits outside of the circle of The Five’s meetings. It’s unclear if she was practicing a séance method by herself or with one other person, as such activities were always meant to be done in groups. In her biography of Hilma, Julia Voss writes:

“Something else happened in 1901. One of the higher beings who normally visited The Five began to speak to Hilma outside the group. “I am Gidro, as you have known me for a long time,” the voice introduced itself in the spring, about half a year before Hilma would try to channel messages in The Five and fail. Gidro promised support: “Give yourself completely, I will help you, you will soon become a medium,”

The breakthrough did not come immediately. “You are not satisfied,” the speaker noted soberly in August 1901, citing “the fire” as a primary cause. The connection is not further elaborated in Hilma’s notes. However, a new name appears in the same paragraph: Sigrid Lancén’s, a gymnastics teacher about ten years younger than the artist. Hilma would later enter into a relationship with Lancén, both physically and mentally. In the same entry Hilma was told to worry less about “useless things.” It ends: “It was said that Sigrid Lancen was my supporting friend.”

It would seem that this higher being was now in communication with Hilma outside of the circle of The Five, and even commented on a specific woman outside the circle, Sigrid Lancen, who Hilma was developing romantic feelings for. This may be what “the fire” refers to in this passage—desire. Side note: Hilma kept a notebook in which she tried to define all the letters and words that would appear in the séance sessions, for the name Gidro she writes “a leader who serves on the astral plane.”

We can assume things continue like this, with Hilma growing in confidence as a channel, both within the context of The Five’s meetings and outside of them. Then on April 12th, 1904, Anna Cassel channels a message meant for Hilma. It is this message which begins to drive a wedge in the group. It states:

“Ananda also prays for you, Hilma. You should rest for days, quiet and still. Look toward images, old ones, images that wait for you. Just have patience, then you will be guided, calmly and surely, to the goal that lies before you.”

“Look toward images…old ones…images that wait for you…have patience…you will be guided to the goal that lies before you.”

Sigrid, Mathilda, and Cornelia did not think the message was out of the ordinary. But the implications of it excited Anna and Hilma—there was some acknowledgement regarding images and a great project that lies ahead. Being artists, Anna and Hilma naturally assumed this meant spiritual artworks, inspired by or directed by the High Ones. But the others disagreed.

In the coming years, the works that Hilma would embark on would be referred to as astral paintings. She later wrote this in a notebook:

“Prophecies of the creation of astral paintings came through Ananda beginning in 1904.”

In a session of The Five in December 1905, Hilma asks a direct question of the High Ones. Is her spiritual work now transferring ‘into the field of painting’? The response is yes. Hilma accepts this new role and purpose of her practice—and begins the Paintings for the Temple series in November 1906.

I asked Ms. Voss: what happens at this point to the group dynamic?

[cue clip 4 “…the group falls apart…”]

This means that Hilma established a connection with the spirit beings which was significant enough that she felt direct guidance from them. Mathilda and Sigrid, the senior members of the group, were the ones who likely pushed back against this dynamic shift. There had never been a time before in their years of channeling when a project was proposed by the High Ones, this was uncharted terrain.

The question of doubt snuck in: is it really the High Ones requesting the group to make art or is it Hilma’s own ambitions clouding her interpretation of the messages?

Whatever the opinion was of Mathilda, Sigrid and Cornelia, there is no doubt that Hilma and Anna saw things with crystal clarity. This may have been the end of The Five, but it was the beginning of something truly remarkable: a body of artwork stretching across years whose sole purpose was the documentation of unseen worlds and the spiritual awakening of humanity.

And now it’s time for a brief intermission.

INTERMISSION

I hope you’ve been enjoying the Hilma af Klint series. I wanted to take this moment to thank everyone who listens to the show: the people who listen through all of the episodes, the people who reach out to me on Instagram, the people who write comments to the episodes on Spotify, and the people who share the show with others. All of this helps tremendously and it keeps growing this little independent sunflower every month. And I thank you for that.

On that note, if you support the vision of Creative Codex and want to gain access to tons of exclusive episodes, please consider joining our Patreon. There you’ll be able to listen to all four hours of the Kurt Cobain series, the four episodes of the newly completed Tarot Exegesis series, the continuing saga of Carl Jung’s Red Book series, and the Jim Morrison special—I’ll be releasing the next installment of the Jim Morrison series soon—and plenty of other goodies. If you’d like to check it out, keep this show funded, and help me quit one of my three part time jobs just head on over to patreon.com/mjdorian, that’s patreon.com/mjdorian. The link for that is also in the episode description.

Thank you in advance for that.

I’ve also created a companion gallery for this episode which features Hilma af Klint’s artworks, and specifically paintings we’ll be discussing in the next chapter. You can check that out at mjdorian.com/hilma. The link for the companion gallery is also in the episode description.

At this point of the episode in most podcasts you’d hear an ad. And that’s why I’d like to thank the sponsor of today’s episode: The National Porch Sitter’s Convention.

[cue dubstep] (Announcer like a Southern lawyer)

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[end dubstep]

Alright, good to know about all those different woods. Thanksss… [deep breath] Without further ado, back to Codex 53: Hilma af Klint • Painting the Unseen • Part 2.

Chapter 4: Spiritual Abstraction

Throughout all of Hilma af Klint’s life, she pursued two interests passionately: art and esoteric spirituality. Concerning the latter, her interests include: Theosophy, channeling spirits of the deceased, speaking with higher beings, Rosicrucianism, Buddhism, and Anthroposophy. These two passions of art and esoteric spirituality exist as paths traveling in parallel, so far they never fully met—the closest they came, was during the sketches of The Five, when drawings were made to depict visions experienced during séances. But as Hilma reaches the age of 44, these divergent interests converge with the assignment from the High Ones—known as The Paintings for The Temple.

It becomes a multi-year effort that synthesizes her creative genius with all she has learned from her esoteric spiritual studies. The series will include a total of 193 paintings, completed across a span of nine years, from 1906 – 1915. Many of these paintings will have overtly spiritual or esoteric symbolism, such as representations of mystical duality, a dual being, spirals, crosses, Rosicrucian symbolism, and more. Never before in Hilma’s academy paintings did she explore such themes. Her training, like the training of her peers in fine arts, reinforced realism and representational work as the only respectable model for art making.

This was the dominant aesthetic model of art since the Renaissance. But just as artists like Vincent van Gogh and Claude Monet are reimagining art’s purpose through the Impressionist style in the late 1800’s. So too, 1,000 km away, Hilma af Klint is reimagining art through a style no one has seen before: it is a kind of spiritual abstraction.

I haven’t seen anyone else use this term to describe Hilma’s paintings. But I feel it is an important distinction to make from the abstract styles of mid-20th century art, which one could argue lean more toward intellectual abstraction. Here in Hilma, we find a style which is overtly spiritual yet divorced from the conventions of traditional representational works. Hence the term: spiritual abstraction.

With the earliest paintings of the massive 193 artwork series, it’s like a switch flips in Hilma—a door opens. She begins to paint as if she is learning to paint for the first time. And for years that follow, she will have two identities as an artist—the one which continues to create portraits and landscapes for public viewing & exhibition, and the one which creates works of spiritual abstraction which are shared with only a small circle of her closest friends.

The name of the project,: Paintings for The Temple, arises out of the instructions given by the spirits, which eventually reveal to Hilma that this monumental series of paintings should have a destined home: a temple space built in the shape of a spiral that winds its way upward, along whose inner walls the paintings will hang, and which will culminate in an observatory at the top.

Let’s now turn our attention to the first series of paintings from Paintings for The Temple. Hilma names this series: Primordial Chaos.

There are 26 paintings in total in the series Primordial Chaos. Looking through all 26 we can see certain patterns unite them—there is a limited color palette of primarily blue, yellow, and green. Letters or words appear on almost every painting. Spirals, snails, and roses recur throughout the series, but not on every painting. There is a sense of progression from the first painting to the last, but what is being communicated is hard to grasp.

Let’s take a deeper look. And attempt to understand.

First, it’s important to acknowledge that this series, Primordial Chaos, was a collaboration between Hilma and her best friend, Anna Cassel. Anna is the one who shared Hilma’s views in The Five, that the spirits were proposing the members turn their attention to art as a form of communicating the messages of the High Ones. Anna was also a classically trained painter and studied with Hilma at the Royal Academy.

It’s unclear to what degree Anna helped with the paintings themselves as they are not signed. The most likely scenario based on the documents I’ve read is that Anna served primarily as the channeler—for the words and drawings being transmitted from the High Ones, while Hilma served as the artist bringing those words and drawings onto the canvas. This arrangement only applies to the first series of 26 paintings known as Primordial Chaos. Afterwards, Hilma would enlist the help of other women or design and complete the paintings herself.

In a notebook entry referring to the process of the Primordial Chaos series, Hilma writes:

“Amaliel draws a sketch, which Hilma then paints.”

This implies that one of the spirit beings—channeled through either Anna or Hilma—provides a sketch, which then becomes a painting.

The first painting in the Primordial Chaos series depicts an amorphous womblike shape floating in the darkness, its contour is framed in a neutral blue tone. The primary colors of the painting are black, blue, gray, and white. The womb-shape is at the center, it appears white with the impression of a gray spiral within, and another shape made by the negative space of the spiral which seems to echo the larger exterior womb-shape.

Across the canvas, coming at a diagonal from the top right down to the bottom left are streaks of black paint, like rain, or a pulsating darkness within which the womb exists. At the base of the painting appears the impression of a deep blue sea or a distant horizon.

The size of this painting is 53 x 37 cm, or 21 x 14.5 inches. A modest size. This is roughly the size of all 26 paintings in this series.

In the second painting we see the womblike shape stretching upward, with two five pointed yellow stars appearing within itself, the stars are connected by a thread of starlight. Around this form is the appearance of orange lightning or electric currents shooting off into the black atmosphere above and the deep blue turbulent waters beneath.

In the third painting the womb-shape has extended outward into seven arms or tentacle-forms, which seem to flow outward with a spinning quality. At the center we still see the impression of yellow, implying this is a continuation of the star transformation that began in the painting before it.

These first three paintings are clearly linked, as if depicting a progression of slides in a science lecture. They each have a raw quality to them, which at first glance may give them the appearance of painting sketches rather than finished works. But given Hilma’s extensive training by this point, at 44 years of age, we can safely assume that the paintings of the Primordial Chaos series look exactly how Hilma intended them to look.

These first three paintings have a ‘rough around the edges’ quality to them, where the brushstrokes look quick and forceful, as if expressing bursts of energy. As the series of 26 paintings progresses the paint is clearly applied with more precision. I get the impression at the start of the series we see some embodiment of the title of the work: primordial chaos. Energy and form existing in raw potential—Hilma paints the story of the origin of creation.

As the series progresses throughout the remaining 23 paintings, we see a diversity of forms and motifs which will continue to be signature aspects of Hilma’s later art. There is the spiral and the connected double spiral as in numbers 4 10 & 11 of the series, the snail shell as in numbers 5 8 & 9, the letters u & w at times connected in script and at times disconnected on opposing sides of the composition, there is the capital letter H, the Christian cross, the colors blue & yellow, the terms vestal & asket, the rose, and the wheat head.

All of these are essential motifs in Hilma’s artwork, which when recognized can help one to read her paintings. Or at the very least, appreciate the way she threads together all of the work with a shared symbolic language. In this regard, I would say that her paintings are a mixture of abstraction and esotericism. The term esoteric implies something hidden which only an inner circle can learn, or something obscured with symbolism that is inaccessible without a guide or teacher. And this is again why the term spiritual abstraction lends itself better to Hilma’s work than the more common term abstract art.

This approach to her art as a body of concealed esoteric knowledge is one I haven’t seen art scholars or historians attempt with Hilma af Klint. They will often point out the meaning of several symbols in passing and move on without digging in further. I’m not sure if it’s a hesitation in engaging with spiritual matters within the context of formal academic writing or if it’s simply confusion regarding her intentions. I’ve definitely felt some of that myself when first looking at her work.

And it’s certainly easier to just call the works abstract art and be done with it…but when you look at her notebooks, her interests, the scope of her intellect as represented in museum exhibitions like the MoMA’s What Stands Behind the Flowers exhibit—there can be no doubt that all of this work meant something more to Hilma. It was not simply an intellectual exercise.

So let’s take a moment and try to understand several of these signature symbols which appear in Primordial Chaos as they will be appearing again in the paintings that follow.

First there are the colors blue, yellow, and green. In Hilma’s symbolic language, blue denotes feminine and yellow denotes masculine. Most of the paintings in the Primordial Chaos series are in only these two colors—blue and yellow. Telling us that these paintings are attempting to depict some basic truth about reality, which is built upon the framework of duality in all things. But sometimes you will also see the color green, and this is considered to be the union of masculine and feminine energies—as blue and yellow make green.

Hilma also wrote this in a notebook in reference to these specific colors:

“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’.”

Here we see formed another duality: nature and intellect. Blue being “real nature” as Hilma states and yellow being “the foundation of knowledge”. Curiously this overlaps well with the Tarot tradition, for example in the Waite-Smith deck, the yellow of The Magician card is often seen as being symbolic of the intellect, while the blue of The High Priestess card in her flowing robe and the water behind the veil is seen as being symbolic of nature and the unconscious.

There is no indication that Hilma had any interest in Tarot cards, but what is more likely is that the occult revival which was occurring during the late 1800’s to early 1900’s had an influence on both Hilma’s paintings and the creation of the Waite-Smith Tarot deck. Curiously, both were being created at the same time—Hilma began work on Paintings for the Temple in 1906 and the Waite-Smith deck was released in 1909.

But back to the topic at hand: the symbolism in the Primordial Chaos series. Next there is the snail shell—one of the most immediately recognizable forms in these paintings. Why is Hilma, or Amaliel—the channeled spirit speaking on behalf of the High Ones—using the form of a snail in a painting series about the origin of creation?

In most origin stories of creation, especially among Western Esoteric traditions such as Hermeticism and Gnosticism, there is a point in time before dualities are established. When life and death, male and female, good and evil do not exist yet. I suspect this is the significance of the snail to Hilma, because one fun fact about snails: they are biological hermaphrodites.

So not only are snails some of the most ancient creatures on earth—having survived half a billion years—many species of snails also carry both male and female reproductive organs. They are a perfect symbol for a distant spark of life that emerges before duality.

There are even some species of snails that can self inseminate as they have both reproductive organs and some will still mate with other snails—even though both of them have both reproductive organs. When used esoterically, the snail becomes a symbol of the union of masculine and feminine energies in the individual—which is a goal of alchemical work.  It’s also an important belief of Theosophy, as proposed by Madame Blavatsky, who writes about a distant time when creatures were all biological hermaphrodites in her book The Secret Doctrine.

There is also a very real societal perspective that would make snails significant to Hilma: she was gay. The idea that all individuals regardless of sex have a unique mixture of classically male and female traits likely appealed to her. In that regard, someone could be a very masculine woman or a very feminine man, or someone androgynous with a mixture of both. Artists in Western cultures and shamans in ancient cultures have both played with these dichotomies. But the snail has been doing it for 500 million years.

We see the snail appear in paintings 5, 8, 9, and 10 of the Primordial Chaos series. The snail also later appears in what is arguably Hilma’s most important series: The Ten Largest. You can see snails in number 3 and number 7 of that series.

Next in our investigation of Hilma’s symbolism we find the letters u and w. They first make an appearance in painting number 5 of Primordial Chaos. There is a “u” at the center of the snail spiral and a “w” on the tail end. Then directly above the shell there is also both letters connected in script form written as “uw”. What does this mean?

To answer this we must turn to Hilma’s notebooks. But specifically one that deals with  definitions for the letters and words which appear in her artworks. It’s like a dictionary of symbols, letters and words.

Like us, Hilma was also perplexed by the letters and words in her paintings. Later in her life she attempts to create a kind of encyclopedia of symbols and letters which appear in her works. The notebook begins with a handwritten note from Rudolf Steiner, whom Hilma once asked to analyze her paintings—this note is cut and pasted onto the opening pages of the notebook. She titled the notebook: Letters and Words Pertaining to Works by Hilma af Klint. She made this dictionary of symbols and definitions as much for herself as she made it for us.

We can confirm this through her correspondences, in one letter she writes back to an  acquaintance who must have seen Hilma’s abstract artworks in person. The topic of the meaning of the letters in her paintings must have come up because she responds: “How is your wife? If she is wondering about my letters, then tell her I am doing the same.”

In this regard, the small notebook that Hilma put together, which she called Letters and Words Pertaining to Works by Hilma af Klint provides an invaluable resource to us. If there is an entry for a specific set of letters we don’t have to speculate, we can just cross-reference what Hilma’s understanding of it was.

On the subject of the letters w & u, we find these definitions by Hilma. The letter “w” means the body, matter, and the material plane. While the letter “u” means the spiritual forces of life and the spiritual plane.

There is an additional entry for each which adds one more layer to their relationship. “W” also means “the bond between heaven and earth”. And “u” also means “the bond between the god within us and the soul”

So again, “w” is associated with the body, matter, and what is seen while “u” is associated with spiritual plane and what is unseen.

At the center of the snail in painting number 4 of Primordial chaos we see the letter “u” layered on top of a Christian cross which is sending out light rays from all four points. The exit or entrance of the snail shows the letter “w”. There is something being communicated here which deals with the relationship between matter and spirit. Is it describing some process on the subatomic or cellular level? Is it dealing with the liminal space between the physical and nonphysical worlds? As the shell spirals outward, from a spiritual center, is it telling us that physical reality manifested or continually emerges from nonphysical reality?

I believe this is the depth with which Hilma ruminated on these symbols and it is the type of engagement she would want us to have with her work. The art would prove successful if it compels in us some curiosity about the mysteries of existence.

Directly above the snail in this painting are the lowercase letters “uw” connected in script form. In Hilma’s personal dictionary this is defined as: “symbol of the dual truth.” What could she be referring to? We know that Hilma was interested in Theosophy and Buddhism. There is a concept of the dual truth that originates in Buddhism that states there is a perceived reality, which is one form of truth, and then there is ultimate reality, which is the second form of truth.

Perceived reality, being the phenomenal world which we can perceive with our senses, is imagined as existing within ultimate reality, which cannot be perceived with our senses. The perceived reality of our physical world is described as a provisional truth. The ultimate reality is described as the ultimate truth. Theosophical ideas take much of their inspiration from Buddhism, and many of Hilma’s friends at this time were involved in Theosophy, so it is no surprise that Hilma would know this dual truth theory.

Again, this correlates perfectly with the definitions of the letters “u” “w” and their combination “uw” which we see throughout Primordial Chaos and in countless paintings in the years to come. “U” is the spiritual plane and spiritual forces, “w” is the material plane and the body, while “uw” is the realization of their marriage together.

Letters are a defining feature of many of Hilma af Klint’s paintings. But it’s important to understand that she is not using them the way we use them in language or poetry. In her work, the letter itself is a symbol of something unseen—an esoteric tool. At times it is a combination of letters creating a nonsensical word such as this entry in her dictionary: “waHa”. Spelled with a lowercase w-a-capital H-lowercase a, which she defines as “to receive help”.

This is not a word in Swedish. It only exists in Hilma’s world—or perhaps, the world of the spirits from which it was channeled. As far as I know there are no languages which regularly capitalize letters in the middle of the word. Another example is the word “bwuH”, spelled all lowercase with a capital “H”, which means “shall call forth pink roses”.

I mean, what is going on here? How is she getting the definitions for these words? And I just realized…The only internal letter that gets capitalized regularly is “H”. That’s weird…

Side note: at this point, I took a break from recording and opened up Hilma’s personal dictionary. I decided to count up all of the entries so that I would have a tally to refer to when speaking about the symbolic letters of her paintings. This took longer than expected, as I now explain.

Phew. Ok. I just tallied up all of the unique letter symbols and words which Hilma takes time to define in her personal dictionary. Ready for this? What’s the total number?

815.

Yeah… I’m not even exaggerating. Hilma catalogued over 800 individual instances of symbolic letters or words with their respective meaning. And many of them are so specific you have to wonder ‘what the heck is going on here?’ For example there is this word: “soH”. She defines it as: “a desperate, impotent struggle during the time of wheat, in the service of spiritual forces.”

Or how about “oHe” which is “the bright currents of the astral forces in our world.”

Or how about this one: “ses” means “yearning, humility, fear of hostile spiritual beings.”

And my favorite: “UH” which means “the time between two earthly existences.”

These meanings have the quality of statements received during visionary states. They remind me of William Blake’s writing. This is the terrain which scholars fear to tread. No academic tools cannot help you here.

A sense begins to form that Hilma was not only engaging with abstraction in her visual art, but she was also engaging with it on a fundamental existential level. She catalogued over 800 words that have no application on our material plane. Once you accept that there is a spiritual plane that intersects with this physical plane, and that you can receive messages from it, then you are engaging with a tremendous amount of abstraction. In which case, it’s no wonder that your visual art will reflect this. Because the art is not about the physical world anymore. It serves as an ambassador for something more.

And so there is a theory which begins to form here, that engagement with spiritual experiences pushes one toward creating abstract art—because our typical physical forms are no longer adequate in capturing such experiences. And I think this is what is happening with Hilma.

In the book, Hilma af Klint: Notes & Methods, it’s mentioned that Hilma receives a message from the High Masters in 1907 which explains the letters in her paintings, the message reads

“The purpose of these letters is to prepare the way for a language of symbols that has already existed forever and that has now been given to humanity by the creative spirits.”

Think about this…how long must it have taken Hilma to catalogue and define over 800 words from her channeling sessions? This is how much this work meant to her. She even sought out the help of one of the leading spiritual thinkers of her time, Rudolf Steiner, in the hope that he might provide some insight as to the meanings of her letters. She showed him these paintings and some from the series that follow and asked him what the words and letters meant and even he had no idea what to make of them. He told her only three things…that he believed the letter “u” meant alpha and the letter “w” meant omega, and that the letter “s” meant serpent.

That’s it. The rest of the work was up to Hilma.

It will be helpful for our upcoming investigations of Hilma’s paintings to notice one other theme which already appears in this first series of Primordial Chaos. That is evolution.

Although Hilma’s paintings are filled with letters and words which often don’t account for any known human language, there are some occasions where we can find a recognizable word. In which case, we can assume this holds some elevated importance to the painting or the series the work belongs to. In this instance it is the word evolution.

It appears written out clear as day at the top of painting number 23 of Primordial Chaos, and it also makes an appearance in her later works, such as in the Seven Pointed Star series, painting number 7 of 1908.

There is no doubt that evolution as a theme plays an important role in Hilma’s work. We know that she was very well read, and would have been familiar with Charles Darwin’s original theory of evolution. The book On the Origin of Species was published in 1859 and quickly became the subject of public debates. Hilma had a deep reverence for nature and would have likely shared in Darwin’s own enthusiasm for studying animals and plants.

A testament to this enthusiasm for nature is the exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art which opened this year and runs until September 27, 2025, it’s titled What Stands Behind the Flowers, and it displays countless watercolor paintings Hilma made for her plant studies. If you have a chance to go see it, don’t hesitate. The exhibit gives a rare glimpse into the genius of Hilma’s mind and serves as an example of her reverence for nature.

Along these same lines there is also a book she created filled with notes and esoteric diagrams about plants, the intent was to depict some spiritual quality of every plant, it’s called Flowers, Mosses, and Lichens.

Hilma would have known of Darwin’s theory of natural selection, which he so eloquently elaborated in the book On the Origin of Species, he states:

“As many more individuals of each species are born than can possibly survive; and as, consequently, there is a frequently recurring struggle for existence, it follows that any being, if it vary however slightly in any manner profitable to itself, under the complex and sometimes varying conditions of life, will have a better chance of surviving, and thus be naturally selected. From the strong principle of inheritance, any selected variety will tend to propagate its new and modified form…”

At the end of the book, he concluded that:

“There is grandeur in this view of life, with its several powers, having been originally breathed into a few forms or into one; and that, whilst this planet has gone cycling on according to the fixed law of gravity, from so simple a beginning endless forms most beautiful and most wonderful have been, and are being, evolved.”

Hilma would have understood evolution as a process of life. Add to that, the concept of evolution appears in Theosophy, which Hilma was familiar with at this point. In Theosophy it is stated that there is a kind of spiritual evolution separate from the biological kind. It is divided into a dual process of involution and evolution. Involution states that the spirit descends into matter and comes to inhabit a body throughout cycles of reincarnation, evolution (in the context of Theosophy) states that the individual must eventually re-ascend to the realm of spirit driven an inner impulse to grow and raise one’s consciousness.

In effect, these two movements of consciousness—first the descending and then the ascending—are at play in every person’s life.

In Hilma’s personal dictionary under the term “evolutionens beteckning” which translates as “the sign for evolution” she shows two circles connected by a curving line. Upon seeing this I couldn’t help but make several connections to this recurring gesture in her paintings: the spinning line which circles on itself, such as in painting number 16 of Primordial Chaos which shows three such lines in green making their way down from the top left at a diagonal to the bottom right—appearing like springs of energy.  I haven’t seen anyone else make this connection yet, but perhaps this is what these recurring ‘spinning lines’ in her many other paintings also refer to: evolution.

As I was gathering together all of the research for this episode I couldn’t help but daydream about Hilma and Anna working away on these paintings. And what fun they must have had doing it. To truly feel like you are charting uncharted waters and doing it all with your best friend. There was an understanding to their process where Anna was serving as a connecting point to what they understood to be the Akashic records. This is a belief in Theosophy which states that there is some nonphysical repository of knowledge, some Great Library, which holds all of the knowledge of the universe. And then someone trained in meditation or channeling can reach the Akashic records—either individually or through the medium of a spirit.

This is how The Five interpreted a message they received in 1900 during a channeling session, in which Anna was the medium. The message stated: “You should read the documents—not written by human hands, but engraved in the finest material of human life. For you should know this: For those who have eyes to see, there is a living text in everything, a diary of the changing fates of worlds, you are to look at the many lives of individuals and a fraction of this text.”

In her biography of Hilma af Klint, Julia Voss writes:

“While Cassel was to ‘calmly study the Akasha,’ as it was formulated at the beginning of the first notebook, af Klint was to paint, ever more and ever faster, in steadily growing formats.” A message from March 1907 stated “Take your palette and begin. Expect a surprise!”

As Hilma continues creating paintings for the Paintings for the Temple project, it’s clear that she becomes more and more independent and confident in her personal vision for the work. As an artist she is establishing a new style, and as things go, styles in art tend to have a mind of their own. But in the first one hundred paintings, before her style is firmly established, you can really see the influence of her experiences in The Five carrying through.

For example, as I was studying the drawings from The Five’s sessions I stumbled on one from November 28th, 1905, which immediately caught my attention. The sketch shows an enormous snail shell which takes up the entire page. The spiral of the snail begins at the exact center of the page and winds its way outward with little segments dividing it, each of the segments have letters or words written in them: the letter u, w, C, the words “under” and “blom”. Then at the top of the spiral shell emerges a snail with the name “annanda” imprinted on it. Ananda was one of the spirit beings which the group regularly contacted.

Looking at this, there is an immediate similarity to the snail shells which Hilma paints in Primordial Chaos, especially considering we see the letters “u & w” in script here as well as in Hilma’s paintings, like number 5 of Primordial Chaos. Though the question would remain: did Hilma channel the drawing for this snail in The Five’s session or was it Anna?

In the signature we see the letters A, H, C, M—telling us that Sigrid was absent, and potentially that Anna served as drawing medium, if the method of using the first letter for the member who is channeling proves true.

And there is yet one final detail on this drawing worth mentioning: there is text written underneath the snail which says “bed Anna tolka”—“ask Anna to interpret”. The spirit seemed to favor Anna in this instance for her abilities to also analyze the message.

I checked in with Ms. Julia Voss about all of this, and I wanted to ask if she also noticed these details regarding the lasting influence which The Five had on Hilma’s paintings…

[cue Julia Voss clip]

And so it goes. By 1907, Hilma’s spiritual, esoteric, and artistic interests have all converged. She is now creating art obsessively—completing over one hundred paintings in one year. She is working feverishly like someone possessed.

Of one of the series, called The Large Figures Paintings she states:

“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.”

What is at the heart of this quest? What is the goal of this work? That’s what we’ll discover on the next episode.

On the next Creative Codex…

We dive into what is widely considered Hilma’s most undeniable work of genius, her painting series titled: The Ten Largest. It is a monumental work, each of these paintings is 10 feet tall and 7 feet wide. What makes these paintings so remarkable? And what is the spiritual message Hilma encoded into these works?

We’ll also venture down a series of rabbit holes dealing with esoteric spiritual traditions and secret societies—and see how they all inspired Hilma af Klint in her life and work.

All this and more on the next—Creative Codex. I’ll see you then.

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