Guest Essay: Hilma af Klint’s Notes from the Spirit World
“Take the Pencil, Hilma”
Before we launch in to this guest post, let me extend my heartfelt thanks for your reactions to my book announcement. Now, I enter the writing stage buoyed by your enthusiasm. I know I’ll return to the comments section during difficult writing moments. So thank you; you have given me a gift—one which this writer never expected to receive.💛
I’m writing to you from a chilly New Orleans, where I’m attending the Modern Language Association’s annual conference. Because I’m busy with conference activities, my friend
, writer of the gorgeous, brilliant newsletter offered to write this week’s post. She’s sharing the notebooks of the artist Hilma af Klint with us—and they are fascinating! I didn’t know much about her before reading Sabrina’s essay, but oh my! Klint was one of the most original, interesting note-takers I’ve ever encountered. Get ready for seance inspired notes, conversations with the spirit world, and art that served as the centerpiece for the Guggenheim’s most popular exhibit ever. I hope you enjoy reading this essay as much as I did!One last note: If you feel called to support those devastated by the Los Angeles fires, Sabrina, an LA resident, recommends visiting this compilation of GoFundMe pages of families who have lost their homes. All donations go directly to families.
The Swedish artist, Hilma af Klint (1862–1944) was relatively unknown to the public until her 2018 Guggenheim exhibit propelled her into fame. Klint didn’t get to experience this roaring success during her lifetime, but she never gave up on her art.
In fact, she believed that her time would come posthumously, and annotated in her notebooks the signs “+ x”, which signaled that those artworks shouldn’t be shown until 20 years after her death.
Through group séances, mediumship, and channeling, Hilma af Klint was guided by the spirit world, which she called “Higher Forces.” She was convinced that her work would impact future generations: “The experiments I have undertaken will astound humanity.”1
Those experiments have indeed shaken art history — revealing that Klint was creating abstract paintings long before other artists, such as Kandinsky and Mondrian, were credited with inventing this art form. In recent years, interest for her work has continued to grow, reaching millions of art lovers and spiritual seekers. Her Guggenheim exhibit was the most-visited exhibition in the museum’s history.
She has become a prominent figure in the contemporary art world, considered a pioneer of abstract work, an avant-guarde feminist, and a fearless spiritual explorer with a unique aesthetic.
As an avid notetaker, she also left a rich legacy of 26,000 handwritten pages that give us insight into her process, contemplation, and revelations.
“Take the Pencil, Hilma”: Mediumistic Drawings with The Five
Hilma af Klint showed interest in spiritual matters from a young age. She joined the Theosophical Society2 the year it was created in 1889 in Sweden, and later Rudolf Steiner’s Anthroposophical movement. Merging these various teachings, she developed her “own spiritual cosmology, which evolved throughout her life.”3
Her first initiation into spiritual matters occurred when she visited a medium:
My first experience with mediumship occurred in 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.4
One of the most important chapters of her spiritual journey started in 1896 when she joined four other women to form “The Five.” The group regularly met to conduct séances to seek the guidance of the spirit world.
The Five had a systematic method of working. “Each meeting started with a prayer, followed by a meditation, a Christian sermon, and a review and analysis of a text from the New Testament. This was followed by a séance. The Five carefully documented their meetings and collected drawings and messages received in sketchbooks.”5
Between 1896 and 1907, they wrote each session in one of five notebooks, which describe who acted as the medium, who created the channeled drawings, what the message received was, and the names of the Spirit who delivered it.
Of the Five members, two of them were formally trained artists: Hilma af Klint and her friend and later lover, Anna Cassel from the Royal Academy. The task of drawing eventually became Hilma’s responsibility. On December 8, 1903, she was encouraged by a spirit named Esther to “Take the pencil, Hilma.” The painter received a rectangle and a sphere, along with an explanation of the meaning of the forms. They were “the expression of life.”6
Klint referred to these drawings as “mediumistic,”7 describing the process: “the images are painted directly through me, without preliminary sketches, with great force.”8
The Higher spirits conveyed their messages in the form of words and images. The drawings were created in an automatic way, as the drawer’s hand was guided by the spirits. Often, The Five were perplexed by the results, and the spirits would attempt to ease their doubts.
For example, referring to the following drawing, the spirit named ‘Gregor’ said:
It is life, friends, a rich mixture of the simplest with the most beautiful, the struggle and the joy, calculations, proofs, the striving toward thousands of species, a diverse jumble to the external observer––but behind it all, a unity.9
Nature Study: Science meets Spirituality
For Hilma af Klint, science and spirituality were not contradictory, but rather complimentary. In 1919-20, she researched 146 nature specimens, “developing an elaborate diagrammatic language to represent the energetic and emotional signature” of plants.10
First I will attempt to understand the flowers of the earth; I will take the plants that grow on land as my starting point. Then, with the same care, I will study what lives in the waters of the earth. Then blue ether with its myriad creatures will be the subject of my study, and finally I will penetrate the forest, exploring the silent mosses, the trees, and the many animals that inhabit the cool, dark undergrowth.11
The study of nature allowed her (and her audience) to “rise to the heights of thought without fear of former fallacies,” and feel “the force within oneself.”12
She explains further:
Behind the effervescent force of the plant is concealed the warmth of feeling, behind the mobility of the animal lies the force of thought. Thought and feeling are united in the gravity of the stone.”13
“An Atom in the Universe”: Interconnected with the Cosmos
Scientific advancements abounded during Hilma af Klint’s life. One of the most notable breakthroughs was the discovery by Pierre and Marie Curie (who won the Nobel Prize in 1903) that elements were mutable, and that atoms were divisible.
Inspired by this scientific revolution, Klint created in 1918 twenty-two drawings titled The Atom Series. Each drawing represents two views of an atom: the one on the upper left shows the atom as it exists and is then enlarged four times.
Klint also provided text observations, explaining the atom’s relationship to the energy field of the spiritual world. This study confirmed “her view of the¨universe as an interconnected whole.”
In one of the drawings, she notes: “Every atom has its own midpoint, but each midpoint is directly connected to the midpoint of the universe.”14
She also saw herself as an extension of this interrelated universe. In her notebook she writes: “I am an atom in the universe that has access to infinite possibilities of development, and it is these possibilities I want, gradually, to reveal.”15
The above image contains the following text:
No.1 The midpoint of the universe consists of innocence
Uncompromising truth 2. Dignity 3. Humility 4. Mercy (4 times enlarged)
No2. Every atom has its own midpoint, but each midpoint is directly connected to the midpoint of the universe
No3. The body must be mediated by going to its center and drawing from these new forces.
No3. Through its longing to create ever more beautiful forms first on the etheric plane, and then in matter, the body becomes capable of being penetrated by light.
The Blue Notebooks and The Suitcase Museum
In 1905 Klint received a commission from one of the spirits named Amaliel, channeled during her séances. She was guided to create a series of paintings which eventually became The Paintings for the Temple. Klint writes in her notebook:
... Amaliel presented me with a task and I immediately said Yes. The expectation was that I would dedicate a year to this task. In the end it became the greatest work of my life.16
She ended up creating 193 works for the series. The first paintings of the series – Primordial Chaos – show the decay and creation of atoms and elements. Her family’s nautical lineage may have influenced her work. Hilma herself compared the paintings to “charts and logarithms for a seaman.”17 Hilma’s father’s ship was also called Snäckan, Swedish for “snail” – a symbol that appears frequently in the painter’s work.
When she moved to her studio on the island of Munsö in Lake Mälaren, she was finally able to unpack the very large paintings and have them photographed. With the help of her companion, Thomasine Anderson, she mounted the black and white photographs in small (22.5x 17.5 cm) blue clothbound books with specific annotations. She also reproduced mini watercolors of the paintings, occasionally enlarging certain details.
The ten landscape-format notebook became her “Suitcase Museum”: a way for Klint to transport and show her large paintings wherever she traveled.
The Spiral Temple: a Spiritual Museum
Over the years, Hlma af Klint became increasingly worried about what would happen to her large body of work. But the Higher Forces had a plan and started delivering specific clues: red circles, spirals, waves, etc. Soon, a form appeared on the page: an octagon enclosed with three geometric shapes – a floor plan
In 1931, Klint started sketching the Temple, which included a spiral staircase that would lead visitors “from the earth to the heavens.” Finally, over two decades after the Paintings for the Temple were created, they had a home in which they could live – at least theoretically.18
Looking at Language (Letters & Words)
Though most of the messages she received from the High Masters were visually-based, Hilma af Klint was also given insights into the world of letters and words. In 1907, the sound of language was explained to her in this way:
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.19
She dedicated an entire notebook to the deciphering of language, and pasted onto the first page handwritten notes by Rudolph Steiner who interpreted some of the letters which appear in Klint’s paintings. She organized the notebook in alphabetical order, and included several definitions for each letter. The interpretations are based on her wide range of spiritual studies, from biblical texts, scientific studies, Rosicrucian, Theosophical and Anthroposophical books. Some seem quite literal, such as “S” referring to “Snake; while others are more complex, like “AndaHes” which means “desire’s joyful faith.”
Studies of the Life of the Soul
Hilma af Klint’s notes weren’t simply explanations of her paintings. They were deep contemplations into the nature of life. Between 1917 and 1918 she wrote 2,058 pages, which she called “Studies of the Life of the Soul.” The work included an investigation of gender fluidity and the necessity of overcoming this dichotomy on a higher, spiritual level. She often refers to “womanman” and “manwoman” writing:
I will begin with a side note of great importance. Many who fight in this drama are dressed in the wrong clothing. Many female costumes conceal a man. Many males costumes conceal a woman.20
She herself embraced her own masculine side, which she referred to as Asket.
Visually, she represented the masculine energy with the color yellow and the feminine energy with blue.
When her lover, Thomasine Anderson, died on April 14, 1940, Hilma drew the grave in her notebook. The loss was so deeply felt, which Hima wrote about:
I will come to you, as soon as you call me, I will be happy. I want, when I fall asleep, for my right side to touch your left, and thus we will walk together toward the summit of the light.21
When Hilma died on October 21, 1944, the last entry in her notebook (from October 8th) reads:
You have service to the mysteries before you and will soon understand what is required of you.22
Notes on Klint’s Notes:
Tap into other realms: Hilma was always guided by the spirit world, and learned to trust in invisible forces. Sometimes inspiration comes from beyond the rational mind and can lead to sublime results.
Automatic drawing (or writing): Sometimes trying to create something “beautiful” can impede our creative effort. As with Hilma af Klint’s mediumistic drawings, it can be liberating to try free-drawing (or free-writing), and loosen the grip on control/ results.
Scientific and Spiritual: whether it’s the study of a plant or atoms, Klint paid close attention to the elements around her. Beyond the observations of the eye, she also liked to merge science and spirituality. When looking at our immediate environment, what emotions or qualities can be linked to it?
Create your own language: Klint assigned new meaning to letters and also developed her own words. Sometimes our default language can feel limiting and it can be fun to come up with new words or associate new meanings to sounds (as some of us did as children).
Hilma af Klint’s notebook HaK 556, 272
Hilma af Klint, a Biography, p.7
Hilma af Klint’s notebook HaK 1164, 92.
Hilma af Klint Notes and Methods, p.14.
Hilma af Klint’s notebook HaK 1162, 41.
Hilma af Klint’s notebook HaK 556, 340
Hilma af Klint’s notebook HaK 556, 274
Hilma af Klint’s notebook HaK 1156, 38.
Hilma af Klint Notes and Methods, p.160.
Hilma af Klint’s notebook HaK 579, 84-85.
Hilma af Klint’s notebook HaK 590, 3.
Hilma af Klint’s notebook HaK 1125.
Hilma af Klint Notes and Methods, p 149.
Hilma af Klint’s notebook HaK 579, 38-39.
Hilma af Klint’s notebook HaK 55, 8.
Hilma af Klint’s notebook HaK 555, 91.
While Klint was drawing her “Spiral Temple,” Hilla von Rebay was conceiving “a temple of nonrepresentation and reverence” in New York with the support of Solomon R. Guggenheim, which became the Guggenheim Museum, where Klint ended up having her breakthrough museum show in 2018.
Hilma af Klint’s notebook HaK 431.
Själslivet, vol.2, p.450-51.
Hilma af Klint’s notebook HaK 1092, 38.
Hilma af Klint’s notebook HaK 1098, 126-27.
 | A guest post by
|
Honored to share Hilma’s work with the Noted community- thanks Jillian for the opportunity ✨💛
This is such an amazing time in the history of art!
When Hilda writes: “I am an atom in the universe that has access to infinite possibilities of development”, she was in the midst of an explosion of not only human awareness, but human expression.
We know that science was declaring the existence of things we cannot see because of scale, such as the Curies’ atomic discoveries. But consider Hilma’s spiritual work! This was a period of revolution for the very idea of representing purely abstract entities in abstract, rather than ‘personified’ or narrative visualizations. Consider early works in visual music accompaniment and abstractions of the 1920’s and 30’s, of the psychic universe, etc.
Planes of abstract contours that it would take a century of technology to be able to render immersively were alive, bubbling in the minds of these artists. What an extraordinary Notebook!