Visual essay: female artists paint the otherworld

Art from Hildegard of Bingen, Hilma af Klint, Agnes Pelton, Leonora Carrington, and more

Some housekeeping: I’m travelling next week and will take a week off publishing this newsletter. I’ll turn off paid subscriptions so nobody will be charged while I’m gone. Thanks for your patience!

---

I’ve been writing to you for months now about the female mystics—the women through history who have had direct experience of the divine or an otherworld, and who then wrote about those experiences.

But here’s the thing: mystic experience can’t really be expressed in words—at least, not in prose that aims to be descriptive and factual. Every mystic you read will admit this at some point (though it rarely stops them from trying).

Descriptive prose is linear, whereas mystical experience is everything and everywhere and all at once.

So is there another way?

Well, yes. Several, in fact. There’s poetry and music and there’s a whole conversation to be had about why and how these forms might be better pitched to recreate the mystical than prose—but we’ll get into that another time.

And then there’s painting. Over the years, mystics have gifted us precious visual renderings of what they’ve seen and felt when they crossed over to the other side. Unlike prose and even poetry and music, these paintings can go some way towards truly communicating the visual experience of these transcendent moments.

And so, several months into this study of the mystics, it strikes me that we might be in need of some visuals. We might need to see just what it is that we’ve been circling all this time.

Here’s a smattering of such pictures. This should be obvious, but this is by no means an exhaustive collection. It’s simply a handful of the images that most grab me personally; the ones I return to time and again. These are pictures that merit some real sitting-with, so I’d encourage you to stay with the images instead of my words.

If you’re interested in learning more about female artists and the beyond, I recommend Jennifer Higgie’s book The Other Side.

Hildegard receiving a vision and dictating it to scribe, Volmar. From her manuscript Scivias, around 1150.

Hildegard of Bingen’s cosmic egg, showing the structure of the universe as revealed to her in a vision, complete with an outer membrane of dark fire, and storms within.

Hilma af Klint, “Group X Number 1, Altarpiece,” (1915). Hilma received many of her artistic visions from spirits she contacted during seances, though she later seemed to move away from this form of painting, developing her own iconography of geometric forms, which drew in part on Christian symbolism.

Hilma af Klint, “The Dove No. 1” (1915). Hilma didn’t pair this painting with Altarpiece, but to me, they are the perfect pair, two sides of the same coin. The masculine and the feminine. The imminent principle of god and the immanent principle of god.

Annie Besant and C.W. Leadbeater, “Vague Religious Feelings” from the book Thought Forms (1905). OK, so this book was coauthored by a man and a woman, but it’s so good at visualizing the quality of mystic experience that I had to include some images from it. Besant and Leadbeater were leading members of the Theosophical Society, in which Hilma af Klint was also involved. Thought Forms sought to visualize emotions, as well as other non-tangible experiences like music. In this case, it’s vague religious feelings that are being visualized, and isn’t this just what that feels like? That soft but bright spiritual stirring?

Besant and Leadbeater, “Upward Rush of Devotion” (from Thought Forms). There’s a clear visual echo between this and the next image from Besant and Leadbeater, and Hilma’s work.

Besant and Leadbeater, “Response to Devotion” (from Thought Forms).

Agnes Pelton, “Messengers” (1932). I will never get over the luminosity of Pelton’s paintings. Her work was deeply influenced by the desert landscapes in which she spent much of her life, and where the beyond often feels so close.

Leonora Carrington, “Eluhim” (1960). For my money, Carrington was the GOAT at capturing the dreamlike quality of mystic experience.

That’s all from me for now. If you enjoyed this post, I’d love it if you clicked the little heart button below.

See you in two weeks.

Love,

xx Ellie