Exploring Mysticism and Parapsychology. This blog is also an attempt to promote awareness of a Modern Universal Paradigm known as Multi-Dimensional Science. It offers a "Scientific" testable Hypothesis for a more "objective" understanding of claimed Psychic and Spiritual Phenomena. A link to this subject should be found on this page or alternatively it can be found easily via a word search.Please note that the Internet articles here may not always reflect the views of the Blogger.
Hilma af Klint (October 26, 1862 – October 21, 1944) was a Swedishartist and mystic whose paintings were amongst the first abstract art. A considerable body of her abstract work predates the first purely abstract compositions by Kandinsky.[1] She belonged to a group called "The Five" (a circle of women who shared her belief in the importance of trying to make contact with the so-called 'high masters' - often by way of séances) and her paintings, which sometimes resembled diagrams, were a visual representation of complex spiritual ideas.
Eftersommar (Late Summer) an early naturalistic work, painted by af Klint in 1903. An example of the works she exhibited to the public during her lifetime.
The fourth child of Captain Victor af Klint, a Swedish naval commander, and Mathilda af Klint (née Sonntag), Hilma af Klint spent summers with her family at their farm Hanmora on the island of Adelsö in Lake Mälaren. In these idyllic surroundings Hilma came into contact with nature at an early stage in her life and this deep association with natural forms was to be an inspiration in her work. From her father she adopted an interest in mathematics.
In 1880 her younger sister Hermina died and it was at this time that the spiritual dimension of her life began to develop.
She showed an early ability in visual art and after the family had moved to Stockholm she studied at the Academy of Fine Arts for five years during which time she learned portraiture and landscape painting . Here she met Anna Cassel, the first of the four women with whom she later worked in "The Five" (de fem), a group of artists who shared her ideas. Her more conventional painting became the source of her financial income while the 'life's work' remained a quite separate practice.
The project on which "The Five" were engaged involved, in 1892, recording in a book a completely new system of mystical thought in the form of messages from higher spirits. One, Gregor, spoke thus: "all the knowledge that is not of the senses, not of the intellect, not of the heart but is the property that exclusively belongs to the deepest aspect of your being...the knowledge of your spirit".
Hilma af Klint's work ran parallel to the development of abstract art by other artists such as Mondrian, Malevich and Kandinsky who were, like af Klint, inspired by the Theosophical Movement founded by Madame Blavatsky. Af Klint's work can be understood in the wider context of the modernist search for new forms in artistic, spiritual, political and scientific systems at the beginnings of the 20th century.
Svanen (The Swan), No. 17, Group IX, Series SUW, October 1914-March 1915. This abstract work was never exhibited during af Klint's lifetime.
Through her work with the group "The Five" af Klint created experimental automatic drawing as early as 1896, leading her towards an inventive geometric visual language capable of conceptualising invisible forces both of the inner and outer worlds. Quite apart from their diagrammatic purpose the paintings have a freshness and a modern aesthetic of tentative line and hastily captured image: a segmented circle, a helix bisected and divided into a spectrum of lightly painted colours. She continued prolifically to add to the body of work amounting to over 1200 painting and 100 texts by her death in 1944.[2] She requested that it should not be shown until 20 years after the end of her life. In 1970 her paintings were offered as a gift to Moderna Museet in Stockholm, which declined the donation. Thanks to the art historian Åke Fant her art was introduced to an international audience in the 1980s. He first presented her at a Nordik conference in Helsinki in 1984, and then wrote a catalog entry to the 1986 exhibition at Los Angeles County Museum of Art, The spiritual in art: abstract painting 1890-1985. organized by Maurice Tuchman. In 2005-2006 her work was shown in some major museums in the exhibition 3 x Abstraction curated by Catherine de Zegher, together with artists Agnes Martin and Emma Kunz.
3 x Abstraction: New Methods of Drawing, The Drawing Center, New York; Santa Monica Museum of Art; Irish Museum of Modern Art, Dublin, 2005–2006
An Atom in the Universe, Camden Arts Centre, 2006
The Alpine Cathedral and The City-Crown, Josiah McElheny. Moderna Muséet, Stockholm, Sweden. Dec. 1 2007 – March 31, 2008 (represented by 14 paintings)
The Message. The Medium as artist - Das Medium als Künstler Museum in Bochum, Germany. February 16 – April 13, 2008 (represented by 4 paintings)
Traces du Sacré Centre Pompidou, Paris. May 7 – August 11, 2008. (represented by 7 paintings)
Hilma af Klint – Une modernité rélévée Centre Culturel Suédois, Paris. April – August 2008 (represented by 59 paintings)
Traces du Sacré Haus der Kunst, Munich. September 18, 2008 – January 11, 2009
De geheime schilderijen van Hilma af Klint, Museum voor Moderne Kunst, Arnhem. March 7, 2010 - May 30, 2010
"Hilma af Klint – a Pioneer of Abstraction" was produced by and showed at Moderna Museet in Stockholm Sweden from February 16 until May 26, 2013, before touring to Hamburger Bahnhof – Museum für Gegenwart in Berlin from June 15 to October 6, and Museo Picasso Málaga from October 21, 2013 to February 9, 2014.
Works by af Klint was exhibited at the Central Pavilion of the 55th Venice Biennial from June 1 to November 24, 2013.
Painting the Unseen, Serpentine Gallery, London, UK March 3 - May 15 2016
Hilma af Klint, Raster Förlag, Stockholm. Swedish text about 100 pictures. ISBN 91-87214-08-3
Vägen till templet, Rosengårdens Förlag. Swedish text, 30 sketches. Describes the teaching period to become a medium. ISBN 91-972883-0-6
Enheten bortom mångfalden, Rosengårdens Förlag. Swedish text, 32 pictures. Two parts, one philosophical and one art-scientific. ISBN 91-972883-4-9
I describe the way and meanwhile I am proceeding along it, Rosengårdens Förlag. A short introduction in English with 3 pictures. ISBN 91-972883-2-2
Hilma af Klint, The greatness of things The Douglas Hyde Gallery, Dublin. English text, 23 images. ISBN 0-907660-99-1
The Spiritual in Art, Abstract Painting 1890-1985, publ. Los Angeles County Museum of Art, 1986
Catherine de Zegher and Hendel Teicher (eds.) 3 X Abstraction, Yale University Press and The Drawing Center, NY, 2005
Åke Fant: Okkultismus und Abstraktion, die Malerin Hilma af Klint. Albertina, Wien 1992, ISBN 3-900656-17-7.
John Hutchinson (Hrsg.): Hilma af Klint, the Greatness of Things. Douglas Hyde Gallery, Dublin 2005, ISBN 0-907660-99-1.
The Message. Art and Occultism. With an Essay by André Breton. Hrsg. v. Claudia Dichter, Hans Günter Golinski, Michael Krajewski, Susanne Zander. Kunstmuseum Bochum. Walther König: Köln 2007, ISBN 978-3-86560-342-5.
Examples of omens from the Nuremberg Chronicle (1493): natural phenomena and unnatural births.
Manuscript of the mid-nineteenth century, possibly of Sgau Karen origin, shows various appearances in the sun, the moon, clouds, etc., and indicates the primarily bad omens these appearances foretell. Explanations in English were added to this manuscript by a nineteenth-century American missionary[1]
An omen (also called portent or presage) is a phenomenon that is believed to foretell the future, often signifying the advent of change.[2] People in the ancient times believed that omens lie with a divine message from their gods.[3]
These omens include natural phenomena, for example an eclipse, freak births of animals and humans and behavior of the sacrificial lamb on its way to the slaughter. They had specialists, the diviners, to interpret these omens. They would also use an artificial method, for example, a clay model of a sheep liver, to communicate with their gods in times of crisis. They would expect a binary answer, either yes or no answer, favorable or unfavorable. They did these to predict what would happen in the future and to take action to avoid disaster.[3]
Though the word "omen" is usually devoid of reference to the change's nature, hence being possibly either "good" or "bad," the term is more often used in a foreboding sense, as with the word "ominous". The origin of the word is unknown, although it may be connected with the Latin word audire, meaning "to hear."[4]
The oldest source for this practice in the Ancient Near East came from Mesopotamia. This practice attested at the first half of the 2nd millennium B.C., and it was vigorously pursued by the Assyrian kings, Esarhaddon and his son, Ashurbanipal in the 7th century B.C.[3]
There were 3 methods to interpret omens, and they were hepatoscopy (i.e. liver divination), lecanomancy, libanomancy. Hepatoscopy is to observe irregularities and abnormalities on the appearance of the entrails of a sacrificial sheep and they were used most in royal services.[3]
Astrological omens were popular in Assyria, during the 7th century BC. Diviners gained much influence by interpreting the omens and advising the king how to avoid the terrible fate during the reign of Esarhaddon (681-669 BC). One of the things they would do in Assyria was to put a substitute king on the throne, and the true king would hide for a while. The substitute king was expected to take the evil consequences and when they believed the danger is over, they would execute the substitute king and the true king will be back on the throne.[3]
The observations of omens were recorded into series. Some of them dated back to the first half of the 2nd millennium BC, and these were arranged as conditional statement later (if such and such is the case, then such and such is the result).[3]
This belief of omens later spread out around the Near East and beyond when we found liver models, the clay model of sheep livers use for the diviners to learn the craft, in Boghazkoi, Ugarit, Megiddo, and Hazor.[3]
Such practice was found in Israel as well. Compared to Israel, they used the methods listed above except, hepatoscopy. According to the bible, God didn’t answer King Saul through dreams, or Urim and Thummim, or prophets, before his final confrontation with the Philistines. Thus, showed that they have a similar belief and practice with their prophets, and dreams, and similar tool as Urim and Thummim.[3]
Letters from the city Mari dated at the latest from the 18th century showed that this divinatory practices were not limited to royal court, but also played an important role in everyday life of the people.[3]
An oionos(omen) was defined in antiquity as the carnivorous vulture, especially a prophetic bird. By careful observation of the bird’s cries and the way or direction it flew, the augurs attempted to predict the future. They also saw lightning or thunder as omens, sent from Zeus, and observed the direction in which they saw or heard them. Omens represented the divine will and the decisions of the gods, their positioning opposite human endeavors, and were aimed at being understood by sensitive receivers of the time, who brought the divine charisma to become intermediaries, channels between the world of gods and humans. Even since Homeric times, the Greeks paid special attention to these signs: when they saw vultures from the left, another symbol of Zeus, they considered it a bad omen. The cry of a heron or a lightning to the right marked positive and promising omen. In the Greek territory, seers also judged good and bad omens from the unwillingness or willingness of a victim to approach the altar and by the state of its offal when slaughtered.[5]
Ancient Roman religion employed two distinct types of professional omen readers. Augurs interpreted the flights of birds, while haruspices employed animal sacrifice to obtain the entrails necessary for divination. The Romans, besides drawing omens from birds, their species and flying style, as well as from lightning and sacrificial animals, paid special attention to a remarkable word or phrase uttered supposedly at random, but which carried a symbolic load and an essentially prophetic content. A widely known incident involved Emilios Paul, who heard his daughter saying that their dog Persa had died, and considered this phrase a good omen as to the campaign against King Perseus, given the phonetic similarity of the two names and the timing the phrase was uttered and the death of the dog occurred. The Romans, unlike the Greeks, considered that signs from the left were usually favorable and positive, while signs from the right were seen as adverse and negative. However, under Greek influence this procedure began to change and eventually lost its universal weight, meaning that each omen case was to be examined separately.[5]
Halley's Comet's appearance in 1066 was recorded on the Bayeux Tapestry. ISTI MIRANT STELLA literally means "These ones are looking in wonder at the star". National Geographic translated it in a 1966 article about the tapestry as "These men wonder at the star."
In the field of astrology, solar and lunar eclipses (along with the appearance of comets and to some extent the full moon) have often been considered omens of notable births, deaths, or other significant events throughout history in many societies. One biblical example is the Magi in the Gospel of Matthew who predicted the birth of Jesus after seeing the Star of Bethlehem.
Omens may be considered either good or bad depending on their interpretation. The same sign may be interpreted differently by different people or different cultures.
For example, a superstition in the United States and other countries across Europe indicates that a black cat is an omen of bad luck.[6] Comets also have been considered to be both good and bad omens. The best-known example is probably Halley's Comet, which was a "bad omen" for King Harold II of England but a "good omen" for William the Conqueror.[7]
^ Jump up to: abcdefghiBeck, David Noel Freedman ed. ; associate ed. Gary A. Herion, David F. Graf, John David Pleins ; managing ed. Astrid B. (2009). The Anchor Yale Bible Dictionary. New Haven: Yale University Press. ISBN9780300140057.
Jump up ^Online Etymology Dictionary. "Omen". Douglas Harper. Retrieved 8 March 2011.
^ Jump up to: abLampsas Giannis, Dictionary of the Ancient World (Lexiko tou Archaiou Kosmou), Vol. I, Athens, Domi Publications, 1984, pp. 43-44.
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