Occult Modernism: Women Who Painted the Invisible

Long before abstraction was accepted by museums, before critics named movements and men were credited as pioneers, women were painting under the guidance of unseen forces.

Hilma af Klint claimed her monumental canvases were commissioned by spiritual masters. Agnes Pelton sought luminous forms through meditation in the California desert. Ithell Colquhoun merged surrealism with occult initiation. Swiss healer Emma Kunz created vast geometric diagrams through pendulum guidance, using them not as decoration but as medicine.

In this episode, we explore the spiritualist currents that shaped modern art and ask a daring question: were these women inventing abstraction, or transmitting it?
What did they believe was happening when they entered trance or deep meditation? What symbols were encoded in their spirals, orbs, and geometric lattices? Why has history minimized the role of spiritualism in the development of modern art? And perhaps most importantly, why would unseen intelligences seek to work through human beings at all?

This is a journey into séances, desert studios, sacred geometry, and the radical idea that art may be collaboration rather than self-expression. Because if creativity is a form of transmission, then the question is no longer whether spirits exist.
The question becomes: what wants to move through you?

References:
1. Higgie, Jennifer. The Other Side: A Story of Women in Art and The Spirit World. First Pegasus Books, New York, 2024.
2. Bashkoff, Tracey. Hilma af Klint: Paintings for the Future. Guggenheim (n.d.)