Hilma af Klint’s Astro-Physics “Predictions”, Explainable Somehow by Dr. Carl Jung ()
1. Introduction
When it is about Hilma af Klint is rather about new frontiers for investigation. As Rosetta Stone was a key for deciphering the Egyptian scripts, the work of Hilma af Klint can be studied and used like an “alphabet” which should give a method to interested people for accessing the collective unconscious in order to get valuable and unknown information.
“She told him to refrain from exhibiting the paintings until twenty years after her death, although we do not know precisely why this was important. Perhaps because af Klint spent the entirety of her life developing her inner capacity to receive spiritual instruction, she hoped that with the passage of time other people would develop this capacity as well. As a result, they would have a greater ability to receive the message inherent in these spiritual paintings”, is a quote from the article “Painting Transcendence: A Jungian Lens on the Works of Hilma af Klint” by Marybeth Carter.
From this perspective, the art-work of Hilma af Klint can be seen at Philosopher’s stone.
2. Hilma af Klint’s Astro-Physics “Predictions”, Explainable Somehow by Dr. Carl Jung
I would emphasize the end of the essay “I Believe: On Hilma af Klint and the Writing Life”, when the author Patrick Allington writes “She painted, for example, in anticipation of the climate crisis. She painted machine learning...”. And why this? Because I hope that in a couple of years, based on the provided images of “The Ten Largest”, the Artificial Intelligence will be able to reinforce or not my hypothesis that, somehow, Hilma af Klint painted in “The Ten Largest” reflections of modern astro-physics images. This would be amazing as “The Ten Largest” were painted before 1915, so decades before modern telescopes will be able to take images from remote galaxies.
Firstly, a couple of reasons why I’m prone to believe that the paintings hide cosmic symbols:
In the Guardian article “Hilma af Klint: a painter possessed”, the curator Leah Dickerman compares her with Leonardo Da Vinci: “Hilma is like Leonardo—she wanted to understand who we are as human beings in the cosmos”.
Also, according to the book “Hilma Af Klint: Occult Painter and Abstract Pioneer” (page 29), by Fant Åke, Hilma af Klint herself tells: “Above the easel, I saw a powerfully illuminated Jupiter symbol ♃, which appeared for several seconds. Then my work began at once, in such a way that the images were painted directly through me, without any preliminary sketches but with great vigor. I had no idea what the paintings were supposed to depict, yet I worked swiftly and confidently, without altering a single brushstroke”. Obviously, the planet Jupiter symbol puts things in astronomical light.
And, by searching on the internet for the keywords “Hilma af Klint, cosmic” or “Hilma af Klint, cosmology” you can find multiple articles that are exploring this theme.
And if it’s cosmic, let it be cosmic.
3. “The Ten Largest”, Similarity with the Modern Astro-Physics
I consider only the “The Ten Largest”, which were painted, as Hilma af Klint told, in a state of trance.
Let’s google search for images based on “gravitational waves”. And, for instance, look at the picture that is posted at: https://www.sciencenews.org/article/gravitational-waves-explained and compare it with “The Ten Largest no. 6” (Figure 1).
Figure 1. The modern picture from ScienceNews is similar with many modern pictures found by searching based on “gravitational waves”.
Now search for images based on “supernova spirograph”. You will find a picture at the link address: http://annesastronomynews.com/photo-gallery-ii/nebulae-clouds/ic-418-the-outer-envelope-has-begun-expanding-outward-leaving-a-hot-remnant-core-destined-to-become-a-white-dwarf-star/ Now compare it with “The Ten Largest no. 9” (Figure 2).
Figure 2. The spirograph structure can be seen in the Hilma af Klint painting but also in the “Supernova Spirograph”.
Let’s move on. Access https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Betelgeuse and look at the third picture, the one with the text “1998/9 UV HST images of Betelgeuse showing asymmetrical pulsations with corresponding spectral line profiles” (Figure 3).
Somehow, it reminds me of the “Ten Largest No. 10”.
Another Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NGC_456_and_NGC_4568
Quite similar with a fragment of “The Ten Largest No 7” (Figure 4).
In the article “Illuminating Parallels in the Life and Art of Hilma af Klint and C.G. Jung” by Bettina Kaufmann and Kathrin Schaeppi, published on aras.org by ARAS (The Archive for Research in Archetypal Symbolism) there is a quote: “In these images, (on the left, af Klint from the same series “The Ten Largest”, No. 6
Figure 3. Not only the groups or little squares are similar but also the curved “spectral lines” that are around the squares.
Figure 4. It is similar not only the spirals but also the attraction point.
Adulthood, 1907) we see intimations of cartography—af Klint was the daughter of the naval commodore Victor af Klint”.
But the biggest object of “The Ten Largest No 7” has a reflection in the supernova picture posted at the address https://www.ibtimes.co.in/universe-could-already-be-dying-no-chance-recovery-false-vacuum-theory-780747 (Figure 5).
So the focus is, this time, on the central part of “The Ten Largest No 6”, with a suggestion of “cartography”. Only that I suggest it is about space cartography.
So let’s see
The Ten Largest No 6 versus pictures returned by searching based on “two black holes collide”: https://www.wired.com/2016/03/two-black-holes-collide-puzzling-flash/ and https://www.researchgate.net/figure/Visualization-of-the-grazing-collision-of-two-black-holes-computed-by-the-Cactus-code_fig3_220781532 (Figure 6).
Now, at the minute 2:40 of the movie from the address
Youtube.com/watch?v=SBjYA5rtUzk (The Hypernova of VY Canis Majoris)
I put together with “The Ten Largest No 4” (Figure 7).
Figure 5. The translations of the supernova halo were painted suggestivelly by Hilma af Klint.
Figure 6. In the centre of Hilma af Klint’s painting there are the white orbits that looks like the translation lines from the right modern picture.
Figure 7. The slow halo from The Hypernova of VY Canis Majoris is similar with the painting.
Also, The Ten Largest No 3 can be inspired by the “Snail-Telescopium Constellation”.
Not at the least, The Ten Largest No1 “Childhood” is similar with a picture searched by “clouds making stars” https://www.nature.com/immersive/d41586-022-03811-4/index.html (Figure 8).
If you search images by “String Theory”, two pictures from the first page are: https://sayostudio.com/portfolio/superstring-theory/ https://medium.com/@ayushtripathi0905/string-theory-dimensional-implications-m-theory-023b8480f2c6.
Put it nearby The Ten Largest No 8 (Figure 9).
Figure 8. The form and the structure of the flowers is similar with the form and the structure of the clouds that will born stars.
Figure 9. The modern pictures from the left are the most simple pictures found based on “String Theory”, so not the artistical ones (Figure 10).
Hilma af Klint’s point of view
From Hilma af Klint’s perspective it is quite explicable how she had predicted scientific cosmic information. “The body is capable of rising above its earthly ties by listening to the supernatural energies (...) I am an atom in the universe that has
Figure 10. By searching “star orbiting black hole” you find on Science portal a picture similar with “The Ten Largest No 8”.
access to infinite possibilities of development, and it is these possibilities I want, gradually, to reveal (...) Consciousness could determine being. Humankind could connect with the living spirit that she thought united all beings, from fauna to flora and even, as she pointed out several times, the mineral world” are quotes from notebooks of Hilma af Klint which you can find on the article “Nasty Woman Artist Hilma af Klint: How the World Works” posted on the site https://www.nastywomenwriters.com/.
4. Not Only Hilma af Klint
If you prefer to not take literally this belief of Hilma af Klint then let’s think that there are also a few interesting examples of culture people who intuited future science laws.
A new study published in the journal “Physics of Fluids” suggests that Vincent van Gogh’s painting “The Starry Night” aligns with Kolmogorov’s mathematical theory of turbulence, which describes patterns of fluid dynamics. And Van Gogh couldn’t have known about Kolmogorov’s theory when he created The Starry Night, as he died 13 years before the mathematician was born.
Also, the abstract artist Jackson Pollock, in his book “My Painting”, revealed he painted in a kind of trance: “When I am in my painting I am not aware of what I am doing. It is only after a sort of ‘get acquainted’ period that I see what I have been about. I have no fears about making changes, destroying the image, etc., because the painting has a life of its own. I try to let it come through”. It sounds a bit like a Hilma af Klint quote from above, isn’t it? (Jung et al., 1964)
More than that, at page 265 of the book “Man and his symbols” by dr. Carl Gustav Jung, nearby a picture, dr. Aniela Jaffe explains “The paintings of Jackson Pollock were painted in a trance (unconsciously) as are the works of other modern artists such as the French ‘action’ painter Georges Mathieu. The chaotic but powerful result may be compared to the massa confusa of alchemy, and strangely resembles the hitherto hidden forms of matter as revealed in microphotographs”. (Jung et al., 1964) In other words, the paintings of Pollock are similar to the modern electronic microphotographs of the micro-matter. Again, it is noticed the power of an unconscious to paint replicas of scientific phenomena.
5. From Dr. Carl Jung Perspective
In the same book “Man and his symbols”, dr. Carl Jung, the founder of analytical psychology, gives other examples of how scientific formulas can be intuited in a dream state. “For example, the French mathematician Poincare and the chemist Kekule owed important scientific discoveries as they themselves admit to sudden pictorial ‘revelations’ from the unconscious. The so-called ‘mystical’ experience of the French philosopher Descartes involved a similar sudden revelation in which he saw in a flash the ‘order of all sciences’.”, says Dr. Jung at page 38 (Jung et al., 1964).
At the same page, there is an old picture of the Ouroboros snake with the remark “the 19th century German chemist Kekule, researching into the molecular structure of benzene, dreamed of a snake with its tail in its mouth. He interpreted the dream to mean that the structure was a closed carbon ring” (Jung et al., 1964).
And, now, the explanation provided, at the same page 38, by dr. Jung, for scientifical intuitions: “Later I shall describe in more detail how such material arises from the unconscious, and I shall examine the form in which it is expressed. At the moment I simply want to point out that the capacity of the human psyche to produce such new material is particularly significant when one is dealing with dream symbolism, for I have found again and again in my professional work that the images and ideas that dreams contain cannot possibly be explained solely in terms of memory. They express new thoughts that have never yet reached the threshold of consciousness.” (Jung et al., 1964)
At page 265 “Man and his symbol” we find this paragraph:
“On the other hand, these paintings reveal an unexpected background, a hidden sense. They often turn out to be more or less exact images of nature itself, showing an astounding similarity with the molecular structure of organic and inorganic elements of nature. This is a perplexing fact. Pure abstraction has become an image of concrete nature. But Jung may give us the key to understanding
‘The deeper layers of the psyche’ he has said, ‘lose their individual uniqueness as they retreat farther and farther into darkness. ‘Lower down, that is to say, as they approach the autonomous functional systems, they become increasingly collective until they are universalized and extinguished in the body’s materiality, i.e. in chemical substances. The body’s carbon is simply carbon. Hence ‘at bottom’ the psyche is simply ‘world.’
A comparison of abstract paintings and microphotograph shows that utter abstraction of imaginative art has in a secret and surprising way become ‘naturalistic’, its subject being elements of matter.” (Jung et al., 1964)
As for Dr. Jung it is explainable why the abstract painting can be similar with the micro-cosmos and as the micro-cosmos is another facet of the macro-cosmos we shouldn’t be so surprised by the similarities between the old painting of Hilma af Klint and the modern images of the Universe.
I would like to believe that dr. Carl Gustav Jung would have included Hilma af Klint in the top of his exclusive and short list of genius people who made great scientific discoveries by “dreaming with open eyes”. The only impediment was that the work of Hilma af Klint was not known by dr. Jung at his time.
It’s giving a better context to know that there are also other known culture people who made correct predictions about astronomy or cosmogony.
6. The Two Moons of Mars, by Jonathan Swift
The writer Jonathan Swift (1667-1745), author of the Gulliver’s Travel, somehow knew about the moons of Mars, Phobos and Deimos, a century and a half before they were discovered. So in ‘Voyage to Laputa’ Swift says the Laputans “have discovered two lesser stars, or satellites, which revolve around Mars; whereof the innermost is distant from the center of the primary planet exactly three of his diameters, and the outermost five; the former revolves in the space of 10 hours (actually about 7 and a half hours), and the latter in 21 and a half (about 30 hours).”
Only in 1877, the astronomer Asaph Hall discovered, by his telescope, the two moonlets of Mars.
7. The “Big Bang” of Poet Allan Edgar Poe
Though “Eureka” is mostly a literary work, Poe (1809-1849) includes in this prose poem ideas astronomical ideas that will be validated in the 20th-century.
Poe says that the Universe began from a single originating particle or singularity, willed by a “Divine Volition”. This “primordial particle”, initiated by God, divides into all the particles of the universe. Poe anticipates also the concept of black holes and a hypothetical solution to Olbers’ cosmic paradox (the night sky is dark despite the tremendous number of stars in the universe).
A scientific reassessment of Eureka also emphasizes that Poe developed a Newtonian evolving universe in which nothing can stop stars or galaxies from collapsing on each other.
In opposition with others that argues on the mental disorder of Allan Edgar Poe, atrophysicist Arthur Stanley Eddington said that “Eureka is not a work of dotage or disordered mind”.
According to some sources, even Albert Einstein, in a 1934 letter, wrote that Eureka was “a beautiful achievement of an unusually independent mind.”
8. The “Relativity Theory” of Poet Mihai Eminescu
In Romania, the country of poet Mihai Eminescu (1850-1889) there was a debate around the question if Eminescu has discovered the “Relativity Theory” before Einstein. The discussion was fed by a correspondence between a young Jewish woman from Romania, Melania Serbu, and Albert Einstein, correspondence that started exactly on this matter. More details are in the article. https://www.epmagazine.org/storage/106/en-albert-einstein.aspx
However, in another article, “Eminescu vs Einstein”, the astro-physicist Cristian Presura brings more light (https://stiintasitehnica.com/eminescu-vs-einstein/).
“Every time I read Einstein’s equations, I am amazed at the order my brain recognizes in the Universe. Every time I read Eminescu’s lyrics, my skin trembles, because it makes me intuit what physics cannot describe” (Cristian Presura, 2021), says the science man Presura in the head of his article.
Even though he is explaining why, in fact, the poems “At the star” (“La steaua”) and “The Evening Star” (“Luceafarul”) are not containing the light theory described by Einstein but only the principle of finite light speed, Cristian Presura admits that the novel “The poor Dionis” (“Sarmanul Dionis”) there is something that foreshadows the Relativity Theory.
“It is understood that then we must part forever; because, in desired spaces, the day will be a century, and when you return you will no longer find Ruben, but another man, analogous to me, whom you will easily find”. The focus is on the words “the day will be a century” (Cristian Presura, 2021), which suggests the time inflation.
Another paragraph from the same novel “The poor Dionis” contains the same concept of relativity: “Let us imagine the world reduced to the dimensions of a bullet, and everything in it reduced in analogy, the inhabitants of this world, supposing them endowed with our organs, would understand everything absolutely in the manner and in the proportions in which we understand them. Let’s imagine her thousands time bigger—same thing. With unchanged proportions, a world thousands timesbigger and another thousands of times smaller would be just as big for us. And the objects I see; how big are they absolutely? Who knows if we don’t live in a microscopic world and only the creature of our eyes makes us see it in the size we see it?” (Cristian Presura, 2021).
In fact, this relativity base concept is present also in “Gulliver’s Travel” of Jonathan Swift, as the hero travels in the country of the dwarfs but also in the country of giants.
9. Other Physics Laws at Hilma af Klint
In 1924, Louis de Broglie introduced his theory of electron waves in his PhD thesis recherches sur la théorie des quanta. He suggested that an electron around a nucleus could be thought of as being a standing wave and that electrons and all matter could be considered as waves. Now have a look at “The Dove No4” of Hilma af Klint, where the dove itself is matter but his wing is connected to the sea waves. This is a quite suggestive picture of the principle “wave-particle duality of matter”.
Same like dr Carl Jung, Aldous Huxley was writing about a kind of collective consciousness. And the cover picture of the “The Doors of Perception”—first edition, which was chosen by Huxley himself, has similarities with the symbol “cube with three levels” found at Hilma af Klint in the “The Dove No3” and at “Swan No 23” and “Swan No 4 (Figure 11).
Figure 11. The circular hyper-cube from “The Swan No23” is present also in other paintings of Hilma af Klint.
If you search images by “Fourth Dimension Adobe Stock”, first picture that arise is a cube with embedded spheres. So something like with the hyper-cube with three hyper-planes and circles of Hilma af Klint.
Indeed, it is possible that Hilma af Klint had access to the theory of the tesseract of Charles Howard Hinton because, according to the Oxford English Dictionary, he first used the word tesseract in 1888 in his book “A New Era of Thought”.
But more important is to see a reflection of this symbol of Hilma af Klint in the modern physics.
10. How the Circular Hyper-Cube of Hilma af Klint Can Help the Physics
It is not new at all the idea of an extra dimension or of multiple extra-dimensions in the space-time continuum, an idea that is hypothetically proposed especially by the String Theory.
But let’s get a more intuitive model of such a supplementary dimension and, as much it is possible, harmonized it with some of the most paradoxal axioms of the fundamental physics.
In order to get a more visual shape I’m emphasizing firstly a couple of physics first-hand paradigmas that usually are not discussed exactly because they are not approachable by the classic physics. And, by human nature, we avoid usually what we can not understand.
10.1. How Small Gravitons Can Explain a Big Gravitational Field?
Let’s think at the gravity of any planet. Any cosmic object, like any object in fact, has a gravity that is given, primordially, by all the atoms that is made of.
In particular, this means that the gravity of any planet is the sum of the gravity of each component atom.
But a key question is how a graviton of an Earth’s atom contributes to the Earth gravitational field which reaches up at least to 62 miles, where is starting the Space boundary called the Kármán line? In more simple words, how big is the gravitional field of a single graviton? Or, if we consider a singleton the graviton and its own gravity field, how big is, in fact, a graviton? This question should help us understand that the graviton has, somehow, a bigger extra-dimension.
10.2. Light Invariance Is Counterintuitive in a Space that Is Only 3D
Something similar, about the photon:
Let’s imagine an optic cable around the Earth and a very short beam of light. It is known that in a second the light beam would make 6 rounds of the Earth. Also, imagine that two planes start to fly from San Francisco but in opposite directions, on the trajectory of our beam light.
According to the principle of the Invariant Speed of Light, after a second, the light will meet both planes at the same moment even though they are at certain distance. This fact is unexplainable in the classic space with the three known dimensions. But we will see that a new dimension has the potential to make it acceptable for our perception.
Not at the last, let’s remember that the Universe has emerged at the Big Bang and since then it is in a continuous expansion. But in comparison with what? We go back to the ideas of Jonathan Swift and Mihai Eminescu before the Relativity Theory was discovered. If the Universe is expanding in comparison with nothing then, in fact, is not expanding. But not this is the case. So, an answer would be that in comparison with the galaxies and solar systems. Going a step forward, we can say in fact that the Universe is in expansion in comparison with stars and planets and going even deeper, in comparison with the atoms which the cosmos objects are made of.
10.3. How Big Were the First Particles in Comparison with the Early Universe?
Now, let’s go back in time to the very moment when the Universe was closest to the Big Bang and the first atoms just have appeared. According with our travelling in history, the Universe is contracting in comparison with the own atoms. So at the moment when the first atoms have appeared they were bigger in ratio with the Universe. In this way is a little bit easier to accept a theoretical extra-dimension that is a kind of circular embedded in the general accepted space-time continuum. According with the senses that we have like biological beings, we can’t apprehend easily this extra-dimension. Hopefully, what we can do is to construct a projection of the extra-dimension in the known 3-dimensions space. And the main characteristic of this projection would be that the particles can pulsate with a bigger circular dimension, like Hilma af Klint was suggesting.
In this way, the famous “double slit experiment” (Stark, 2024) performed by Thomas Young get more sense because a particle with a bigger field will split in two interacting sub-particles and the mystery of the Quantum Physics reveals one layer.
Mainly, because an electron or a photon that travels by pulsating bigger and smaller in each moment, indeed would traverse both slits in the same moment so would tear done and both parts by interacting like waves would give the known but enigmatical interference grid.
Also, gravitons that are pulsating at big distances can interfere in gravitational fields that have hundreds or thousands of miles.
10.4. The Infinity Column of the Sculptor Constantin Brancusi
Not less interesting is to go back to the axiom of Invariant Light Speed, in particular to our imaginary experiment with a beam of light and two planes flying in opposite directions. And to see that the concept has also origins in culture, I will give you like a starting example the Infinity Column of the sculptor Constantin Brancusi (Figure 12).
Figure 12. The infinity column of the sculptor Constantin Brancusi.
So try to see the photon pulsating bigger and bigger through the own travelling in space.
But remember that a beam of light is made by many photons, not all of them pulsating in the same rhythm. And, in fact, when we say that a light beam reaches a point of an object, it is only about the photons that by pulsating are returning to the central point, to the lowest dimension, when the energy is at the highest level (at the opposite, when the photon is at the biggest dimension, the energy is at the lowest level and is not “visible”).
Let’s rotate the Infinity Column so to have a trajectory of the photon from the left to the right (Figure 13).
Figure 13. A trajectory of the photon from the left to the right.
Which is similar with Figure 14.
Figure 14. A simulation for increasing-decreasing of the extra-dimension like the Column of the Infinity
In the presentation movie “The Fourth Dimension is Real” by Alan Zucconi, there is a similar image of the cross-section of a hyper-sphere when rotating it over a hyper-plane. And what we can see in three-dimension is a 3D sphere that is growing and after that is shrinking.
So what in 4D space is rotating in the regular 3D space we see like a sphere that is changing the size (Figure 15).
Now, let’s go to our experiment with two planes and a beam of light.
Regarding the plane2 that is more away, some photons of the light beam will have time to grow up so they will reach the plane2 at the same time when other photons just reached the plane1 at their highest energy and the low dimension.
According with this model, a light beam reaches first an object when first of the own photons reaches the object at the highest energy and the low dimension. The photons that are at an intermediate level are not taken into account because they are not visible at that moment.
Indeed, it is strange that a photon is not visible in any moment, but who can say certainly the opposite?
And from pure perspective the light beam looks like a line because the photons are visible only when they are at the low dimension, practically a point. And the line is a succession of points.
Figure 15. The fourth dimension is real.
But travelling in 4-dimensions is something like the graph from above, but at a higher rate. This is why the Optics laws are valid as we know them.
Because of the reasons that I showed I think that such a model of an extra circular dimension can be a small but inspiring step forward in achieving The Theory of Everything.
11. Conclusion
At the end, let’s remember that Allan Edgar Poe, in his “Eureka” poem, was criticizing this world, suggesting that it has fallen away from God by elevating scientific reason above cultural intuition.
A kind of the same idea was present at the philosopher Lucian Blaga, author of the poem “I don’t crush the wonders corolla of the world” and of “Cosmic Trilogy”, as his central believe was that “the mystery potencies the knowledge”.
And, the advantage of cultural-science over strict science is that, as Carl Jung stated in “Man and his symbols”, the humans have an extraordinary capacity to produce symbols that also gives clue about yet unknown things. But the science methods are mainly the mathematical or physics induction and deduction and the equations are expressing precisely strict definitions leaving usually no room for extra-thoughts.
The dialog between science and analytical psychology was launched in the chapter “Conclusion: Science and the unconscious” by M.-L. von Franz in the book “Man and his symbols”. And it must be continued.
Pictures are by courtesy of Hilma af Klint Foundation https://hilmaafklint.se/.