Hilma af Klint and the Inner Cosmos
Could one of the best ways to study the universe be through the human mind?
The abstract painter Hilma af Klint (1862–1944) may offer an answer. Her large-scale series The Ten Largest, painted in 1907, bears a striking resemblance to some of today’s astronomical images.
Af Klint’s process was deeply spiritual and intuitive. She believed she was guided by higher forces and often entered trance states to create her work. Through these altered states of consciousness, she may have glimpsed forms that science would only much later discover.
A Physicist Notices Something Strange
In 2019, astronomer Britt Lundgren visited the Guggenheim Museum’s Hilma af Klint: Paintings for the Future exhibition. What she saw there left her stunned: af Klint’s works resembled scientific diagrams she recognized from her training — particularly Thomas Young’s 1807 wave interference patterns and Herschel’s star mapping.
Intrigued, Lundgren spent four years investigating these connections. In 2025, she published her findings in Leonardo, the MIT Press journal of art and science.
One example: af Klint’s The Swan, No. 5 features curved arcs and radial dots that closely resemble illustrations from Young’s physics lectures. Herschel and Messier’s 19th-century drawings of Lyra, Vega, and the Orion Nebula also bear striking similarity to forms in af Klint’s Swan series.
The Problem of Influence: Did She See These Diagrams?
Could af Klint have seen these scientific images? Possibly. But even if she had, how could she have replicated them so exactly — or recalled them decades later without reference?
This puzzle brings us to the concept of cryptomnesia, as described by Carl Jung. In Man and His Symbols, Jung shares a story about philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche, who once reproduced a passage word-for-word from a book he had read as a child — unaware he was copying it. Jung explains:
“This is a special instance of what is called ‘cryptomnesia’ — a peculiar phenomenon that has been repeatedly observed in many mediums. They can apparently reproduce exactly things they have heard or read, without consciously remembering them.” (Man and His Symbols, 37)
Jung believed that unconscious memories could resurface during trance states or altered consciousness — particularly in artists and mystics. Af Klint, who painted in spiritual trances, may have accessed memories of diagrams she didn’t know she remembered.
Jung’s Theory: The Mind as a Microcosm of the Universe
Jung saw the unconscious not just as a storehouse of forgotten memories, but as something more mysterious. He argued that the unconscious mind mirrors the structure of the universe itself.
In Man and His Symbols, he writes:
“The collective unconscious appears to consist of mythological motifs or primordial images… They are among the highest values of the human psyche… The impact of an archetype is like the charge of a battery.” (Man and His Symbols, 68–72)
Jung saw parallels between mystical imagery and scientific reality. He noted that Jackson Pollock, while painting in a trance, seemed to reproduce “the physics of subatomic particles.” If Pollock, painting from the unconscious, could visualize the microcosm, then perhaps af Klint, in her own trance states, painted the macrocosm — the cosmos itself.
Af Klint's Process: Astral Guidance and Symbols
Af Klint believed her paintings were guided by higher beings. She called them “The High Ones” and described their instructions as spiritual transmissions. In 1896, she wrote:
“Suddenly, I saw the symbol for Jupiter (♃) above the easel. It was large and shone with a blue light.”
She claimed to receive guidance to paint “on the astral plane” — suggesting that her imagery was not earthly, but celestial.
A Mysterious Visual Harmony: Paintings and Space Photography
What’s most astonishing is how The Ten Largest paintings resemble modern images of space — captured with tools af Klint never had access to, like the Hubble Space Telescope or computer simulations of gravitational waves.
Here are some examples where af Klint’s abstract forms align with current astronomical discoveries:
Af Klint and the Physics of the Future?
Af Klint’s art not only echoes astronomy — it also seems to anticipate concepts from modern physics:
Af Klint as Cosmic Cartographer
In 2019, the Archive for Research in Archetypal Symbolism (ARAS) published an article highlighting parallels between af Klint and Jung. Her father and grandfather were naval cartographers. Some of her abstract compositions look like maps — but maps of the stars.
A Message for a Distant Audience
Af Klint once showed her paintings to Rudolf Steiner, who told her the world wouldn’t understand them for decades. She took his advice to heart. In her will, she wrote that her paintings should not be shown until at least 20 years after her death.
Her first major exhibition finally happened in 1986 — 42 years after she died.
Conclusion: Seeing the Stars from Within
Could Hilma af Klint’s paintings be more than spiritual abstractions — more even than unconscious memories? Could they represent a deep intuitive knowledge of the cosmos, received not through scientific instruments, but through altered states of consciousness?
Based on her paintings, we might dare to imagine that not only the micro-cosmos but also the macro-cosmos can be intuited by the unconscious. This echoes a line of thought shared by depth psychology, archaeology, and astrophysics alike.
There are clues that altered states of consciousness — the very states af Klint painted from — can give access to profound, even universal insights. Archaeologists David Lewis-Williams and David Pearce, in their book Inside the Neolithic Mind: Consciousness, Cosmos, and the Realm of the Gods, argue that humans have long possessed “the ability to enter altered states of consciousness culminating in visionary experiences.”
Indeed, many of the symbols in af Klint’s work can be traced to much older origins. Some appear in the ancient Cucuteni-Trypillia culture of Neolithic Eastern Europe — a civilization known for its spiral motifs, solar glyphs, and goddess figurines. If af Klint reproduced these in trance, she may have been accessing what Carl Jung called the collective unconscious: a reservoir of memory and meaning that transcends time and personal identity.
As the Jungian scholar Aniela Jaffé once wrote:
“It does not matter at all that these relativities, discontinuities, and paradoxes hold good only on the margins of our world — only for the infinitely small (the atom) and the infinitely great (the cosmos).”
(Jung, 1964, p. 261)
Jung believed that the psyche does not stop at the edge of the self. In his words:
“The deeper layers of the psyche lose their individual uniqueness as they retreat farther and farther into darkness... 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.’”
(Jung, 1964, p. 265)
He saw this process at work in artists like Jackson Pollock, whose trance paintings seemed to express the structure of subatomic matter. Likewise, af Klint’s paintings may express the structure of cosmic matter — not only stars and galaxies but the hidden logic that underlies them.
Her series The Ten Largest presents at least ten striking parallels with imagery now familiar through ultra-modern astrophysics: gravitational waves, black hole orbits, hypernovae, and star births. Yet these cosmic phenomena would only become visible decades later, through technologies like the Hubble Space Telescope. That she painted them in 1907 remains a mystery.
This is not to make grand claims without evidence. This essay is not an academic paper but a starting point, one twist of the spiral.
Af Klint herself claimed no credit for these visions. As she described her process:
“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.”
(Fant Åke, Hilma af Klint: Occult Painter and Abstract Pioneer)
Af Klint did not claim to understand her own paintings. But she believed they had a message — one that was meant for the future.
Now, perhaps, we are that future.
And now, perhaps, we are ready to see.
Works Cited
Fant, Åke. Hilma af Klint: Occult Painter and Abstract Pioneer. Stockholm: Bokförlaget Åsa, 1989.
Jaffé, Aniela. In Man and His Symbols, edited by Carl G. Jung, 261. New York: Dell, 1964.
Jung, Carl G. Man and His Symbols. New York: Dell, 1964.
Lewis-Williams, David, and David Pearce. Inside the Neolithic Mind: Consciousness, Cosmos, and the Realm of the Gods. London: Thames & Hudson, 2005.
Online Sources Referenced in Astrophysical Comparisons with The Ten Largest:
- “Gravitational Waves Explained.” Science News, https://www.sciencenews.org/article/gravitational-waves-explained
- IC 418 — Supernova Spirograph. Anne’s Astronomy News, 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/
- “Betelgeuse.” Wikipedia, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Betelgeuse
- “NGC 4567 & NGC 4568.” Wikipedia, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NGC_456_and_NGC_4568
- “Universe Could Already Be Dying: No Chance of Recovery, Suggests False Vacuum Theory.” International Business Times, https://www.ibtimes.co.in/universe-could-already-be-dying-no-chance-recovery-false-vacuum-theory-780747
- Overbye, Dennis. “Two Black Holes Collide, and a Puzzling Flash Appears.” Wired, https://www.wired.com/2016/03/two-black-holes-collide-puzzling-flash/
- “Visualization of the Grazing Collision of Two Black Holes.” ResearchGate, https://www.researchgate.net/figure/Visualization-of-the-grazing-collision-of-two-black-holes-computed-by-the-Cactus-code_fig3_220781532
- The Hypernova of VY Canis Majoris (Video). YouTube, uploaded by Deep Sky Videos, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SBjYA5rtUzk
- “Clouds Making Stars.” Nature, https://www.nature.com/immersive/d41586-022-03811-4/index.html
Author Cristian Horgos is a mathematician and technologist living and working in Romania. An early version of this essay was published in Nasty Women Writers.
