An Intimate Pilgrimage from the Highlands to the Lowlands
In December, I was honored with a formal invitation from the traditional Matsigenka village of Shipetiara, located in the shoulder area of the Manu Biosphere of Peru, to bring a group for an immersion experience. I have opened a spiritual travel program in September 2021 and am now taking registrations.
Photo credit: Tui Anandi, Xapiri.
It is a privilege to sponsor this special program focusing on sacred traditions linking the peoples of the Andes and the rainforest. A portion of tuition is tax-deductible supporting the Xapiri Matsigenka Storytelling Project, and sponsoring a small group of Q’ero paq’os traveling with us.
Photo credit: Cecile Sother.
Photo credit: Carla Woody.
This should be considered a pilgrimage of respect for sharing traditions and experiencing nature. Intrepid travelers understanding this honor and willing to take the COVID-19 vaccination to protect these Indigenous people, who have little to no contact with outsiders, are welcome.
This program is co-sponsored by Kenosis and Kenosis Spirit Keepers, the nonprofit arm of Kenosis. I founded both, the former in 1999 and latter in 2007, and have been sponsoring spiritual travel programs for more than 20 years.
There’s a good chance you haven’t heard of Hilma af Klint unless you’ve been to a show or seen articles on the flurry she’s now creating as major exhibitions of her artwork are gaining momentum, across the globe, consistently since 2013. Prior to that her only international show of any significance was The Spiritual in Art – Abstract Painting 1890 – 1985 at the Los Angeles County Museum where she was listed as a previously unknown painter against luminaries Kandinsky, Kupka, Malevich and Mondrian. In fact, she’d only exhibited four times in group exhibitions in her native Sweden during her life. The last time was 1914.
Why?
Hilma became fed up with the lack of understanding and response to her work by contemporaries. A significant point was Rudolf Steiner’s reluctant visit to her studio in 1908, his tepid feedback and suggestion she completely alter her method and source of inspiration.
She decided the world was not yet ready for her paintings. When she passed in 1944, she’d willed her lifework—approximately 1500 paintings and works on paper, plus her notebooks totaling 26,000 pages—to her nephew Erik af Klint who had no involvement whatsoever in art. There was an unusual requirement in the will: None of her work was to be made public for 20 years. A wise choice since the 1940s was not the landscape into which to release precious expressions whose source was not of a pedestrian world.
Here are three major points of interest.
Despite unfavorable responses to her work, she didn’t give up as some might have. Instead, she retreated to her studio and secreted her output. This reminded me of Saint Julian of Norwich who slipped her writings into cracks in the walls of her cell—this for her physical safety though—to be discovered only after her death. Women through the ages have kept things quiet, lived beneath the radar, known to few, because it was dangerous to be recognized. Not so now.
Kandinsky is credited with inventing abstract art with his 1910 watercolor. When, in fact, Hilma was already producing a series called Primordial Chaos between 1906-1907. So, she’s actually the mother of invention.
Primordial Chaos, Group I. Courtesy of the Guggenheim Museum.
It goes back farther than that. In 1903, her hand was being guided in automatic writing sessions and non-representational drawings—not unlike some of her later paintings. Initially a classical artist, it was automatic writing that loosed her from those precise restrictions. She jumped right into abstraction informed by the metaphysical question: What lies beyond form?
Group X, Altarpieces, 1915. Public domain.
She was fortunate to live in a time of great curiosity in the Western world toward those things beyond the physical plane. Like many artists and writers of the time, Hilma was interested in spiritualism. She was a member of the Edelweiss Society in Sweden whose prime interest was mediumship. Hilma left to be part of a small group of women who called themselves The Five. They met regularly to hold seances, automatic writing sessions and other related exploration. She continued to hold these interests throughout her life. She was a seeker who drew from a complex well of the occult, Theosophy, Rosicrucianism , Buddhism, Christianity, Anthroposophy and physics, along with her foundation in spiritualism. It formed her world view and emerged clearly in her cosmic artwork.
My introduction to Hilma af Klint came through the remarkable documentary Beyond the Visible, streaming online. I was so taken with her story and artwork I ordered Paintings for the Future, the coffee table book produced by the Guggenheim, to study her more closely.
In well-deserved recognition, this female artist—who once painted alone in her studio, secreting her work—had her work viewed by more than 600,000 art enthusiasts by the close of the 2018-2019 Guggenheim exhibition. This is “the highest recorded attendance figure for a single exhibition in the museum’s history.”
And so, the celebration of her work continues globally. It’s about time.
I remembered a dream from last night. This is significant because I typically don’t, if I dream at all. I suppose I must though. It’s common knowledge that we all dream most nights. But in this case, I awoke from it—for a few seconds—and observed to myself, that’s peculiar. It’s unclear if anything happened before or after that short clip, but I promptly went back to sleep. It was a few hours after I got up that I recalled the dream.
It’s in times of heightened awareness that such recollection occurs, and there’s a clear message. The messages come in other ways, too, just as it did a few minutes ago, and I’m compelled to write about it. I was reading Rilke’s The Notebooks of Malte Laurids Brigge when suddenly a passage popped out from the page.
But scarcely a day passes now without such an encounter. Not only in the twilight; it happens at midday in the most crowded streets, that a little man or an old woman is suddenly there, nods to me, shows me something, and then vanishes, as though all the necessary were now done.
It was upon reading these few lines that my dream last night plucked itself out of the depths and advanced in my memory. I’m guessing it will stick with me as others of importance have remained just beneath the surface, at the ready to be called up in great visual detail, unfolding second by second, loosing the visceral response to be reviewed, reminded or having marked a passage.
Here are a couple of the latter sort from the mid-1980s that I’ve kept close and celebrated over the years.
I see myself scurrying away on a path straight through a thick dark forest. I’m wearing one of those medieval capes with its large hood on my head and carry my cat tightly in my arms. It has a fairy tale look. Suddenly, I hear loud crashing from the right, and I see a huge white stallion running through the trees at breakneck speed headed directly for me. It screeches to a halt a few feet in front of me and begins to leap over and over straight up in the air. I stand there and watch it.
It was a short time after that I began to paint again after a 10-year hiatus.
I’m in an old mansion fallen into disrepair, standing at the bottom of one of those sweeping staircases. When I look up, I realize a third of the steps had fallen away. The staircase doesn’t reach the next story.
That was a repetitive dream that lasted for some years. But finally, it shifted. The staircase reached the next story. When I got to the top of the stairs, there was a wide hall that seemed to stretch endlessly that led to other halls, stairs and unusually interesting rooms. By then I’d begun to make major changes in my life that ultimately brought me to where I am now. This dream took the other one’s place as repetitive. It still visits every several years and is always welcome.
I’ve also had dreams that play a part in admonishing me, but also acknowledge. Its tendrils extending into daylight hours with synchronicities like the one last night. My favorite involved a relationship with the playwright Eugene O’Neill.
So, my dream last night…
I’m associated in this dream, meaning in my body looking out of my own eyes. I reach into my mouth, grasp the incisor at the lower left and pull it out. I hold it up, astounded. I go over to a wall mirror—that magically appears. When I open my mouth rather than a gaping hole where the other one was, strangely, I see another tooth that must have been just behind that one plucked out. It’s already half grown.
That’s it. I can imagine its message but will be alert, engaged and experience its unfolding. I also acknowledge this one isn’t just for me but also the Collective.
The Lifepath Dialogues offer an invitation toward embodiment of all that is life-affirming and the deeper meaning of sustainability. Themes are drawn from books "Calling Our Spirits Home" and "Standing Stark" and 20+ years as a conscious living mentor leading spiritual travel journeys with Indigenous Wisdom Keepers serving their communities, group and individual programs. Carla specializes in working with people who seek to live through their deeply held values. For more info see the “About” tab. The author may be reached via cwoody@kenosis.net. Follow this blog by becoming a fan on the Kenosis Facebook page.
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