Quest Magazine

Originally printed in the May - June 2004 issue of Quest magazine. 
Citation: Abdill, Edward. "In Profound Gratitude." Quest  92.3 (MAY-JUNE 2004):88

By Edward Abdill

Perhaps we have all known someone who has helped us get through a difficult time. In our darker moments, the love of those close to us provides comfort and gives us strength. Most likely, we all remember those kind folks, and we are grateful to them for what they did for us.

Yet, as valuable as that is, there are a few people who have an awesome ability to inspire others at the very core of their being. Such inspiration is not personal. It is not given to cheer us up, although it does. It is not given to us because the person is our friend, although they are. It comes to us in the silence, beyond all the words that may help to convey it. It comes to us as a revelation, a sudden flash of understanding, and as deep joy.

Two such individuals have affected me in that way, Dora and Fritz Kunz. Two more dedicated Theosophists would be hard to locate. Dora and Fritz each had that near-sacred power to stimulate the Inner Self. They did it in very different ways.

Let me begin with Fritz.

It was my great privilege to work with Fritz for some years. His passion was to justify the Theosophical philosophy at the bar of modern, exact science. He attracted some of the great minds of his day and got them to write articles for the magazine he founded: Main Currents in Modern Thought.

Fritz was able to articulate the Theosophical metaphysics in such a way that by the sheer power of his understanding, those who listened thought they understood everything he said. They did not, of course. Yet, on leaving his presence, they knew that they had been subtly changed. They had become aware of a previously unknown depth within themselves.

For years I have pondered the ideas first expressed to me by Fritz. Years after his death, I have begun to understand some of them, and they have fired me to present them to others with the same fervor.

Dora Kunz inspired in a very different way.

Unlike Fritz, Dora had no great facility with language. In fact, she was sometimes dreadful at communicating what she wanted to say. She would seldom finish a sentence, often say the opposite of what she meant, and frequently make her audience collapse into laughter by using the wrong words. At the same time, Dora had an enormous vocabulary, and her lack of language skills did not block her great intelligence, practical knowledge, and wisdom.

Many know that Dora was the founder of Therapeutic Touch. She did a great deal to help those who were sick or disturbed. She must have helped thousands over the years, and no doubt those who received her help are grateful.

What many did not know about Dora is that she was a master at meditation. She began the practice when she was only five years old and continued it to her death at age ninety-five. She held a weekly meditation class at the New York Theosophical Society for many years. It was my great privilege to be part of that, and it was in that class that I learned to meditate.

When meditating with Dora, it was possible to become aware of a profound peace within. It would fade out of focus, but it would not be forgotten. While no one can awaken the Inner Self for us, Dora was able to stimulate that Self in those around her. Without words, she was able to give students a sense of direction, a sense of purpose, meaning, and finally a sense of the Eternal.

From Fritz I got a better understanding of this world and the full nature of a human being. From Dora, I was led to the experience of the Inner Self. It seems to me that the only way one could ever repay a fellow pilgrim for such gifts is to follow in their steps. In that spirit, I can only hope that I might be able to pass on to others the impersonal gifts received from Fritz and Dora. That is the only gratitude they would want and the only gratitude worth having.

Originally printed in the May - June 2002 issue of Quest magazine.
Citation: Algeo, John. "Brotherhood." Quest  90.3 (MAY - JUNE 2002):

By John Algeo
National President

A member of our Society recently returned our 2002 Annual Fund leaflet, which included a quotation using the word "brotherhood." That word was circled and the comment added, "I'm not a brother." That comment has been made in recent years by a number of women who object to the use of the word in our first Object: "to form a nucleus of the universal brotherhood of humanity without distinction of race, creed, sex, caste, or color." The use of the word in Theosophy and the history behind it are worth considering.

In the early days of our Society, there were two strong interests among its members. One was to increase human cooperation on an international scale without any bias, to promote cross-cultural understanding, and to transform ones own nature through insight into the nature of reality and of the human constitution. Those interests became embodied in our three Objects, which you find stated on the inside front cover of this journal.

But a second kind of interest was also very widespread, namely, to learn how to do exceptional feats, to perform phenomena, and to acquire unusual abilities. The nineteenth century, when the Theosophical Society was founded, was a hotbed of interest in spiritualism and psychic phenomena. It was, in fact, such interest that led many of the early members to join the Society in the hope of finding in it a channel by which they might experience and learn to produce such phenomena themselves.

The wise teachers who inspired the foundation of the Society, however, had no patience with the second interest. One of them wrote to an Englishman, A. O. Hume, who strongly preferred the latter, as follows: "it has been constantly our wish to spread on the Western Continent among the foremost educated classes 'Branches of the T. S. as the harbingers of a Universal Brotherhood . . . a 'hotbed of magick we never dreamt of" (Mahatma Letters, chronological no. 11). The same teacher wrote to another Englishman, A. P. Sinnett, in even stronger language: "you have ever discussed but to put down the idea of a universal Brotherhood, questioned its usefulness, and advised to remodel the T. S. on the principle of a college for the special study of occultism. This, my respected and esteemed friend and Brother'will never do!" (Mahatma Letters, chronological no. 2).

The brotherhood those teachers were talking about was clearly not a brotherhood of males, but of human beings without distinction (as the first Object says) of race, creed, sex, caste, or color. Almost all words have more than one meaning. Think how many meanings there are for "love" or "fear" or "truth." So also "brotherhood" has many meanings, and one of them is (as defined by the Merriam Websters Third New International Dictionary, the biggest and best dictionary of present-day American English): "a group sharing a common interest or quality." The "universal brotherhood of humanity" is the worldwide group sharing the common quality of humanity, without any distinctions. That is the way early Theosophists understood the term and used it, and it is the way it is used in the first Object.

In more recent years, a new sensitivity to language has developed, and terms that might be misunderstood in a limited sense as applying only to one sex have generally been avoided. So the old generic use of "man" to mean "human being" became taboo (although etymologically "man" is from the same root as the word "mind" and meant a being with a mind, not a masculine being). Conforming to the new sensitivity, in the literature we now produce, we'like almost all publishers these days'make a concerted effort to avoid what today is widely perceived as "sexist" language, although it certainly was not so intended originally or perceived to be so by earlier speakers and writers.

Accordingly some years ago, we looked at rephrasing our Objects. The Objects of the Theosophical Society are international ones. They are defined by the General Council (or main administrative body) of the Society and are stated in our international Rules and papers of incorporation. No nation can of itself change the Objects; they are in common to all branches of the Society around the world. But nations speaking different languages translate the rules into their own language. We argued that the wording of the Objects was late Victorian British English, which needed to be translated into present-day American English, and a committee proposed three such translations of wording in the Objects into current usage. Two of those proposals were accepted; one was not.

The rejected proposal was to rephrase the first Object to read: "To form a nucleus of the universal human family without distinction of race, creed, sex, caste, or color." Some of us thought that captured the sense of the original, while avoiding the "sexist" misunderstanding of the word "brotherhood." However, that proposed change became a subject of intense and heated controversy. And the reason for the controversy was precisely that early difference of opinion about the purpose of the Theosophical Society, reflected in the two interests of early Theosophists.

Those who objected to changing "brotherhood of humanity" to "human family" thought that we were departing from the intention of the founders of the Society to emphasize human unity to something else, and they cited statements like those quoted above to Hume and Sinnett, which emphasized "brotherhood" as the central purpose of the Society. In the end, we decided to leave the wording of the first Object as it has been for more than a hundred years, with the recognition that "brotherhood" here obviously does not mean "a group of male siblings" but rather "a group sharing the common quality of humanity."

Words have no inherent meaning. They mean only what their users intend them to mean. Of course, other people may misunderstand the intention behind any words, so if one person says to another "I love you," the meaning may be "I honor you and wish the best for you in all things" or "You amuse me" or "I lust after you." If the words are misinterpreted by a hearer, that does not change the meaning intended by the speaker. This is a widespread problem in communication by human language. What is needed is, not an assumption about meaning, but rather an effort by the hearer to discover the intention of the speaker.

The intention of the first Object is made clear by its qualifying prepositional phrase: "without distinction of race, creed, sex, caste, or color." To ignore that phrase is to mis interpret the clear intention of the Object. To insist that "brotherhood" can mean only a group of men is to ignore the fact that the word does in fact mean a number of different things, including a group of human beings. For communication to be effective, two things are needed: for the user to be clear and for the perceiver to make an effort to understand the users intention and not project an imagined meaning on another's words.

Women have always been centrally important in the Theosophical Societys nucleus of universal brotherhood. The chief idea person of Theosophy (Helena Blavatsky) was a woman; its most distinguished leader (Annie Besant) was a woman; the current international President of the Society (Radha Burnier) is a woman. Other members of the Society (such as Matilda Joslyn Gage, Clara Codd, Margaret Cousins, and Dorothy Graham Jinarajadasa) have been active feminists. Ultimately, words are less important than actions, and the actions of Theosophists have always been on the side of equality and a brotherhood that embraces both sexes without distinction.

Originally printed in the May - June 2002 issue of Quest magazine.
Citation: Hall, Kathleen. "Theosophy and the Emergence of Modern Abstract Art." Quest  90.3 (MAY - JUNE 2002):

By Kathleen Hall

At the turn of the nineteenth century, a movement in art emerged that was a response to higher awareness of cosmic truth. Modern abstract art was the visible manifestation of spiritual ideals professed through the teachings of Theosophy and other wisdom lore. The artists of this movement were scribes who painted what words could not say.

Spirituality in abstract art began around 1890 and ran in parallel with a growing interest in mysticism and the occult. Many artists were becoming intrigued with spiritual writings, in particular with Madame Blavatsky's major work, The Secret Doctrine. Undoubtedly there were other influences, such as the works of Edouard Schuré, Jakob Böhme, and Emmanuel Swedenborg. But it was Theosophy that had the most profound effect on the emergence of modern abstract art and specifically on the founding fathers of the movement, Wassily Kandinsky, Frantisek Kupka, Piet Mondrian, and Kazimer Malevich.

Theosophy gave these artists a vista that became the fundamental groundwork of their spirituality. From this viewpoint, they believed they were able to see beyond and into the natural world, as well as gaining an understanding of the ancient wisdom and cosmic principles of our existence. This lofty vantage point elevated all four beyond this-worldly concerns and gave them a sense of divine sight into otherworldly realms. They stood in the doorway between two worlds, they were the messengers, and communicating this knowledge became the objective of their art.

The language with which these artists translated their vision of one world into terms of the other was abstraction. To be successfully understood, that vision had to be presented in simple, relevant terms that could later develop and expand into complex structuring as it became more familiar to both the artist as teacher and the viewer as student. In its final form, it is outwardly simplistic, while intrinsically complex in its reduction of the divinely enigmatic.

It seems more than coincidental that four distinct artists, at about the same time in history, were all influenced by the teachings of Theosophy and manifested their spirituality through their art, which almost had no choice but to be abstract. The context of their work was not a familiar picture of visible reality, but a faith in things unseen. Visionary, prophetic, mystical, and deeply spiritual, Kandinsky, Kupka, Mondrian, and Malevich can be considered as initiates who came from ages past to teach the ancient wisdom in our time and in images appropriate to us. What they produced was a seam in the universe through which they were able to make the unseen visible so that we can catch a glimpse of the great mysteries of the cosmos.

All four artists first began in the Symbolist style. Their early work expressed representations of cosmic ideals in forms that were familiar and recognizable. However, the iconography of Symbolism limited the manifestation of universal concepts, and Kandinsky, Kupka, Mondrian, and Malevich all became increasingly aware of this limitation. Having experienced the extent of the Symbolist voice, they began to dig deeper into their Theosophical ideals and surfaced with new ways to say things.

The language that emerged was abstraction. Abstraction was a formless voice that dissolved the boundaries of the concrete object to allow the flow of cosmic light to spill forth onto an awaiting canvas, the site where the inner and outer realms of spirituality began a new creative evolution. Each artist was painting the canvas with their own particular brush, but all were dipping from the same paint pots of spiritual awareness.

Wassily Kandinsky was an avid student of occult and mystical teachings. Theosophy provided the main structure for his lessons in spirituality, but he certainly enriched his studies with other material. As his spiritual awareness evolved, so too did his art. Ideals that he was previously content to express in Symbolist form, later shed their casings as they expanded through abstraction. As Theosophical teachings on thought forms and the correlation between vibrations, color, and sound influenced his work, he began to rely very little on form. Shape, line, and color became his main tools for creating a visible image of unseen events in the astral world.

Frantisek Kupka approached the realm of the spiritual in art from a similar direction. He too began as a Symbolist painter and presented concepts found in the Theosophical teachings on esoteric Eastern religions and philosophies. As a Symbolist, these ideas seemed to be a representation rather than a manifestation of his spiritual knowledge. When he began to make the connection between the forces acting in this world as a microcosm of the macrocosmic forces in the universe, his work began to communicate a divine message. This is also when his paintings became more abstracted, evolving into works of sacred geometry.

Piet Mondrian, like Kandinsky, read extensively on spiritual concepts. His endorsement of Theosophy was distinctly acknowledged and he frequently made reference to it in regard to the content of his work. His ideas were first expressed as Symbolist art, then as he began to explore the use of color as a means to project the inner being of an outwardly visible object, his work started to change. His sole objective became the reduction of form to simple contrasts of line and color to signify the unity between opposites: male and female, static and dynamic, spirit and matter. Geometric shapes and primary colors were to become his trademark, representing in simple terms the immensely complex spiritual structuring of the universe.

Kazimir Malevich was originally involved with the Russian Symbolist movement, but then began exploring Zaumism and the fourth dimension. In particular, the time and space concepts he studied came from his readings on P. D. Ouspensky, the Russian Theosophist. Eventually his work evolved into a greater manifestation of the fourth dimension and his Suprematist works began to follow a path that saw the dissolution of form into sacred geometry and Absolute "nothingness."

The effects of Theosophy on the founding fathers of modern abstract art are unmistakable. Each artist— Wassily Kandinsky, Frantisek Kupka, Piet Mondrian, and Kazimir Malevich—manifested in his own particular style varying aspects of Theosophical ideals. All began with the symbolic representation of spiritual concepts, then out of necessity evolved into abstraction. It was an inevitable process. The familiar forms of the visible world were not able to express the cosmic realm. Only line, shape, and color were of use to the artist as a language through which the voice of the universe could be communicated. It was perhaps an experimental translation of Divine concepts.

Theosophy was perhaps the most important spiritual philosophy to emerge in the latter half of the nineteenth century, especially in regard to the profound impact it had on the direction of modern art. Its doctrine of universal "brotherhood," the study of ancient and modern religions, philosophies, and sciences, and the investigation of the unexplained laws of nature and the psychical powers latent in humankind were not only timely in terms of a changing world, but unequivocally compelling to the artist as a seeker of Truth.

It was inevitable that some artists would turn their attention to spirituality at the dawn of the materialistic age of the twentieth century. That change came about, first, because the further humanity is removed from the natural environment, the greater is its need for a spiritual replacement and, second, because everything is as it should be.

Kathleen Hall studied the modern abstractionists and their Theosophical connections while working on the thesis for her master's degree. In connection with that work she corresponded with a number of contemporary Theosophical artists, particularly Burton Callicott, Don Kruse, and Pamela Lowrie. She is a resident of Vancouver Island, British Columbia, and became a member of the Canadian Federation of the Theosophical Society as a result of her study.

Originally printed in the May - June 2002 issue of Quest magazine.
Citation: Harris , Lynda. "Jean Delville: Painting, Spirituality, and the Esoteric." Quest  90.3 (MAY - JUNE 2002):

By Lynda Harris

THE ESOTERIC, the occult, and the spiritual became subjects of absorbing interest during the last decades of the nineteenth century, as many in the West reacted to the materialism and hypocrisy of their age. The enthusiasm for such ideas reached its peak during the 1890s, the decade when the Belgian painter and writer Jean Delville (1867 -1953) was at the height of his powers.

Delville's Background

Delville was born in the Belgian town of Louvain, and moved to Brussels at the age of six. As an adult, he lived mainly in the Brussels suburb of Forest, though he also spent some years in Paris, Rome, Glasgow, and London. His artistic ability was exceptional from an early age. He began his training at the Brussels Academy of Fine Arts when he was twelve, continuing there until 1889 and winning a number of top prizes. He began exhibiting professionally at the age of twenty, and later taught at the Academies of Fine Arts in Glasgow and Brussels. In addition to painting, Delville also expressed his ideas in numerous written texts.

The artist's granddaughter Miriam Delville describes her grandfather as primarily a seeker, who searched all his life for perfection (personal communication, November 2001). In his late teens and early twenties, he painted landscapes and depictions of the poor. Then (perhaps rather like Annie Besant) Delville turned from social problems to esotericism and spiritual philosophy. Unlike Besant, however, he was associated with a great number of esoteric societies and individuals during his lifetime. Probably, as Miriam Delville says, this was due to his search for the ideal.

Though Delville never found the one perfect philosophy, three movements seem to have had a particularly strong effect on his ideas. The first of these was Rosicrucianism, as expounded by Sir Josaphin Paladan (1858 -1918). The "Si", whom Delville met in Paris in 1887 or 1888, was a highly eccentric occultist, whose self-styled title associated him with Ancient Assyrian royalty. He presented himself as a descendent of the priestly magi, and to enhance this exotic impression he wore long robes and styled his dark hair and beard in fashions reminiscent of the ancient Assyrians.

In fact, the Sir's real name was Joseph Paladan, and he came from Lyons, France's second city. Like his family before him, he combined a strong Catholic faith with occultism and esotericism. He arrived in Paris in 1884, aiming (and for a while succeeding) at taking the city by storm. He set up his own Rosicrucian order called the Order of the Rose+Cross of the Temple and the Grail . His writings hinted at occult practices, alchemy, magic, and initiation, as well as a fashionable admiration of Wagner. He also wrote a novel describing the eroticism and decadence of the Parisians. All of these subjects were well suited to the tastes of the Parisian aesthetes of the late nineteenth century, and Paladan's flair for publicity led to his great popularity at the time Delville met him.

In the beginning, Delville adopted of Paladan's ideas. Between 1892 and 1895, he exhibited paintings in the Sir's Paris Salons of the Rose+Cross. After 1895, Delville dissociated himself from the Sir, though he remained true to many of the latter's esoteric concepts. These played an important part in Delville's own philosophy, which (making use of a term of Paladan's) he called Idealism. Once Delville had separated from Paladan, he set up his own Idealist exhibitions in Belgium.

Édouard Schura (1841 -1929), who came from Strasbourg and lived much of the time in Paris, was the second major influence on Delville and his ideas. Schura had developed his spiritual concepts in conjunction with the great love of his life, Marguerite Albana Mignaty. The two met in Florence in 1871, and their mutual conversations reached fruition during the autumn of 1884. The result was Schura's highly influential book The Great Initiates, first published in 1889, and still in print today. The extent to which Schura was also influenced by Theosophical ideas is unclear, but he was a member of the Theosophical Society between 1884 and 1886.

The Theosophical Society was the third important influence on Delville. As Brendan Cole, author of a comprehensive doctoral thesis on Delville points out, the artist's interest in Theosophy first became evident in 1895. This was the date when Delville published his Dialogue entre nous, a text in which he outlined his occult and Idealist views. This interest was to increase, as Delville moved further away from Paladan's orbit. Sometime during the mid to late 1890s, Delville joined the Theosophical Society and assimilated his new beliefs with characteristic enthusiasm. In his book The New Mission of Art (1900), he drew connections between Theosophy and the ideas of Schura and a decade later became the secretary of the Theosophical movement in Belgium. At the same time, he added a tower to his house in Forest, painting the meditation room at the top entirely in blue, with the Theosophical emblem at its summit. Although photographs and drawings of the house still exist, the structure itself, regrettably, no longer stands.

Delville and the Occult

Though Delville frequently wrote about spiritual subjects, he almost never discussed his pictures. Nevertheless, there is no doubt that he was a painter of ideas, and it is clear that there are connections between his paintings and his esoteric views. A recurring theme in many of his works was the evolution of the human soul, achieved through initiation and reincarnation.

Delville's ideas on initiation were influenced by Schura and later by Theosophy, but he was probably introduced to the subject by Paladan. As Robert Pincus-Witten points out, Paladan saw himself as an initiate with occult powers and accorded the same status to some of the other members of his group, who may have participated in secret initiations about which we know nothing.

Did Delville participate in initiation ceremonies himself? He might well have as a member of Paladan's society; he certainly would have in the Masonic movement, to which he also belonged. In any case, both he and Paladan described the true artist as an initiate, whose mission was to send light, spirituality, and mysticism into the world.

Another important key to an understanding of Delville's paintings and drawings is the concept of the astral light. The radiant streams in many of the artist's scenes are no doubt depictions of this, as suggested below. In his Dialogue entre nous, Delville described the astral light as an invisible, universal matrix that surrounds everything in the universe, including the stars and the animal, vegetable, and mineral kingdoms. It also saturates and surrounds the souls of human beings and engenders their rebirth in new bodies. The artist's works make it plain that the colors of this astral light change, according to the spiritual level. In the dense material realm, the hues are hot, predominantly red and orange. The light in the higher levels of the psychic universe, in contrast, is brilliant and shimmering. There the dominant colors are clear purples, whites, and golds.

Delville's Paintings and Drawings: Some Examples

The Portrait of Mrs. Stuart Merrill

Deville's best pictures (especially the earlier ones) often have an air of mystery and intrigue. One of the most mysterious is his Portrait of Mrs. Stuart Merrill. This drawing, executed in chalks in 1892, is strikingly otherworldly. In it Delville depicts the young woman as a medium in trance, with her eyes turned upwards. Her radiating red-orange hair combines with the fluid astral light of her aura.

The hot colors that surround Mrs. Merrill's head allude to the earthly fires of passion and sensuality. On the other hand, the book on which she rests her chin and long, almost spectral hands is inscribed with an upward-pointing triangle, which represents Delville's idea of perfect human knowledge, achieved (as he says in his Dialogue), through magic, the Kabbalah, and Hermeticism. As has been widely recognized, the painting, with its references to occultism and wisdom seems to hint at initiation. In that case, the woman's red aura might refer to her sensual side, which will become more spiritualized as she moves into a different stage of development.

But whatever the interpretation, this very unusual portrait has had a strong effect on viewers. Patrick Bade in Femme Fatale sees it as eerie and supernatural; and Philippe Jullian in Dreamers of Decadence calls it "a positively magical vision." It is sometimes referred to as the Mona Lisa of the 1890s and is also given the title La Mysteriosa. Today, few details are available about the sitter, and even her first name goes unmentioned in the literature. The most extensive information on her identity is given by Delville's son Olivier in his biography of the painter. Olivier's account is not firsthand, however, as he was born at least ten years after the picture was executed. He reports that Stuart Merrill (a Symbolist poet who published his works in Paris and Brussels) had a house in Forest near to the Delvilles. He adds that "the young Mrs. Merrill-Rion" was a Belgian, and that Delville was struck by her strange beauty and depicted her with a mediumistic character.

The painting was not bought by the Merrills, but remained with the Delvilles until it was sold to a private collector in California in the late 1960s. In 1998, it was acquired by the Brussels Museum of Fine Arts, where it is now on display.

Satan's Treasures

Another of Delville's best works, which is also on view in the Brussels Museum of Fine Arts, is Satan's Treasures, first exhibited in 1895. In it the artist depicts Satan with a wild, fiery head of hair and huge red tentacles instead of wings. Scarlet waves surround his left arm, as he presides over a river of unconscious men and women. The transfixed figures lie in the center of a luxuriant coral reef, surrounded by coins, jewels, and strange fish. Beyond the reef are vistas filled with jagged rock formations painted in shades of orange, yellow, and brown. These formations are influenced by the mountainous backgrounds in the Mona Lisa and other works by Leonardo da Vinci, but in Delville's scene, the entire landscape is located underwater.

Though the nude bodies of the entranced men and women are a subtle mixture of acid pinks and yellows, highlighted with touches of green, the overall tone of the painting is orange. In his study of Delville and Roerich, James Cousins (8) relates Delville's own description of Satan's Treasures as follows: "the astral light (as the artist described it to me) strikes through the water-world and merges with the colour of the bodies."

Though the full interpretation is left to the viewer, it is clear thatSatan's Treasures is not a traditional vision of hell. This unusual image reveals a fascination with decadence and the erotic, which was typical of Paladan and the period in general, but at the same time, as in so many of Delville's works, the underlying theme is likely to be initiation. Since Delville was a great admirer of Édouard Schura's The Great Initiates, Satan's Treasures may well have been inspired by an episode from the Initiation of Isis in Schura's book. In the relevant scene, Schura describes the novice's failure of an early test, the temptation of the senses. Wrapped in a dream of fire, the novice becomes drunk with the heavy perfume of a seductive woman, and later falls asleep, after wildly satisfying his desire. This failure is described by his hierophant as a fall into the abyss of matter.

Delville's vast undersea world, ruled by Satan, is almost certainly an image of the material abyss. Satan, lord of the physical realm, presides over its sleeping inhabitants. Wrapped in delusion, the dreaming men and women are mesmerized by Satan's spell, and trapped by their own desires. Satan's "treasures" include not only their sensuality, but also their attraction to worldly riches, represented by the pearls, coins, and corals that surround them. Above all, the entranced people themselves are the treasures of Satan.

The Angel of Splendor

At a later stage in Schura's Initiation of Isis, the initiate overcomes his entrapment in matter. Delville's 1894 painting entitled The Angel of Splendor can be seen as an illustration of this next phase of human development. In this work, currently in a private collection, the realm of matter is represented by serpents and tangled thorny roses at the bottom right of the canvas. A male figure, with raised arms and upturned eyes similar to those of Mrs. Stuart Merrill, sits half in and half out of the material realm. On his left, a luminous and almost bodiless female angel rises upward, with the fluid and transparent folds of her dress surrounding the man in a circle of light. A vast landscape spreads out, far below the figures. It is filled with jagged hills similar to those in Satan's Treasures. Here, however, they are painted in luminous purples and golds and rise out of a bright blue sea.

This scene can be viewed in two ways. If it is inspired by the episode from Schura's Initiation of Isis, the man would be the disciple's discarded earthly self, falling back, and swallowed up by matter. In this case, the angel would be what Schura describes as "another, purer, more ethereal self," which has just been born. Alternatively, if the story is not taken directly from Schura, the angel can be seen as a separate being (perhaps the man's higher self), guiding him up from the abyss. In both interpretations, however, the basic meaning is the same. Delville's painting is clearly a depiction of the soul's spiritual evolution.

The School of Plato

In 1895 Delville won the Belgian Prix de Rome and went with his family to Italy. While there, he painted The School of Plato, another work in which the theme of spiritual evolution plays a part. This painting, which is now in the Musea d'Orsay in Paris, was greeted with great enthusiasm when it went on display in Brussels in 1898. Its colors are predominantly cool, emphasizing blues, greens, and tans, with touches of purple. Plato, whose philosophy Delville greatly admired, sits in the center of a beautiful but artificial classical landscape, disseminating wisdom to a group of twelve male pupils. He is bearded and Christ-like, an association that is not coincidental. According to both Schura and H. P. Blavatsky, the leading authority on Theosophy, Plato had been initiated, but instead of speaking openly, he disguised esoteric truths by put them into a rational, intellectual form suitable for public teaching. These teachings were later passed on to the Fathers of the Church.

In Delville's painting, Plato is draped, but all of his students are nude. Looking at them, viewers tend to be struck by their oddly effeminate appearance. Delville's aim was to represent the disciples as androgynous. According to Plato, and later esoteric systems such as Theosophy, primordial humans had once been hermaphrodites. Their separation into two sexes occurred as they fell deeper into matter. In Delville's day, Paladan and other fashionable Parisian aesthetes believed that the more spiritual human types were already beginning to return to the androgynous state. The effeminacy of Plato's disciples is thus a sign of their purity and their evolution away from materialism and towards divinity.

Delville's Character and Last Years

According to the biography by his son Olivier, Delville was determined to pass his ideals on to the world by his continual painting and writing. He also supplemented the unreliable income he made from these activities by teaching art. But his busy professional life did not prevent him from applying his strongly held beliefs to his personal life. Though Delville left home for a number of years in later life, Olivier nevertheless describes his father as a person of courage, perseverance, probity, and intellect, as well as an upright family man who was strict with his six children.

Despite all his work and ability, however, Delville never achieved the recognition he would have liked. As Brendan Cole says in his thesis, the artist almost certainly paid a price for refusing to compromise his ideals. In addition, as Cole points out, the intolerant and polemical tone of many of Delville's writings could have put people off.

By 1951, Delville was almost completely ignored and forgotten. The art critic Paul Caso, who visited Delville at his house in Forest in that year, was one of his few remaining supporters. In his introduction to Olivier's biography Caso describes Delville's face as grave, deeply lined, and almost tragic. At this time, as Caso puts it, Delville's solitude in the art world was total.

Delville died two years after Caso's visit so did not live to see the revival of interest in his work. That revival was marked by exhibitions in London in 1968, and in Paris in 1972. Today Delville's pictures (especially the early ones, before World War I) are once again recognized for their unusual qualities. Although they do not correspond with everyone's taste, many people now see them as outstanding and fascinating expressions of otherworldly subjects. They are often included in exhibitions and anthologies of the Symbolist movement and in books on fantastic and esoteric art. Delville's works are also remembered in the international Theosophical headquarters at Adyar, India, where the main hall is decorated in a style that Philippe Jullian (The Symbolists) believes to imitate that of Delville.

References

Lynda Harris is an art historian and lecturer with degrees from Bryn Mawr College, Boston University, and the Courtauld Institute of Art. She has a special interest in paintings with esoteric symbolism and is the author of the book The Secret Heresy of Hieronymus Bosch.