Hilma’s Ghost

Works on Paper, 2024

Sharmistha Ray and Dannielle Tegeder merged two concepts from the history of spirituality and magic, “sigils” and “thought forms,” exploring the visualization of thoughts and symbolic representations for desired outcomes in magic. Sigils, derived from “sigillum,” signify deities or desired outcomes in magic, evolving through chaos magic and English artist and occultist Austin Osman Spare’s innovative approach. Ray and Tegeder collaboratively drew 28 charged sigils, representing qualities like Abundance and Love, merging language deconstruction with Spare’s method. Capitalized letters in metallic paint embed into drawings, heightened by 14 paper hues reflecting collaborative consciousness. The book Thought-Forms, by Theosophists Annie Besant and Charles Leadbeater, delved into drawing thought-forms intuitively from clairvoyant experiences. Many of the illustrations in the book are radically abstract. The book had a major impact on artists like Hilma af Klint and Vassily Kandinsky and countless other artists and is therefore considered a major tome in Western art history. The book is now believed to have given birth to Abstract Modernism. Hilma’s Ghost’s fusion of these ideas applies color symbolism and thought-form principles to sigil magic, emphasizing unconscious influence and symbol impact on reality.