Hildegard of Bingen c. 1098 – 17 September 1179 lived as the Abbess of a Benedictine Monastery. She was a mystic and visionary. Monks and nuns put into paintings her visions. These paintings have survived to this day.

SCIVIAS (Know the Ways) is in book format and is the story of the journey of humanity. In the painting above humanity is in modern terminology symbolised by yellow/gold stars surrounded by a red outline. These gold stars/humans are situated in the firmament and simultaneously in the womb of Eve.
This vision in the eyes of Hildegard offers each soul its existence concurrently in the womb and in the heavens. This is a beautiful example of her vision of each of us as having an immanent and transcendent aspect to our being, a vision similar to nondual philosophies throughout history.

Hildegard was canonized as a saint in 2010.

She received visions and used those visions to inspire her musical compositions.

In her own words she recounts her visionary nature:-

From my early childhood, before my bones, nerves, and veins were fully strengthened, I have always seen this vision in my soul, even to the present time when I am more than seventy years old. In this vision my soul, as God would have it, rises up high into the vault of heaven and into the changing sky and spreads itself out among different peoples, although they are far away from me in distant lands and places. And because I see them this way in my soul, I observe them in accord with the shifting of clouds and other created things. I do not hear them with my outward ears, nor do I perceive them by the thoughts of my own heart or by any combination of my five senses, but in my soul alone, while my outward eyes are open. So I have never fallen prey to ecstasy in the visions, but I see them wide awake, day and night.”

From a modern viewpoint we might describe this vision as astral travel and it is typical during these flights as with many non-local experiences that the ordinary five senses are not in play. The visionary consciousness is a further sense – the sixth sense.

c. 1445 – May 17, 1510

Sandro Botticelli was an Italian artist who in his time became ‘unpopular’ due to his associations with the feared and hated visionary preacher, Dominican friar Girolamo Savonarola.

In this painting Botticelli recreates in paint one of Savonarola’s visions.

In one of Savonarola’s sermons, he preached a vision that had come to him in which he saw an extraordinary heavenly crown. At its base were twelve hearts with twelve ribbons wrapped around them and written on these in Latin were the unique mystical qualities or privileges of the Virgin Mary – she is ‘mother of her father’, ‘daughter of her son’, ‘bride of God’. Botticelli included this vision in his Mystic Nativity.

This painting looks to the casual observer like a religious painting of The Virgin birth. The writing on the ribbons held by the dancing angels is now invisible to the naked eye but through infrared reflectography it has been shown that the original words on the angels ribbons corresponded exactly to Savonarola’s 12 privileges of the Virgin. This painting is described as follows, in the words of Dr. Jennifer Sliwka:

“In his Mystic Nativity, Botticelli translated aspects of both the Apocalypse and of Savonarola’s visionary sermon into paint, connecting the glory of Mary with the imminent coming (or Second Coming) of Christ on Earth. The inscribed scrolls held by the three embracing angels at the foot of the composition which proclaim, in Latin, “peace on earth to men of goodwill” also reinforce this reading. The inscriptions, together with the embracing gestures, the prevalence of olive branches and the fleeing devils, some of whom have been impaled by their own weapons, all suggest a coming together of the celestial and the earthly and the era of peace expected to follow Christ’s return to Earth. The scattering and impalement of the devils however remind us that this vision of joy and love has been achieved through suffering and death, suggesting that this nativity might also be understood as a kind of “Mystic Rebirth.” Speaking to things yet-to-be-seen, Botticelli’s work was an attempt at envisioning the spiritual hopes of his contemporaries in concrete visual terms.” (Dr Jennifer Sliwka https://brooklynrail.org/2021/07/criticspage/The-Painter-The-Preacher-Botticellis-Mystic-Nativity-and-Savonarolas-Sermons)

From a consciousness studies point of view, this is a painting of someone else’s vision. A vision of unification in the realm of consciousness and spirit. This painting shows profound levels of love and light, happiness with people rejoicing, hugging each other and flow. The people look like they are in a wind, a gentle curving of people into each other but there is destruction coming – a warning within the ribbons of the angelic forces.

Kandinsky is well known for his connection to the spiritual through his seminal book The Spiritual in Art which discusses his synaesthesia and his connection to his abundant spiritual life.

Synaesthesia is a well-known medical condition and is entirely distinct from extraordinary experiences. Synaesthesia is predictable to the person experiencing it. The extraordinary is unpredictable and is always hugely surprising. Kandinsky was aware of this difference. Some of his most famous quotes highlight his visionary knowledge.

“Everything that is dead quivers” (Kandinsky)

This is a reference to the aura of ‘everything’. That consciousness/the aura is in all.

The painting above is an unusual representation by Kandinsky. There is the potential for the representation of a near death experience, the possibility of a body represented by a black coffin like shape on the right-hand side being taken to another landscape. The figure in the foreground known as The Lady in the title has part of her arm missing and clearly chopped off, blood and soreness is represented here.

This is a rare painting which discusses astral vision and out of body experiences.

DEGARD – Painter of Auras 1975 –

Degard is a pioneering British ‘Painter of Auras’: a visionary artist, doctoral student, founder of the genre Contemporary Visionary and owner of The Visionary Brit Museum www.visionarybritmuseum.co.uk and an involved member of AAPS.

The Visionary Brit Museum is a red telephone box outside of the British Museum which hosts Visionary art exhibitions exclusively.

DEGARD’s paintings are a visual description of consciousness. Degard sees a consciousness around people and things; she calls this energy a conscious Aura and many of her paintings are titled as Aura Conscious. Degard has what she calls ‘extraordinary experiences’ almost daily which she brings to her painting.

The Aura of Beyonce, oil on canvas and wood, gold leaf, 2016, Degard

The paintings are achieved by requesting of The Record (Akashic Record/God/Angelic forces/Higher power) for the information on a specific person, who she refers to as ‘that person.’ Typically the information on that person is available to her, and Degard can create the painting. For Degard’s doctoral studies she is identifying the intricate patterns she has painted and analysing how these patterns describe the personality, life experience, health, career and more of that person.

Degard has exhibited extensively with recent exhibitions including Aura II at Brook Street Gallery opposite Claridge’s, London, Quintessence of Consciousness at The Royal College of Art, solo show at Museum Al Zubair, Oman and Saatchi Art. She has hosted and arranged talks, titled ‘Art with…’, at the Royal Society of Art, where she is a Fellow. Degard works alongside Anxiety UK to bring Art into mental health. Degard has recently published a paper with The Astropolitics Institute ‘Space and Art’. Degard regularly exhibits in The Visionary Brit Museum.

Degard has written four books, is a committee member of The Colour Group and a fellow of The Galileo Commission for the Scientific and Medical Network. She is also a member of European Society for the Study of Esotericism. Degard is working on her doctorate ‘An Exploration of the Visionary in Art’ in Fine Art in London supervised by Professor Fae Brauer.

Degard’s Art joins a long history of artistic study of consciousness, perception, and cognition studies interwoven with visionary experience; as exemplified by visionary artists, Susan Hiller to Kandinsky, Hilma af Klint to William Blake. Degard’s Art brings this visionary and mystical genre, into a contemporary, socio-political context.

Molly Hackney, writer of The Medium’s Medium (written for an exhibition at Frieze, London 2019) says of Degard’s latest exhibition, The Power of Things, Drip: Still Lifes

‘The canvases at Drip enchant the viewer with this glimpse into spirit connection. It is her choice of objects that give this exhibition such magnetism.’

Degard graduated from The Royal College of Art in 2019. She has further received awards from the Alan Davie Foundation.

Grace Ndiritu is a British-Kenyan artist whose artworks are concerned with the transformation of our contemporary world. Her dedication to changing museum policy is a significant part of her practice; she achieves this through recognising the vibrational impact of a place. The recent change in 2022 by The International Council of Museums in their definition of what a museum is, was influenced by her presentation The Museum of The Future at their annual ICOM International Committee for Collecting conference in 2021, in which she outlined what museums need to do if an organisation wants to positively influence the social field around them and practice a lack of self-interest.

Her unique vision reveals her dedication to change museums both practically and energetically as an artist. As Ndiritu firmly believes ‘healing’ is a type of institutional critique. In the first of her two-part artist text written in 2016, Ndiritu shared the foundational impetus of her Healing, The Museum methodology, which is based on the idea of using performance as a peace-building tool to deal with issues of global conflict.

“Man is a social being. Factors such as political conflict, social tension and economic stress affect his mental health. Such factors are at least as important as biological factors. Frantz Fanon paid particular attention to these social problems and his brand of political psychiatry is as relevant today as it was during his time. Alienation and oppression still exist. Unemployment is widespread and tyrannical rulers still oppress their people. Mental illness cannot be solved by drugs but by changes in the political and social order.” (1)

In 2012, I began creating a new body of works under the title Healing The Museum. It came out of a deep need to re-introduce non-rational methodologies such as shamanism in order to reactivate the “sacredness” of art spaces. I believed that most modern art institutions were out of sync with their audiences’ everyday experiences and the widespread socio-economical and political changes that have taken place globally in the recent decades. Museums are dying. And I see shamanism as a way to re-activate the dying art space as a space for sharing, participation and ethics. From prehistoric to modern times the shaman was not only the group healer and facilitator of peace but also the creative – the artist.

Mitchell is an artist who works with many disciplines; from painting to video and sculpture or what she calls objects. She uses these many disciplines to create ‘experiments’ which question our social and philosophical ethics – who are we, what do we value and how do we exist? Mitchell is interested in the many responses and outcomes which come from this questioning.

In her current practice Mitchell focuses on the social use of ‘magical thinking,’ for example,in her exhibit, All Auras Touch, 2020.

All Auras Touch is a snapshot of contemporary Australia revealed through the process of photographing human energy fields, otherwise known as auras. Taking the main occupation list from the Australian Census as the starting point, artist Kate Mitchell aims to photograph the aura of one person for each of the 1,023 recognised occupations.

Using electromagnetic field imaging equipment, participants of All Auras Touch will have their aura portrait taken by the artist. Each aura portrait will then form part of an expansive installation. All Auras Touch reminds us that we are all energetic beings made up of the same matter.

The post-materialist scientific position for Mitchell is pan-psychic. However, in Mitchell’s other work she questions how we ‘work’ with this universal knowledge in society. She looks at the use of tarot cards, astrology, and predictions – as part of a questioning of how society uses, in its most basis ways, this universal knowledge.