The Great Invocation, in Garage Rotterdam

The Great Invocation refers to the mantra allegedly received by British writer Alice Bailey from a spirit guide in 1945, as the last battles of WWII ravaged Europe. Bailey described The Great Invocation as a synthesis of meditation, prayer, and affirmation, that would assist the world in times of unprecedented calamity, thus ‘saving humanity from self-destruction’.

While some of the artists participating in The Great Invocation explore totemism, others investigate arcane aspects of human consciousness via strategies such as automatism, sublimation, and séance. The artworks – or the processes involved in producing them – are conduits for intuitive powers latent in the mind; tools for accessing hidden, perhaps even divine, knowledge. The exhibition features several pieces of visionary art from the internationally acclaimed collection of De Stadshof Foundation: Madge Gill, Bertus Jonkers, Jan Kervezee and Marc Lamy.

Ultimately, this exhibition demonstrates that, while visual art may be inherently ‘of this world’, it can be a source of revelation and transcendence. In a society where scientific rationality and technological objectivity dominate, art remains uniquely capable of providing us with a means of satisfying spiritual hunger.

-Pádraic E. Moore, 2021