Embodying the Great Mother: Olga Fröbe's Spiritual Authority at Eranos
This article examines the trans-disciplinary œuvre and hosting activities of the Swiss-based artist and archivist, Olga Fröbe-Kapteyn (1881-1962), founder of the Eranos Conferences and creator of the Eranos Archive. Drawn from my doctoral project's findings, the text argues that Fröbe’s self-id...
| Main Author: | |
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| Format: | Electronic Article |
| Language: | English |
| Check availability: | HBZ Gateway |
| Interlibrary Loan: | Interlibrary Loan for the Fachinformationsdienste (Specialized Information Services in Germany) |
| Published: |
2025
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| In: |
Approaching religion
Year: 2025, Volume: 15, Issue: 2, Pages: 89-110 |
| Further subjects: | B
mytho-cosmology
B self-mythologisation B non-ordinary states of consciousness B archetypal symbolism B esoteric modernism B spiritual authority B Great Mother archetype B visionary art B Eranos B Olga Fröbe-Kapteyn B epistemic agency |
| Online Access: |
Volltext (kostenfrei) Volltext (kostenfrei) |
| Summary: | This article examines the trans-disciplinary œuvre and hosting activities of the Swiss-based artist and archivist, Olga Fröbe-Kapteyn (1881-1962), founder of the Eranos Conferences and creator of the Eranos Archive. Drawn from my doctoral project's findings, the text argues that Fröbe’s self-identification with the "Great Mother archetype" functioned as a strategy of feminine spiritual authority at Eranos - expressed through practices of conference-hosting, image curation, archiving and visionary art-making. Through unpublished correspondence, Eranos-Jahrbücher texts, and visual analyses of Fröbe's Visions drawings (1934-37) and "Great Mother" Archive images, Fröbe is situated within 1930s New Age esotericism. Drawing on religious studies concepts and art-historical methods, her "mythopoetic performance" of the Great Mother is interpreted as a mode of both institutional and visionary authority. Fröbe's opus exemplifies how fin-de-siècle women mobilised visionary experience and archetypal symbolism, constructing autonomous modes of spiritual and epistemic leadership within modernist intellectual cultures. |
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| ISSN: | 1799-3121 |
| Contains: | Enthalten in: Approaching religion
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| Persistent identifiers: | DOI: 10.30664/ar.162346 |
