Embodying the Great Mother

Olga Fröbe-Kapteyn, founder of the Eranos Conferences and creator of the Eranos Archive, used her self-identification with the "Great Mother archetype" as a strategy for feminine spiritual authority. Through conference-hosting, image curation, archiving, and visionary art-making, she expressed this authority. Analysis of her Visions drawings (1934–37) and Archive images situates her within 1930s New Age esotericism. Her "mythopoetic performance" of the Great Mother is interpreted as a mode of institutional and visionary authority, exemplifying how fin-de-siècle women mobilized visionary experience and archetypal symbolism to construct autonomous spiritual and epistemic leadership within modernist intellectual cultures.

Study at a glance

Abstract

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 Through unpublished correspondence, Eranos-Jahrbücher texts, and visual analyses of Fröbe’s Visions drawings (1934–37) and “Great Mother” Archive images, Fröbe is situated within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.