I would like to take this opportunity to thank Marlene Park for serving as my dissertation adviser, and for providing me with invaluable assistance in all aspects of its production. I would also like to acknowledge Herb Hartel, who was writing his dissertation on Raymond Jonson at the same time, for valuable exchanges on the relationship between Bisttram and Jonson.

1. In this paper I use the word Theosophy in a very general way to include the numerous occult movements of the period. Claude Bragdon, More Lives Than One (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1938); Manly P. Hall, An Encyclopedic Outline of Masonic, Hermetic, Qabbalistic and Rosicrucian Symbolical Philosophy (San Francisco: H. S. Crocker, 1928; reprint The Secret Teaching of All Ages, Los Angeles: The Philosophical Research Society, 1997); Jacqueline Decter, Nicholas Roerich: The Life and Art of A Russian Master (Rochester, VT: Park Street Press, 1989).

2. Ruth Pasquine, The Politics of Redemption: Dynamic Symmetry, Theosophy, and Swedenborgianism in the Art of Emil Bisttram (1895-1976) (Ph.D. diss., City University of New York, 2000).

3. Herbert R. Hartel, Jr., The Art and Life of Raymond Jonson (1891-1982): Concerning the Spiritual in American Abstract Art (Ph.D. diss., City University of New York, 2002). The events surrounding the founding of the Transcendental Painting Group are related in Gail Levin and Marianne Lorenz, Theme and Improvisation: Kandinsky and the American Avant-Garde 1912-1950 (Dayton: Dayton Art Institute, 1992).

4. Dennis Reid, Atma Buddhi Manas: The Later Work of Lawren S. Harris (Toronto: Art Gallery of Ontario, 1985); Robert C. Hay, Dane Rudhyar and the Transcendental Painting Group of New Mexico 1938-1941 (MA diss., Michigan State University, 1981); Michael Zakian, Agnes Pelton: Poet of Nature (Palm Springs: Palm Springs Desert Museum, 1995).

5. Time Cycle No. 1 (the drawing) was acquired by Lawren Harris in the late 1930s. Douglas Worts, Lawren S. Harris: Transition to Abstraction 1934-1945 (MA diss., University of Toronto, 1982): 74, fig. 58. Worts says that Harris acquired another Bisttram drawing also,but does not identify it.

6. Emil Bisttram, "The New Vision in Art," Tomorrow 1 (Sept. 1941): 37-8.

7. H. P. Blavatsky, The Secret Doctrine: The Synthesis of Science, Religion, and Philosophy, 2 vols. (London: The Theosophical Publishing Company, Ltd., 1886; reprint Pasadena: Theosophical University Press, 1988), Vol. I: 433-4.

8. "Yes, Rosicrucianism was one of our first sources of influence. We were with the Heindel group for several years, never definitely tied up with them but contacting them." Mayrion Bisttram to Yvonne Housser, TLS, 20 Jan 1940, Yvonne McKague Housser Papers, National Archives of Canada, Ottawa. Yvonne Housser and a number of other Canadian artists studied with Bisttram in Taos on the recommendation of Lawren Harris. Additionally, Bisttram has a copy of a diagram illustrating Heindel's cosmological system in his 1928 notebook, which is in the William Warder papers.

9. Max Heindel, The Rosicrucian Cosmo-Conception or Mystic Christianity: An Elementary Treatise upon Man's Past Evolution, Present Constitution and Future Development (Chicago: M. A. Donahue & Co., 1909; reprint London: L. N. Fowler, 1923): 106-7.

10. Ibid., 96-7.

11. Blavatsky, The Secret Doctrine, Vol. II: 591, 596.

12. Alice Bailey, Letters on Occult Meditation (New York: Lucis Publishing Co., 1922): 5.

13. Ibid. Bailey's diagram follows the Table of Contents.

14. Ibid., 24-29.

15. Ibid., 205, 207. Dane Rudhyar was particularly close to Bailey, who published his book The Astrology of Personality: A Reformulation of Astrological Concepts and Ideals in Terms of Contemporary Psychology and Philosophy (New York: Lucis Publishing Co., 1936). She also published the booklet by Alfred Morang, Dane Rudhyar: Pioneer in Creative Synthesis (New York: Lucis Publishing Co., 1939).

16. Claude Bragdon, The Beautiful Necessity: Seven Essays on Theosophy and Architecture (New York: Knopf, 1910), 73-4.

17. Claude Bragdon, A Primer of Higher Space: the Fourth Dimension; to which is added, Man the Square, A Higher Space Parable (Rochester: Manas Press, 1913), Plate 30.

18. Ibid., Plate 1. The Generation of Corresponding Figures in One-, Two-, Three- and Four-Space. For Bragdon's place in the discourse on the fourth dimension, see Linda Dalrymple Henderson, The Fourth Dimension And Non-Euclidean Geometry in Modern Art (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1983), 193-201.

19. Blavatsky, II, 593.

20. Bisttram described his method of using Dynamic Symmetry in his manuscript The Practical Application of Dynamic Symmetry for the Contemporary Creative Artist, ca. 1960. TMs, Bisttram Papers, Archives of American Art, 2893: 220-434.

21. The thrust of Hambidge's research was to prove that the Greeks (and the Egyptians) used these rectangles in all their design work, specifically in vases and architecture. Jay Hambidge, Dynamic Symmetry: The Greek Vase (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1920); The Parthenon and Other Greek Temples: Their Dynamic Symmetry, preface by L. D. Caskey (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1924). Hambidge began proposing Dynamic Symmetry as a system for contemporary artists to use after he found that it was artists who were most receptive to his ideas. The most well-known artists to adopt his system were Robert Henri and George Bellows. An important supporter was the Harvard professor Denman Ross, whose color system Bisttram used. Hambidge's system was very popular with artists; it was taught in public schools and at art schools and universities well into the 1950s.

22. In his manuscript on Dynamic Symmetry, Bisttram provided a list of the dimensions he used for the root rectangles. For the Root 5 rectangle he gave 4 x 9, 8 x 18, 16 x 36. For two side-by-side Root 5 rectangles he gave 8 x 9, 16 x 18, 32 x 36. Bisttram Papers, AAA 2893: 246.

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