page_title: Paulina Peavy
section_title: Spiritual and philosophical ideas
hierarchical_section_title: Paulina Peavy / Spiritual and philosophical ideas
caption_attribution_description: English: The chart and text together explicate Peavy's philosophy of the four seasons of the world, each of which last 3,000 years.
context_page_description: Paulina Peavy was an American artist, inventor, designer, sculptor, poet, writer, and lecturer. Best known for her paintings, her work incorporates both mythical and spiritual iconography. In 1932 she attended a seance held in the home of Rev. Ida L. Ewing, the pastor of The National Federation of Spiritual Science, Church No. 68, in Santa Ana, California. Peavy first encountered "Lacamo", a spirit from another world whom she called her "spirit muse," while in a trance during one of the weekly meetings. Afterward when she painted, she claimed that Lacamo directed her brush. She sometimes wore a mask to channel Lacamo’s energy. Her paintings were exhibited in Los Angeles, San Francisco, and New York during her life time and have recently resurfaced in exhibitions. The works reflect her belief that humanity was slowly moving toward an androgynous species, which she called “one-gender perfection, ” through contact with alien species, or UFOs. In her consideration of a future-sex and post-masculine world, Peavy’s work aligns with that of Hilma af Klint, Agnes Pelton, and Forest Bess.
context_section_description: In 1932, Peavy began attending weekly séances at the Long Beach home of Ida Ewing of Long Beach, whom she described as "a trance medium." It was there that she said she first met Lacamo (pronounced LA-cum-mo), a spirit that Peavy called a UFO, or “Unidentified Foreign Object.” Although Lacamo originally channeled his communications through Ewing, eventually the spirit would "spoke" directly to Peavy. In her 1982 film, Mountain of Myrrh/UFO, she describes her first encounter with the UFO as seeing a "great cloud and fire unfolding itself, and a brightness was about itself, the color of amber. . . . The spirit of the living creations was in the wheels. As for this ring [meaning sound], they were so high they were dreadful.  Wherever the living creature went, the wheels went. The flying saucer’s spacecraft form is planetary, consisting of an aggregation of hierarchical egos, a vast pulsating living power unit, promulgated as seed around a central nucleus. Being seed in constant metamorphosis, they create themselves mentally by the brow in any form in any place in the universe and by feat of travel that their thought enacts upon. Their genesis is wholly mental." Lacamo, through Ewing, instructed Peavy to read Isis Unveiled (1877) by Helena Petrovna Blavatsky, a Russian philosopher and co-founder of the Theosophical Society whose ideas inspired the work of other artists like Hilma af Klint. The Bible and Christian Theology figured prominently in Peavy's work throughout her life. A 1946 article by Margaret Mara published in the Brooklyn Eagle reads, “Interpreting the parables in the Bible with a paint brush is the gigantic task undertaken by Paulina Peavy, modernistic painter, who has evolved some amazing theories following 10 years of biblical research.” But her philosophy of the cosmos moved beyond established theosophical and religious tests. She also recalls that Lacamo instructed her to “reduce all capitallised [sic] words in the Bible- to their low case and then wholly scientific meanings; as example- biology- embryology- etc.!” Through these synthetic visions, her philosophy and images combined modern conventions of science with historical religious philosophy. 
  Lacamo continued to teach Peavy and co-author works with her for over 50 years. For Peavy, Lacamo existed beyond human conceptions of gender and identity. According to her, Lacamo revealed a vision of the future in which single-sex female reproduction would render men unnecessary. Her worldview hinged on the idea that humans were continually reincarnated until they became “pharaohs,” or “free souls” who had achieved “one-gender perfection." In her art, pyramids represent this evolution. Over time, she developed a philosophy that the world evolved through 12,000 year cycles composed of four seasons of 3,000 years each—the spring age, summer pyramid age, autumn age, and winter age. “The male” only appeared during the winter age, which she also referred to as “Babel.” In her writings, films, and paintings, Peavy advanced her belief that humankind was  “nearing the end of our 3,000 year age- likened to a prolonged WINTER” and that soon the spring age, where humanity ascended to “one-gender perfection” would arrive. Curator Bill Arning has drawn a connection between Peavy and radical feminists like Valerie Solanis, who wrote a book called the SCUM Manifesto arguing that men were an unnecessary evil. Her paintings were revealed to her. She felt herself to be the physical maker, but not the spiritual author. Through the act of painting and revising, which she did continually, the images revealed their meaning to her over a long span of time.
caption: This is a page of Peavy's manuscript defining her seasons.
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