In 1896 Anna Cassel and Hilma af Klint founded the group De Fem (The Five). Sigrid Hedman, Mathilda Nilsson and Cornelia Cederberg were the three other members of the group. They began as an ordinary spiritualist group and their paintings took spiritual and ritual themes.
The artists in their seances were said to have communicated with spirits through a psychograph, an instrument for recording spirit writings, or a trance medium. During these events, spirit leaders presented themselves by name and promised to help the group’s members in their spiritual training. The spirits communicating with the five women were mostly Gregor, Georg, Clemens, Ananda och Amaliel. Such leaders are common in spiritualist literature and life. Through their spiritual guidance, the group was inspired to draw automatically in pencil, a technique that was not unusual at that time. When the hand moved automatically, the conscious will did not direct the pattern that developed on the paper, and, in theory, the women thus became artistic tools for their spirit leaders. This technique, called automatism was used a decade later by the Surrealists.