The Tree of Life 1 – The Secret Tale

— J. Chr. de Vries

For Leo S.

About two or three weeks ago, I received a letter from the Swedish art historian Ole Viskrys. The letter did not only surprise me because I hadn’t heard from him in years, but also because of its content. He wrote that he was conducting research on the relationship between abstract art and mathematics, which quickly led him to theosophy. In his research, he came across a German publicist named Satur Losse, who had spent some time in the circles of the Dutch philosopher Mathieu Schoenmakers. During this time, Losse had the opportunity to meet the painter Piet Mondriaan once.


Viskrys found in Losse’s estate a diary with notes from a conversation that Losse attended between Schoenmaekers and Mondriaan. According to Losse, this conversation took place in the autumn of 1916, in Laren. The discussion revolved around the concepts of ‘dying’, ‘deterioration’, and ‘undergoing’, based on Schoenmaekers’ text ‘Reflections’. In the diary, two words were underlined: ‘objectwise’ and ‘subjectwise’, the first one with an arrow pointing to the concepts of ‘deterioration’ and ‘undergoing’, and the second one pointing to the concept of ‘dying’. Below this, there was the phrase, also underlined: Lions Die. On the following page was this obscure sentence: Therefore: rivers enter every ocean fluidly, Lions incessantly feel eternity.


Losse quoted the following passage from Schoenmaekers in the diary: “In fact, you paint a tree throughout your entire life. This tree can also take on abstract forms because you paint not images [afbeeldingen] but reimages [weerbeeldingen].” ‘Whether the quote is apocryphal or not,’ Viskrys added, ‘we will never know.’ The diary also contained a separate sheet of paper with the following story:

• Lux Et Omnibus Secretum
• Transcending hidden eternities, silent echoes continuously rendering enigmatic thoughts,
 Tree and life eternal, do our ends sustain? Immense treasures, curiously opening numerous tales in numbers. A predestined life of tales.
• Do our ends sustain the hidden invisible senses, transcending and lingering eternally? Mysteries evoking realms each long yearning, real and illusional secret entities, questioning unraveled ends, sometimes trying in our naked souls?

• Whispering hopes expending restless experiences, dividing our truthful hopes over silent ends, questioning unraveled ends, sometimes trying in our naked souls? Literally ending after death?

• The hopeful ending, unraveled, limitless, timeless, immaterial, merging at truthful ends, quests unlimited, ends safely tested in our notions, in secret insights falls the hopeless ending. The hopeful ending, quests unlimited, ends safely tested in our notions, in needless goals. Enigmatic needs die secretly.

• If failing, if trying — enigmatic needs die secretly. How or where? Musing and yearning boldly escaping the hopeful ending, quests unlimited, ends safely tested in our notions, in needless goals. Goals eternally turning sad, sad trees unfolding central knowledge, in noticing the hopeless ending, acrostic brave stories of limitless universal tales end, zealous entering realms of pointless orbits in needless tales.
 Is silence, this hoping in silence, weaving hopelessly alternating tales, what ending, moulding and yielding, hours of painful ending, fills our restlessness?
• Is silence, this hoping in silence, weaving hopelessly alternating tales. What ending, moulding useless silent tales, hours of painful ending, fills our restlessness?

• Whispering hopes expending restless experiences, do our ends sustain? Transcending restless, useless tales… how? End, no dance; and neither darkness — Whispering hopes expending restless experiences, the hopeful ending, is life literally unfolding silently in our nature?

This cryptic tale by Losse appears to contain a hidden message. It took me some hours to find the key, or actually, there appeared to be three versions of the same key. Viskrys wrote in his letter to me that he didn’t want to insult me by revealing the key, assuming that I would easily discover it myself. However, he strongly urged me never to disclose the key publicly; a secret text should remain forever secret, at least for the uninitiated, not for the wise, of course, as nothing remains hidden from them. It remains to be seen if all secrets wish to be revealed to me, but it is self-evident that I could not escape complying with his request.

Viskrys didn’t provide any further information about his research in his letter, including whether or to what extent he used Losse’s diary for it. I thanked him for his story and offered some polite and obligatory comments. Yesterday, I received a second, short letter from him. He wrote that Losse was the third husband of his German grandmother. That was the reason he had relatively easy access to the diary, which was stored in his grandmother’s country house, still in the family’s possession.

What I didn’t mention to Viskrys was that I found the story to be an intriguing linguistic exercise, but I had little interest in the theosophical mumbo-jumbo. However, I did find the tension between artistic expression and logical structures so fascinating that I contemplated a new story in which I would attempt to explore this theme. Is the ‘Tree of Life’ of Mondriaan ‘anecdotal’ or ‘mythical’, I wondered?

— J. Chr. de Vries, Den Haag, January 18, 2023