At the Academy of Fine Arts she met Anna Cassel, the first of the four women with whom she later worked in "The Five" (de Fem), a group of artists who shared her ideas: Cassel, Cornelia Cederberg, Sigrid Hedman, and Mathilda Nilsson.

"The Five" began their association as members of the Edelweiss Society, which embraced a combination of the Theosophical teachings of Helena Blavatsky and spiritualism. The group of female artists The Five was engaged in the paranormal and regularly organized spiritistic séances. They opened each meeting with a prayer, followed by a meditation, a Christian sermon, and a review and analysis of a text from the New Testament. All of this would then be followed by a séance. They recorded in a book a completely new system of mystical thoughts in the form of messages from higher spirits, called The High Masters ("Höga Mästare"). One, Gregor, spoke thus:

Through her work with the group The Five, Hilma af Klint created experimental automatic drawing as early as 1896, leading her towards an inventive geometric visual language capable of conceptualizing invisible forces both of the inner and outer worlds. She explored world religions, atoms, and the plant world and wrote extensively about her discoveries. As she got more familiar with this form of expression, Hilma af Klint was assigned by the High Masters to create the paintings for the "Temple" – however she never understood what this "Temple" referred to. Hilma af Klint felt she was being directed by a force that would literally guide her hand. She wrote in her notebook: