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From The Maze Where Realities Converge - the psychedelic encyclopedia of reality from The Ultimate Comment
Austin Osman Spare was a magician, artist and a sort of fucked up psycho-witch. Peter Carroll has a point here when he says that Aleister Crowley was a mystic rather than a magician, because he focused entirely on religious goals rather than practical sorcery. Spare's magic, on the other hand, is largely about acheiving earthly and fleshly desires. There are extravagant claims made about his abilities to read minds, tell the future, conjure spirits and affect the forces of nature... if you believe that sort of thing. While Crowley drew on venerable and respectable traditions like yoga, qabbalah and hermeticism, Spare claimed to be trained in the traditions of witchcraft. He was a massive influence on chaos magick.
Contents |
Zos, Kia and Self-love
'Zos', in Spare's philosophy, is (among other things) the creative power of the magician, the imagination.
'Kia' is the formless Ultimate Reality, another word for Tao or Brahmin or Buddha-nature. It is also the Will. As Peter Carroll points out, Kia is that which makes life meaningful. If you can understand how all these things are the same, you're doing pretty well.
Spare writes that Kia "may be regarded as the primordial sex principle, the idea of pleasure in self-love." What does he mean here? Perhaps he is saying that reality is essentially a striving, that it is in the nature of existence to lust for itself. Compare Schopenhauer on "the world as will", Nietzsche on the will-to-power, Sartre on "being for-itself", Kahlil Gibran on "life's longing for itself" or Baruch Spinoza on conatus. The aim of Spare's magic is to reach a state of consciousness where you are swept along on a constant torrent of enjoyment of the passions, freed from "belief" (Spare uses the word to mean all that is static and solid in the mind) and ego. This is what he calls "self-love". It is a state of simplicity in which complete unification of the mental life has been acheived.
From The Book of Pleasure (self-love): The Psychology of Ecstasy:
"The Kia which can be vaguely expressed in words is the "Neither-Neither," the unmodified "I" in the sensation of omnipresence."
"The absolute freedom which being free is mighty enough to be "reality" and free at any time: therefore is not potential or manifest (except as its instant possibility) by ideas of freedom or "means," but by the Ego being free to recieve it, by being free of ideas about it and by not believing. The less said of it (Kia) the less obscure is it"
Personal symbolism
Spare's basic innovation was to create a system of magick whose symbolism was not traditional, but personal. This completely revolutionized the occult and along with the influence of Discordianism, made chaos magick possible. In Spare's system, magic no longer requires study of complex arcana like qabbalah or alchemy, there are no secret formula kept hidden by occult orders. The magic of Aleister Crowley or Eliphas Levi or other traditionalists resembles a science; Spare's is Art. As Einstein said, "Imagination is more important than knowledge."
His method harnesses and plays with the desires, obsessions and energies of the magician's own mind. Take his system "of fortune-telling by cards" from The Zoëtic Grimoire of Zos for instance - while traditional Tarot decks are based on grand, archetypal, mythological figures, Spare insisted each magician create his own deck of cards representing the emotions and events of his own life. "You should evolve your own meanings, symbols and methods. This is vital."
"There is no qualification, no ritual or ceremony. His very existence symbolising all that is necessary to perfection. Most emphatically, there is no need of repetition or feeble imitation. You are alive!" - The Book of Pleasure (Self-Love): The Psychology of Ecstasy
Sigilization
The sigil method Spare describes in The Book of Pleasure (self-love): The Psychology of Ecstasy, is extremely popular among practising magicians these days. We start with a statement of a desire and bring it to fulfilllment in three steps:
First you create a sigil, an abstract expression of your desire. This is normally done by writing out the desire, deleting all the vowels and repeating consonants, and making a witchy-looking symbol from the remaining letters. Use your creativity and artistic intuition here. Alternatively, you can create a spoken mantra from a rough anagram of the desire. It should sound nonsensical and be easy to pronounce.
Secondly, the sigil is charged. This involves entering a state of one-pointed, intense awareness by means of meditation, orgasm, intense emotion or other methods (see methods of altering consciousness) and focusing on the sigil while in this altered state, which need only last a split second.
Lastly, you destroy the sigil and forget all about it. If you cannot fully forget it, at least abandon your lust of result and cultivate the attitude of 'friendly indifference' toward the outcome. Trust the subconscious to do its work; don't consciously worry about the desire any more.
Much has been written on sigil magick, most of it tiresomely repetitive. Pop Magic! by Grant Morrison is a good primer on sigil magick. Check out 'Practical Sigil Magick ' by Frater U.D. for a more in-depth treatment.
Exhaustion
Spare's magicks make use of a state of mental vacuity he called Exhaustion and Peter Carroll calls gnosis. This is a state in which dualities are annihilated and consciousness enters an undifferentiated state which is not conceptual, nor verbal nor cognitive. It may be understood - in Taoist terms, for Spare was obviously influenced by Taoism - as a mutual negation of yin and yang effecting a return to the ineffable Tao.
One way to enter a state of Exhaustion is to pick a duality - like love and hate.
Now think about love - ain't love grand? Think about what love looks like. How is love known? What does it feel like?
Now think about hate - what forms does hate take? How is it expressed? What represents hate to you? Try to enter into the spirit of hate as much as possible.
Now think about both love and hate. Hold both concepts in your mind simultaneously.
Now think about neither love nor hate... and then your mind splits open!!!!
The Death Posture
Spare describes at least two other techniques for entering a state of neither-neither, both of which are called the death posture:
One method is to stand on tiptoes, with your arms locked together behind your back, your back and body arched and straining to the limit, and breath deeply and heavily and rapidly until you black out. Peter Carroll, who probably knows what he's talking about, says you can use a wall for balance. If you can get this to work for you, you're doing better than most.
Alternatively, kneel in the seiza position in front of a mirror. Stare at your eye in the mirror and forcibly suppress all thoughts that arise in the mind. This is difficult, but the results defy belief and explanation. Aleister Crowley's 'Liber III vel Jugorum' and 'Liber Turris vel Domus Dei' (both of which can be found here) give instruction in how to develop this ability to suppress thoughts.
Read
His writings are here, but be warned that they will only confuse and disgust a mind of ordinary calibre.
