Kenneth Grant - Excerpt.pdf - Kenneth Grant - UmbraPagan

Austin Osman Spare and the Zos Kia

Cultus

from The Magickal Revival

by Kenneth Grant

H.P. Lovecraft, in one of his tales of terror, alludes to certain entities which have their

being "not in the spaces known to us, but between them. They walk calm and primal, of

no dimensions, and to us unseen."

This aptly describes Austin Osman Spare. The circumstances of his birth emphasize the

element of ambivalence and inbetweeness which forms the theme of his magic. He told

me he was not sure whether he was born on the last day of December 1888, or on New

Year's Day, 1889; whether, as he put it, he was Janus backward-turning, or Janus

forward-facing. But whichever aspect of the deity he more closely represented, it is a

fact that his life was a curious blend of past and future. Despite his inability to

remember quite when he was born, the place was certainly Snowhill, London: he was

the only son of a City of London policeman.

When barely twenty years of age he began writing The Book of Pleasure, in which he

used art and sex to explore the subconscious mind. The Book of Pleasure reeks of

diabolism to such an extent that Mario Praz in The Romantic Agony (Oxford, 1933)

refers to Spare as an English "satanic occultist", and he places him in the same category

as Aleister Crowley.

Spare's intense interest in the more obscure aspects of sorcery sprang from his early

friendship with an old colonial woman who claimed descent from a line of Salem

witches that Cotton Mather had failed to exterminate. Spare always alluded to her as

Mrs. Paterson, and called her his "second mother". She had an extremely limited

vocabulary composed mainly of the fortune-teller's argot, yet she was able to define and

explain the most abstract ideas much more clearly than could Spare with his large and

unusual vocabulary.

Although penniless, she would accept no payment for her fortune-telling, but insisted on

the odd symbolic coin traditionally exacted as a sacrifice fee. Apart from her skill in

divining, she was the only person Spare ever met who could materialize thoughts to

visible appearance. Aleister Crowley- who met and attracted all kinds of psychically

active individuals-met two only in the course of his life who had this particular siddhi

(Allan Bennett was one; the other, Crowley did not name).

Mrs. Paterson, when visited for purposes of fortune-telling, would read a person's

character immediately as a matter of course before going into details about the future. If

she prophesied an event she was unable to describe verbally, she would objectivize the

event in a visual image and the querent would see, in some dark corner of her room, a

clearly defined if fleeting image of the prophesied event. And this never failed to follow

at the appointed time.

It was undoubtedly Mrs. Paterson's influence that stimulated Spare's innate interest in

the occult, which, allied to his remarkable skill as a draughtsman enabled him to

reproduce through his art the strange entities he encountered in transmundane spheres.

He drew several portraits of Mrs. Paterson, one of which appeared in The Focus of Life,

published by the Morland Press in 1921. Another drawing of her by Spare recently

appeared (1971) in the part-work encyclopaedia Man, Myth and Magic, where she is

shown after having "exteriorized" herself in the form of a nubile girl.

Spare too was able occasionally to conjure thought-forms to visible appearance, but

whereas in the old witch's case it was an unfailing power, in his own case it was erratic

and uncertain. On one occasion it worked only too effectively, as two unfortunate

persons learnt to their cost. They were of the dilettante kind, mere dabblers in the occult.

They wanted Spare to conjure an Elemental to visible appearance. They had seen

materialized spirits of the dead in the seance room, but had never seen an Elemental.

Spare tried to dissuade them, explaining that such creatures were subconscious

automata inhabiting the human psyche at levels normally inaccessible to the conscious

mind. As they almost always embodied atavistic urges and propensities, it was an act of

folly to evoke them as their intrusion into waking life could be extremely dangerous.

But the smatterers did not take him seriously.

Using his own method of elemental evocation, Spare set to work. Nothing happened for

some time, then a greenish vapour, resembling fluid seaweed, gradually invaded the

room. Tenuous fingers of mist began to congeal into a definite, organized shape. It

entered their midst, gaining more solidity with each successive moment. The

atmosphere grew miasmic with its presence and an overpowering stench accompanied

it; and in the massive cloud of horror that enveloped them, two pinpoints of fire glowed

like eyes, blinking in an idiot face which suddenly seemed to fill all space. As it grew in

size the couple panicked and implored Spare to drive the thing away. He banished it

accordingly. It seemed to crinkle and diminish, then it fell apart like a blanket swiftly

disintegrating. But while it had cohered and hung in the room like a cloud, it was

virtually opaque and tangible; and it reeked of evil. Both the people concerned were

fundamentally changed. Within weeks, one died of no apparent cause; the other had to

be committed to an insane asylum.

Although Spare was convinced that an occult Intelligence frequently painted, drew, or

wrote through him, he was unable to discover its identity. He was, however, in almost

daily contact with a familiar, a spirit-guide, known as Black Eagle whom he had clearly

seen and drawn on several occasions. But he was convinced that Black Eagle was not

the sole source of his automatism. Spare had but to turn his head suddenly and he would

sometimes catch a glimpse of the familiar spirits that constantly surrounded him.

Several times he had "caught" one of them long enough to make a lightning-swift

sketch.

Spare's frequent traffic with denizens of invisible realms led to his evolving a graphic

means of conjoining all thoughts- past, present, and future- in the ever-fluid ether of

Consciousness. His graphic symbology represents a definite language designed to

facilitate communication with the psychic and subliminal world.

It was Spare's opinion that for this language to be truly effective, each individual should

evolve his own, creating his sigils from the material nearest to hand- his own

subconscious. He gave as a reason for so much failure in divination the fact that,

although the operator sometimes succeeded in annexing traditional symbols to his own

subconscious awareness of their true values, many of the symbols eluded correct

interpretation; they therefore failed of nexus and were consequently sterile.

Not only could Spare "tell fortunes" in the usually accepted sense, he could also use the

cards for influencing the host of subtle entities which swarm in the astral light, and with

their cooperation he accomplished much of his magic.

He designed and used a pack of cards which he called the "Arena of Anon", each card

bearing a magical emblem which was a variation of one of the letters of the Alphabet of

Desire. (The basis of this Alphabet, together with many early examples of the letters

composing it, is given in Spare's 'The Book of Pleasure', on which he began working in

1909 and published privately on completion, in 1913.) When vividly visualized, the

emblem or sigil mysteriously stirs the subconscious and a corresponding image, or set

of images, arises in the mind. In proportion to the power of belief in the sigil, so is the

clarity of the image which it evokes. If the sigil taps a layer of ancient or cosmic

memory, some astonishing images surge into the mind and the skilful sorcerer is able to

project them into the astral mind-stuff of other individuals, so that they imagine the

image to be a palpable presence.

Spare could influence elemental phenomena as well as the minds of other people. Great

danger lies in possession, and Spare wisely refrained from writing too openly about the

processes he employed. What I know about his methods I learnt from personal contact

with him.

Even as a child, Spare employed these curious sigils. One is reminded of Yeat's words

in The Trembling of the Veil: "Mathers described how as a boy he had drawn over and

over again some event that he longed for; and called those drawings an instinctive

magic."

When he was seventeen Spare stayed at the home of the Rev. Robert Hugh Benson,

author of The Necromancers and other occult novels. They went out for a walk one

summer day; a serene and cloudless blue sky shone overhead. It had been fine all day,

and Benson was curious to know whether Spare could, in such unlikely circumstances,

produce rain by magical means. Spare said he could, proceeded to trace a sigil on the

back of a used envelope, and, pausing in his tracks, concentrated all his attention upon

it. Within ten minutes small clouds began to appear; they massed at a point immediately

above their heads and discharged violently. Both Benson and Spare were drenched to

the skin.

A year or two later, Benson introduced Spare to the Hon. Everard Feilding, Secretary of

the Society of Psychic Research. At the time Feilding was associated with Frederick

Bligh Bond, the President of the Archaeological Society who, by psychic means, had

discovered the buried Edgar Chapel at Glastonbury Abbey. Like Benson, Feilding

wanted proof of Spare's magical powers and, when the latter offered to oblige, proposed

the following test: Spare was to materialize an object which Feilding mentally

visualized without giving any clue as to its nature.

Spare drew one of his magical sigils, which, instead of being symbolic of the unknown

desired object, was the ideograph of a familiar spirit whose services he frequently

employed when any mind-reading was required.

After some time, Spare received a vivid impression of the object in Feilding's mind. He

then drew a second sigil, told Feilding he need no longer concentrate, and proceeded to

do so himself. These proceedings were interrupted by a knock on the door. Feilding

tiptoed to the door, opened it, and was amazed to find his valet proffering a pair of

slippers. Feilding turned to Spare and asked him how he had done it!

An essential part of Spare's technique lay in deliberate forgetfulness, and this is the part

which a novice finds extremely difficult. One is reminded of the king who lavished a

fortune on an itinerant alchemist who had successfully manufactured the Philosopher's

Stone. After giving the king lengthy and complicated instructions, which the king

repeated by heart, the alchemist smiled and said approvingly: "Yes, your Highness has

remembered every detail perfectly; there is just one further point to remember. For three

minutes before the Alchemical Substance congeals, you must concentrate your mind

upon its lustre as it seethes in the alembic, but during this time you should on no

account let the thought of greenness cross you mind for even a moment." The king

thanked the alchemist and prepared to make the Stone. Everything went according to

plan until the last few minutes, when the mind of the king was invaded by an army of

green objects which he was powerless to banish.

With Spare's sigils the case is somewhat similar. The reason he gives for forgetting the

desire at the time of invoking it lies in the fact that for the operation to succeed the

conscious mind must have no inkling of the transaction. Consciously formulated desires

take time to materialize; subconscious desires can be made to materialize very swiftly.

Consciousness of the desire vitiates the entire process, so a method had to be found of

forgetting the desire during the period of magical evocation. Spare called the process

"union through absent-mindedness" and advocated the yogic method of emptying the

mind of all but the sigil. This is not always successful so as an alternative he suggests

the sigillization of perennial desires, desires that are sure to arise periodically, as for

instance the desire for beautiful women. Several such desires are then sigillized,

scrambled together, and laid aside for several days. On reassembling the cards upon

which they have been drawn, the operator is unable to remember precisely what

sigillizes what! The rite is then comparatively easy to accomplish for it requires only

concentrated thought.

Spare often supplemented the process by a sexual formula which endowed it with added

efficacy. He derived most of his sex-magical formulae from a Delphic Pythoness who

communed with him during sessions of automatic writing. This Delphic Oracle was

probably the spirit of old Mrs. Paterson, guiding him from beyond.

One such formula enabled him to "give life to the autistic, by an earthenware virgin". In

view of the present-day predilection for auto-erotic aids to ecstasy, the resuscitation of

the dildo (At the time of writing, my attention has been drawn to "the first European sex

paper" which reflects the current obsession with purely mechanistic aspects of self-love.

Nevertheless, such methods employed in a magical manner may place the practitioner in

direct contact with his daemon or genius.) and the widespread curiosity about the

sorcery of sex, Spare's formula of the Earthenware Virgin is of particular interest,

though for Spare it had an exclusively magical aim.

Until he received this formula he had, as he put it, "copulated merely with the

atmosphere, or rode whores, witches and bitches of all kinds, there being few virgins".

In order to translate a specified desire from the level of subjective consciousness to the

material or objective plane, the Pythoness instructed him to construct an urn in

conformity with the dimensions of the erect penis. Sufficient space- but no more- was to

be left at the end of the vessel in order to form a vacuum when the phallus was inserted.

The cavity was to contain the sigillized wish, which was automatically consecrated at

the moment of orgasm. The greatly enhanced pleasure induced by the suctional power

of the vacuum increased the size of the penis and caused an unusually prolonged

orgasm. At the critical moment, the desire was to be vividly visualized and held steadily

in mind for as long as possible. When the mental image began to wane and disappear

the urn was hermetically sealed and buried in a casket filled with earth, or in the ground

itself.

Spare maintained that this was the formula used by the ancient Greek urnings; hence the

designation. In one of his unpublished writings he give the following instructions: "Bury

the urn at midnight, the moon being quartered. When the moon wanes, disinter the urn

and- while repeating a suitable incantation- pour its contents as a libation on to the

earth. Then re-bury it."

As the sperm would by that time have congealed, Spare advised a replenishment before

the second "burial". He describes the Earthenware Virgin as "the most formidable

formula known; it never fails and is dangerous. Hence, what is not written down must

be guessed.

"From this formula was derived the legend of the genii of the brazen vessel associated

with Solomon."

Whether this is so, I do not know, but there is a curious illustration in Payne Knight's

celebrated Discourse on the Worship of Priapus (London, 1865) which is not

satisfactorily explained in the text. It is in two parts and depicts a male figure with

sexual organ erect; in his raised right hand he holds a vase-shaped sheath which he is

about to clamp upon the phallus. The second part of the illustration shows the same

image, but with penis drooping languidly after ejaculation, and the waist of the figure

girdled with fruits symbolic of the rite's fulfilment. There are also one or two

illustrations in Reinach's Repertoire des Vases Peints (Paris, 1899), which suggest a

similar magical practice.

Spare could undoubtedly materialize atavisms from his own subconsciousness and

clothe them fleetingly in the sexual ectoplasm (or astral semen) of his atmospheric

copulations.

Occasionally, these entities actually achieved a degree of density sufficient to make

them visible- and even palpable- to other people. He called them "elemental automata"

or "intrusive familiars". They frequently copulated amongst themselves, engendering

offspring simultaneously. Spare has depicted many of these creatures in their peculiar

Kenneth Grant - Excerpt.pdf

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