Austin Osman Spare
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I am new to the study and inexperienced in the application of magick, but I saw a post a few days ago about chaos magick and Spare's name came up around the technique of sigilization. I too am curious about how all of this relates to ceremonial magick and Thelema, in general.
I gather that the chaos stuff is about trying to distill the magical act/intent to an effective core principal, something essentially magical and powerful, without all the elaborate trappings of a more traditional approach. This was described to me as, "post-modernist," and I suppose Spare might be likened to a magicians' Mark Rothko--celebrating the beauty and power of a single bold line over the multiple hues, brushstrokes and technical realisms of old.
That seems kind of neat, for what it's worth, but it raises a couple questions for me. First, I suppose this stuff must work, to some extent, or it wouldn't have its adherents. I'd be interested to hear stories or views about the effectiveness of Spare's approaches, or of chaos magick in general, and how it compares to the effectiveness of other, I suppose, more traditional magical techniques?
Second, and more to the point for me, is that I think of magick within Thelema as a component of initiation, as a way of experiencing and expressing an unfolding self to support the discovery and enactment of True Will. Do others agree to some extent with that placement? How would chaos magick relate, then, to the broader purpose of love under will? Seems that without an overarching system, something essential could be missing from the chaotic approach--like the difference between a technically skilled artist, say an ink wash painter, forming a deliberate expression with a simple brushstroke, and the watercolor splash of a distracted child. Both might have their similarities and be called art by some, but I see a real difference between the two, which strikes me as having some application here.
93, 93/93
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Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the Law.
Let me ask you this question:
If there was a button in front of you, a big, red, shiny button, that if pressed would proceed to loosen and ultimately sever all ordered connections within your consciousness, leaving you in a state of utter, true, pure Chaos, would you press it? Just to see? Is there anything you wouldn't be okay with letting go? Your "sanity", maybe? Your fear(fear's an addiction, y'know)? Your hopes, dreams, memories? Would you be willing to take that leap of faith into the Ocean? Do you believe in a shore? Or is the Undertow the only thing on your mind?...
The Chaos initiation is not for everyone. I pressed the button simply because I didn't care. My consciousness is not sacred to me, and I wanted to see how far it would go. That Chaotic state is the Gnosis of Chaos Magick, and the core factor in deciding if it's for you.
There's my rant, hope it helps.
Love is the Law, Love under Will.
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Great rant, and my response is easy. I would not push the button you describe. It sounds like madness, and you have offered only dissolution of the self without reward or return. That seems utterly pointless, especially if the promise is, as it seems, of a self too severed to recognize its own experience .
Having said that, the fact that you are still here to talk about it, still able to form a declaratory sentence, suggests that your analogy exaggerates the effects.
I accept that a return is not guaranteed, that one must in any initiation swim out to the point of exhaustion. But I also gather from your own coherence that even without any system or structure to support the return, there is some pattern of tidal current that tends to wash the exhausted swimmer to some shoreline of ordered connections....
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Chaos over time is Order. Life. Order without Chaos is madness, entropic heat death.
"One must have Chaos within oneself to give birth to a dancing star."
~Friedrich Nietzsche~There is a Shore.
Where you end up all depends on what you are when you go in. If you wish to produce a magical result, be your spell. Dissolve it in the Ocean of probability, and watch it crystallize in the Fires of Reality.
Or, if it's mysticism you seek instead of magick, just jump in. See who bothers to come save you. Don't worry, even Choronzon can't make it out that far. Demons are afraid of Water
All in all, it's braught me to the A.'.A.'. anyway.
It's the Star I was following on those dark nights, even if I didn't know it.Chaos is just the means.
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@Zalthos said
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Does anyone have an opinion on where his works stand within Crowley's paradigm?"Just getting into Nietzsche now? Twenty four years old. Hmm.... If you are still at a "Nietzsche-stage" - I would suggest that you don't know what are you dealing with when it comes to Spare.
Where to start? Hmmm well, whether you are male or female will significantly alter your relationship with Spare's writing.
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@Diluvium said
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"One must have Chaos within oneself to give birth to a dancing star."
"The chaos that Nietzsche writes about is not at all similar to the Chaos of the occult traditions. This is very important. Nietzsche was concerned with some "dionysian scream" that was related to suffering and reception of the message. (this is the main thesis of Nietzsche's first book, Birth of Tragedy). The CHAOS in occult traditions is very different. It is not the emotional chaos of philosophical nihilism. Nor is it some sort of state perceived in meditation. Rather CH-A-O-S is dealing with some aspects/correspondences of material reality. It concerns itself with aspects that are vulnerable, weak, brittle, capable of being broken into parts and so on. After that the metaphors start to run thin and specifics are needed. A person has to begin to explain their motivations for being interested in revelations of the secrets. The motivations can be noble - but in my case, not the business of this forum.
Nietzsche simply tends to attract too many 20-something white men with "chips on their shoulders" so to speak. Nietzsche fanboys I call them. They are drawn to his light because they find the idea of Will-to-Power to be seductive. One could assume this motivation is due simply to their boyish aggressions. (And in a delightfully amusing twist of irony, those fanboys are aware of nothing about what having Power really means.)
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@Zos said
"The chaos that Nietzsche writes about is not at all similar to the Chaos of the occult traditions."
I appreciate the intellectual distiction. I personally have not read or studied much of Nietzche, this quote simply resonated with me when I got it from a second-hand source.
To me, it's the idea that Chaos is the force that reverses entropy and keeps a system in motion, producing further complexity of life. Not entirely seperate from the Tao. It is the Fool, within Adjustment.
Nor am I overly versed in the Chaos of the occult traditions, I simply know the Chaos I've experienced, which has certainly served to show me what is truly weak and brittle in my own consciousness. I suppose the Power came in seeing it in the world around me as well, and learning to direct it. -
Diluvium:
"I'm vaguely aware of a relationship between Crowley and Spare, more specifically that Spare was actually inducted into one of the orders, but I'm lost on any other details."
Very recently in an underground magazine here in Spain, came out a very extensive and detailed article about Spare life and work. In the point about his relationship with Crowley, it seems that Spare doesn´t pass that Probationer prove. In the Crowley annotations about this, he wrote that Spare had few discipline for this kind of work (maybe he really meant "few interest"), because he “was an artist”, and otherwise he should pass.
Apart from this, it seems that Spare mocks on Crowley for various reasons related to Crowley tendency to extravagancy and so on. It´s mentioned one occasion in were apparently Spare invited Crowley to eat a cake containing horse poop. Crowley ate it, and when Spare said of what was made the cake, Crowley said that he already knew it.. True or false? Who cares, anyway..
By the way, it seems that Spare interest in magic(k) was just by his own. In fact, the Book of Pleasure and the most of his magical works were “things of youth”, principally tryings for put in words his methods and approaches to his artistic and spiritual work. I don´t think that Spare really could agree with his fitting in any kind of “magical movement”, like the ridiculous "Chaos Magick" people have tried to do. In fact his "Sermon to the hypocrites" was a point for that, in his times..
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@SmokingMonkey said
"I don´t think that Spare really could agree with his fitting in any kind of “magical movement”, like the ridiculous "Chaos Magick" people have tried to do."
@SmokingMonkey said
"Spare had few discipline for this kind of work (maybe he really meant "few interest"), because he “was an artist”"
Chaos is very interesting to me because it is the artist's approach to magick. It sees the magician as the prism, with its own law and structure independent of any sort of law it comes across in its waking life. There is no need of divine names or sacred artifacts, only an active imagination and a willingness to experiment. When I am seeking artistic inspiration rather than spiritual revelation(though they are often inseparable), Chaos Magick is where I will turn.
Spare was an inspiration, not a founder. He used magick in the name of no god but Art, and in that, (skilled)Chaos Magicians follow.
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Nothing really to disagree here, but making this point clear: I´m talking specifically about Chaos Magick circles in a social or general sense. Certainly I don´t have nothing against the Chaotic body of work and culture per se. But it can be said that, as far as I´ve seen it in Spanish language Chaos Magick forums and circles, when more of tree or four people concurs and autodefines as a Chaos Magicians group, the more bigot, arrogant, autocomplacent, I-suck-your-dick-if-you-suck-mine, they become.. It is not much different from any other kind of tea-social group, you know, but with the very important complement of pseudo-magical illumination that makes them believe themselves above their own dairy miseries and very stupidity, with the great support and relief to support themselves mutually. Maybe it could be different in other languages, but certainly that is what generally you can found in the Spanish internet..
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@Zalthos said
"Is there anyone out there applying Spare's methods? Does anyone have an opinion on where his works stand within Crowley's paradigm?"
His works don't stand within Crowley's paradigm at all. Spare did have a brief association with Crowley in London in the early years of the 20th century. At one time Spare did have a passing interest in ceremonial magic as one aspect amongst many in mysticism and the occult. This can be seen from some of his paintings and drawings from this period which show magicians in ceremonial robes at altars. Although becoming a Probationer, he never went beyond that. From some of the references to ceremonial magic and fat magicians in The Book of Pleasure published in 1913, it is clear that he came to dislike Crowley. This is clear also from the first part of Zos Speaks!, where Kenneth Grant records some dismissive references about Crowley that Spare made to him at the time (1940s, 1950s) that the Grants knew Spare.
As to Spare's methods, they shifted over the decades. In many quarters today Spare is characterised by his sigillisation techniques. However, these were developed during the time he was working on The Book of Pleasure. After World War I, sigils are absent from his work (the only exception I know of is the drawing Theurgy from the late 1920s) until he met Kenneth and Steffi Grant in the late 1940s. Stimulated by Kenneth Grant's interest, sigils resurge into some of Spare's drawing and paintings thereafter.
In my view Spare was essentially a mystic, and his Zos-Kia has affinities with Taoism. Some of his paintings and drawings communicate particularly effectively his vision of perpetual transformation and shifting identity, and for me this has affinity with Thelema as Going, not Being.
That aside, I don't think that Spare's work stands within Crowley's paradigm, any more than Crowley's work stands within Spare's paradigm. However, the work of both men has affinities with other magical and mystical traditions. Crowley, for instance, regarded Thelema as being closely related to Taoism; this can be seen from in particular Liber Aleph as well as his rearrangment of and comment upon Legge's translation of the Tao Teh Ching. It is these commonalities that resonate with me, superceding paradigms.
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in my opinion there isn't any division between spare's art, magick, writing, and life. i think he is misunderstood - principally by the chaos magick lot - because most seem to miss the point that his "system", if it can be called that, is purely personal to him, and many also make the mistake of trying to separate his magick from his art.
again my opinion, anyone attempting to follow his techniques is completely missing the point, that of individual self expression. seeing peter carroll make attributions for spare's "alphabet of desire"... it's so off the mark that it's almost entertaining (but then chaos lot might bang on about how there is no truth anyhow, a fairly asinine and pointless tendency itself).
regarding crowley and spare, people tend to make a little too much out of their connection and spare's A.: A.: membership, and there's not much in common in their magical approaches. crowley was into a scientific exploration of magical practices and states, whereas spare is best considered as a pure artist (and a superb one at that).
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@bdc said
"in my opinion there isn't any division between spare's art, magick, writing, and life. i think he is misunderstood - principally by the chaos magick lot - because most seem to miss the point that his "system", if it can be called that, is purely personal to him, and many also make the mistake of trying to separate his magick from his art."
I agree with that. His vision of perpetual transformation and the transience of identity was expressed primarily through his artwork, and his written work grew out of that. It's clear from The Book of Pleasure, for instance, that the origin of the Sacred Alphabet, or Alphabet of Desire, is primarily in sensation. As such it is personal.
The problem is I think that most of us see ourselves as "followers" of illustrious persons such as Grant, Spare, Crowley, Bertiaux, Blavatsky, etc - great people against whom we suppose that we cannot hold a candle. In reality, it's not like that. There's a continuum of work upon which we all draw to a greater or lesser extent, but it is catalysed through our own magical and mystical experience, from which an intrinsic body of work develops. Others will in turn draw upon the work of ourselves and others, but again by a similar process develop their unique bodies of work.
@bdc said
"regarding crowley and spare, people tend to make a little too much out of their connection and spare's A.: A.: membership, and there's not much in common in their magical approaches. crowley was into a scientific exploration of magical practices and states, whereas spare is best considered as a pure artist (and a superb one at that)."
Again, I largely agree. However, the "scientific exploration of magical practices and states" is in my view only one aspect of Crowley's work. It's the sweep of his vision that is more interesting, articulated in works such as Liber Aleph, The Book of Thoth, Little Essays Toward Truth, and The Book of Lies.
