Austin Osman Spare and Aleister Crowley

On July 10, 1909, Austin Spare joined Crowley’s ‘magical order’ the A.A. as a Probationer.  [Richmond, ‘Discord in the Garden of Janus’]

At the that time there were only two other signed-up members besides Spare and Crowley himself: 

https://wanderer-exile.angelfire.com/crowley-s-magick-probationer.html

https://www.100thmonkeypress.com/biblio/acrowley/books/collegii_sancti/collegii_sancti.htm

From Liber XV ‘Liber Cordis Cincti Sepente sub figura’  “The full knowledge of the interpretation of this book is concealed from all, save only the Shining Triangle. The Probationer must nevertheless acquire a copy and thoroughly [sic] acquaint himself with the contents. He must commit one chapter to memory.”

(Read it for free at ‘sacred texts}:’    https://sacred-texts.com/oto/lib65.htm

Spare’s A.A. membership soon goes off the rails.   Keith Richmond states:  “Spare’s failure to advance beyond the starting grade of Probationer does not of course pass unnoticed by Crowley.  In 1912, while going through pledge forms to review the progress of those who had joined the society, Crowley came across Spare’s, and noted dryly on the back:  ‘An artist can’t understand organization, or would have passed.’”  (Richmond, Now For Reality, page 15.)

Crowley would sing a different, and nastier tune, regarding Spare’s departure from the A.A. in his reaction to the publication in late 1913 of Spare’s ‘The Book of Pleasure.’

The Book of Pleasure was first published no earlier than September 1913.

(See Richmond, Discord, Notes 35 and 36.)

From pages 2 – 3:  “… Others praise ceremonial magic, and are supposed to suffer much Ecstasy!  Our asylums are crowded, the stage is over-run!  Is it by symbolizing we become the symbolized?  Were I to crown myself King, should I be King?  Rather should I be an object of disgust or pity.  These Magicians, whose insincerity is their safety, are but the unemployed dandies of the Brothels.

“Magic is but one’s natural ability to attract without asking; ceremony what is unaffected, its doctrine the negation of theirs.  I know them well and their creed of learning that teaches the fear of their own light.  Vampires, they are as the very lice in attraction.  Their practices prove their incapacity, they have no magic to intensify the normal, the joy of a child or healthy person, none to evoke their pleasure or wisdom from themselves.

“Their methods depending [sic] on a morass of the imagination and a chaos of conditions, their knowledge obtained with less decency than the hyena his food.  I say they are less free and do not obtain the satisfaction of the meanest among animals. Self-condemned in their disgusting fatness, their emptiness of power, without even the magic of personal charm or beauty, they are offensive in in their bad taste and mongering for advertisement…”

There’s more, but you get the idea.  Spare scholars such as Gavin Semple and Keith Richmond are agreed that the foregoing epic rant was a direct shot at Aleister Crowley.  In his 1999 essay ‘Discord in the Garden of Janus,’ Keith Richmond presents a cogent argument that the diatribe was a reaction on Spare’s part to an attempt by Crowley to seduce him. 

I agree that was a likely factor in Spare’s unmitigated hostility to Crowley in ‘Book of Pleasure,’ but the comparison of ceremonial magicians to vampires and to lice suggests to me that there was more than that to his revulsion.  Furthermore, according to Richmond and to Gavin Semple, the shots at Crowley were added “quite late” in the production of Pleasure, which speaks to an event closer in time to late 2013 than Crowley’s behavior to Spare in 1909 – 1910.  (See Richmond, Discord, Note 48.) 

I suspect that the ‘more’ pertained to Victor Neuburg and to Joan Hayes.  (There seems to be some disparity over the spelling of Victor’s last name.  I have opted to standardize all mentions of his name in accordance with biographer Jean Overton Fuller’s spelling:  ‘burg’ rather than ‘berg,’ to avoid any confusion.)

Austin Spare must have met Neuburg when he joined Crowley’s ‘A.A.’ in 1909, at which time Neuburg was also a member, with ‘neophyte’ status, one grade above Spare’s own ‘probationer’ status.  By 1910, they were close enough that Neuburg dedicated two poems to Spare in Crowley’s A.A. journal ‘The Equinox.’

In 1911, Neuburg began an affair with Joan Hayes (aka Ione de Forest), a dancer in Crowley’s stage plays, and continued it even after she married a friend of Neuberg’s, Wilfrid Merton, in December, 1911.  Six months later, Hayes left her husband, who filed for divorce.  In August 1912, she shot herself in the heart. 

According to Crowley biographer Lawrence Sutin, Crowley took credit in writing in 1929 for Hayes’ suicide, in ‘Chapter XXI Of Black Magic of the Main Types of the Operations of Magick Art and of the Powers of the Sphinx,’ in his book ‘Magic in Theory and Practice,’ wherein there is a paragraph that Sutin says refers to the death by suicide of Joan Hayes (Sutin, page 231). 

Sutin states:  “Neuburg later expressed the conviction that Crowley had murdered her through psychological or magical means.  Crowley himself corroborated this charge [in the quote below from ‘Magic in Theory and Practice.]”  [Sutin, page 231]:

“6. Works of destruction, which may be done in many different ways. One may fascinate and bend to one’s will a person who has of his own right the power to destroy. One may employ spirits or talismans. The more powerful magicians of the last few centuries have employed books.1”

“1.  In private matters these works are very easy, if they be necessary. An adept known to The MASTER THERION [Crowley’s self-bestowed title] once found it necessary to slay a Circe who was bewitching brethren. He merely walked to the door of her room, and drew an Astral T (“traditore”, and the symbol of Saturn) with an astral dagger. Within 48 hours she shot herself

“As explained above, in another connexion [sic], he who “destroys” any being must accept it, with all the responsibilities attached, as part of himself. The Adept here in question was therefore obliged to incorporate the elemental spirit of the girl — she was not human, the sheath of a Star, but an advanced planetary daemon, whose rash ambition had captured a body beyond its capacity to conduct — in his own magical vehicle. He thereby pledged himself to subordinate all the sudden accession of qualities — passionate, capricious, impulsive, irrational, selfish, short-sightedness, sensual, fickle, crazy, and desperate, to his True Will; to discipline, co-ordinate and employ them in the Great Work, under the penalty of being torn asunder by the wild horses which he had bound fast to his own body by the act of “destroying” their independent consciousness and control of their chosen vehicle. See His Magical Record An XX, Sun in Libra and onward.”

  Sutin goes on to say:  “This passage shows Crowley at his vilest and most vainglorious.”  [ibid] 

Well, yeah, it does take a special kind of person to seek the credit for furthering another person’s suicide, as means of enhancing their own reputation, ‘magical’ or not.

But wait, there’s more:  the question of Crowley’s motivation.  About that, Sutin states:  “It is difficult to avoid the conclusion that, in the case of his beloved Neuburg, Crowley, motivated by a jealousy he could not confess (as unworthy of a Master of the Temple), employed what measures he could to psychically undermine the vulnerable Hayes during the crisis of her divorce…”  [ibid, page 232]. 

However, Sutin earlier states on page 214 that, “Neuburg had, in the past, willingly placed his family funds at the disposal of Crowley and the Equinox… [During a months-long break between the two in 1911] the cutoff of funds could not have been pleasant.  There is a startling story alleging the extent to which Crowley had gone to wring money from Neuburg’s family.  According to one family friend, during one of their trips to the Sahara, Crowley had sent Neuburg’s mother a telegram reading:  Send £500 or you will never see your son again.”  Neuburg’s desertion would not be permanent, however; the two men renewed their erotic, magical and financial alliance the following year.” 

That would have been 2012, prior to the suicide of Joan Hayes in August.  Crowley must have been terrified at the possibility of once again losing his cash cow.  And all of this adequately explains Spare’s fury in late 1913 regarding “ceremonial magicians” who were blood-suckers.

In the ‘Introduction to his 1929 “magnum opus” ‘Magick in Theory and Practice,’ Crowley defines ‘magic’ as being “I) DEFINITION.

Magick is the Science and Art of causing Change to occur in conformity with Will.”

Which would cover any contribution he may have made or thought he made to the death of Joan Hayes, whether by harassment or by ritual, as he well knew in that introduction.  He goes on to say: 

“(Illustration: It is my Will to inform the World of certain facts within my knowledge. I therefore take “magickal weapons”, pen, ink, and paper; I write “incantations”—these sentences—in the “magickal language” ie, that which is understood by the people I wish to instruct; I call forth “spirits”, such as printers, publishers, booksellers and so forth and constrain them to convey my message to those people. The composition and distribution of this book is thus an act of Magick by which I cause Changes to take place in conformity with my Will.)

In one sense Magick may be defined as the name given to Science by the vulgar.”

https://sacred-texts.com/oto/aba/defs.htm

Crowley’s definition of magic would fit any intentional act by a human being, by any means, as he clearly well knew, from that definition and the example he gave thereby of writing a book. 

Two years after the death of Joan Hayes, in 2014, Victor Neuburg finally faced off with Aleister Crowley and told him he was leaving him for good.

Years later, on August 04, 1935, Neuberg biographer Jean Overton Fuller attests she heard from Neuburg himself what Crowley’s reaction was:

“…  Vicky said to Cremers, ‘It’s strange not to have seen you all these years.  The last time I saw Crowley he cursed me.  Did you know that?’

It was the first time he had spoken the name.  So it was true.

‘No, I didn’t know,’ she said.

‘Just before he left for America.  It was done with full ritual.  In that room.  You remember that room with all those things in it?’

She nodded but said, ‘You knew a thing or two yourself!  You would have taken measures to protect yourself.’

‘I didn’t,’ he said.  ‘I was too miserable.  So I was completely open.’  He meant that it had every chance to work.  The whole ritual had occupied a long time.  ‘It was such a foul curse.  He cursed me to die… It was the malice!  I couldn’t have believed he could bear me so much hate as to wish such things upon me.  After all we’d been through together.””  (Fuller, pages 40 – 41)

(Read Crowley’s book ‘Magic in Theory and Practice’  for free here):  https://hermetic.com/crowley/book-4/chap21

or download it for free from the wellcome library: 

https://wellcomecollection.org/works/y4f9srp7

Somehow Crowley got ahold of a copy of ‘Book of Pleasure,’ and made his displeasure clear therein.  Robert Ansell stated:  “There is a copy of The Book of Pleasure in the State Library of New South Wales, Australia, in which Crowley has noted his criticism of the book:  “Imitated from the works of Aleister Crowley, Kwang-Tze, and other adepts.  Their words and thoughts are misrepresented and distorted.  Spare was at the time a pupil of F. P. [‘Frater Perdurabo, Crowley’s ‘magical name’], but was kept back by Him on account of his tendency to Black Magic.  This tendency is seen in its development in this book.  Critics will note the ignorance of meanings of words, e.g. “obsession incarnating”.  One also finds sentences without verbs + fine nonsense like Neither-Neither stolen from J.M. Barries ‘Never-Never.’””

Ansell, The Bookplate Designs of Austin Osman Spare. Page 35.  The Bookplates Society with The Keridwen Press, 1988.

“Critics will note…”  says to me that Crowley was writing for posterity, and expected his remarks to be the last word on ‘The Book of Pleasure.’

THE FOCUS OF LIFE:

In ‘Now For Reality,’ Keith Richmond quotes Crowley’s remarks on The Focus of Life, published some ten years after BP:  “My Disciple has learnt much from the Book of the Law; for the rest he has drawn from the Book of Lies and William Blake, also Nietzsche and the Tao Teh King.” 3”

“3  Crowley wrote his criticism of The Focus of Life, along with his accompanying poems, in the copy that Spare presented to him in 1922.  Collection of “Frater N.””

Crowley then began to compose poems to go with the pictures in Focus.  Symond’s book ‘Now For Reality’ includes the poems side by side with the pictures they were intended to illustrate.  (Unfortunately, the poems are included in the numbering of the pages of Symond’s edition of Focus.)

The poems are aggressively, violently, sexual; here’s a sample from page 37 of Now For Reality of Crowley’s poetry: 

“Nature is a torture-house

  Frightful are the tools of fate,

And sinister the demoniac carouse

  Of the old obscene elate

  Executioner never satiate,

Allows every privilege to hate –

  O wanderer!”

Here’s another sample, from page 40 of Reality:

“Spurs the Nightmare Flank

     and belly?

  Grip thine Ankh!

  Madden by thy speed

  The screaming slut  Thy seed

  Swamp her soul with jetted life!

      On her beget

  More voluptuous bastard

  Joys – and she is mastered!”

William Wallace tries hard to make Crowley out as an influence over Spare in his ‘Afterword’  to ‘The Book of Pleasure (Jerusalem Press ‘revised and expanded’ 2023 edition, hereafter known as BP 2.0):  “Another likely volume perused by Spare was [Crowley’s] Konx Om Pax (1907) by virtue of its contents.  Even the title, deriving from a phrase spoken in the [Crowley ritual] Eleusian mysteries, may have alerted Spare…”  Wallace does not go on to spell out exactly what influence Konx Om Pax might have had on Spare, but he does say that Konx Om Pax includes the Crowley text Thien Tao (Liber XLI) and includes a quote from page 59 of the text:

“Blow the Tom-tom, bang the flute!

  Let us all be merry!

  I’m a party with acute

  Chronic beri-beri.”

Wallace calls this treating of “occult matters in a light-hearted manner.”  [BP 2.0, page 87]  Personally, I’d call it the kind of graffiti one might find in a 12-year-old’s school notebook, and not at all as being erudition in occult or any other matters. 

The only place in his Afterword to BP 2.0 where Wallace draws a specific link to a specific instance of Crowley’s supposed influence over Spare, is in the following paragraph on page 86, where Wallace says:  “Whether Spare would have admitted it or not, the influence of Crowley persisted, not just in The Book of Pleasure and its successors, but to the end of his life.  Item 221h, of the second Archer Gallery show, is a small stélé [sic], bearing the image of the Goddess [sic] Nuit arched over geometrical designs bearing sigils, with Sacred [sic] letters vertically to left and right.”

Wallace does not provide a picture of this ‘stele,’ nor enlighten us further on the contents or the provenance.  However, Spare made a number of ‘steles’ for his friends, notably for Frank Letchford and for Kenneth and Steffi Grant, which featured other Egyptian icons such as the goddess Isis; these obviously show an interest in early Egyptian art, an interest he shared with Crowley, and are in and of themselves hardly indicative of any special influence by Crowley on Spare.  Wallace is anxious to prove that such an influence by Crowley over Spare existed, but, in my opinion, his vague assertions, lacking in actual evidence as they are, tend to indicate the exact opposite.

Moreover, in his essay ‘The Neither-Neither I,’ in the 2012 Fulgur edition of Spare’s book ‘The Focus of Life, Robert Ansell shows that Austin Spare was keenly interested in early Egyptian art and mysticism years before he met Crowley.  Ansell says: “From his earliest days as an artist, Spare clearly identified with Amen, [the national god of ancient Egypt], as is evidenced in his signatures and pseudonyms…”

(Ansell’s essay pages are un-numbered.)

Ansell further notes regarding ‘The Focus of Life’ the indications in the book that Spare was seeking unity with a ‘feminine half.’

As influences on Spare in Focus, Ansell cites as “most evident Nietzche’s Thus Spake Zarathustra, “specifically the concept of the Übermensch…”  Ansell also mentions Helena Blavatsky’s Secret Doctrine as being an “important influence” in Spare’s work.  Notably, Ansell, a Spare expert, doesn’t mention Crowley at all.

About Crowley’s book, The Book of the Law:

Re Richard T. Cole’s ‘Liber vel Bogus:’  From one online critic:  “… author fails to convince us that the Cairo Working occurred other than as Crowley claimed, more or less, subject to the proviso concerning the Boulaq Museum which was, most likely, simply a mistake made by Crowley’s drug-dazed brain more than two decades after the fact…”

https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/28085937-liber-l-vel-bogus—the-real-confession-of-aleister-crowley

However, in contradistinction to the ‘drug-crazed brain’ apologia for any anomalies between historical facts and Crowley’s claims concerning ‘The book of the Law,’  Kenneth Grant stated in his Introduction to his 1991 book ‘Remembering Aleister Crowley’ that:  “Crowley was almost, but not quite, at the end of the road.*  His mind remained keen, but ill-health, old age and the air-raids had driven him from London…”

*  Later in the Introduction, Grant states:  “He [Crowley] was sixty-nine, and replete with worldly experience; I was twenty, with hardly any.”

And further, in a note from January 1945, Grant states:  “The complications which Crowley found too fearful to contemplate concerned his need for medicaments which he was taking against his severe bouts of asthma.  His health was deteriorating rapidly and when I finally went to stay with him many of my services consisted in getting doctors and chemists to supply substances which they were far from eager to dispense.  These included veronal, heroin, ethyl oxide, and cocaine.  The state of Crowley’s health necessitated such massive doses that one doctor at Hastings hinted to me in confidence that he feared that his patient was a drug addict!  Nevertheless, despite his poor physical condition, Crowley never lost his mental elasticity and alertness.”  

However, I agree with Cole’s critics that his extreme emotionalism is grating and makes Bogus wearisome to read.  I thought impressive, however, the depth of his research.   

For anyone interested in learning more about ‘The Book of the Law,’ I highly recommend Micheal Aquino’s dispassionate examination, verse by verse, of the factual issues, re-printed in full in Don Webb’s book ‘Overthrowing the Gods:  Aleister Crowley and the Book of the Law.’                              

EPILOGUE:

From Chapter 21 in Crowley’s ‘Magic in Theory and Practice,’ first published in 1929:

[Note] “I. “The Devil” is, historically, the God of any people that one personally dislikes. This has led to so much confusion of thought that The Beast 666 [Crowley] has preferred to let names stand as they are, and to proclaim simply that Aiwaz*ne who is the hieroglyph of arcane perfection. The number of His Atu is xv, which is Yod He, the Monogram of the Eternal, the Father one with the Mother, the Virgin Seed one with all-containing Space. He is therefore Life, and Love. But moreover his letter is Ayin, the Eye; he is Light, and his

Zodiacal image is Capricornus, that leaping goat whose attribute is Liberty.  (Note that the “Jehovah” of the Hebrews is etymologically connected with these. The classical example of such antinomy, one which has led to such disastrous misunderstandings, is that between Nu and Had, North and South, Jesus and John. The subject is too abstruse and complicated to be discussed in detail here. The student should consult the writings of Sir R. Payne Knight, General Forlong, Gerald Massey, Fabre d’Olivet; etc. etc., for the data on which these considerations are ultimately based.)”

(Page 193 in the edition below):

‘Magick in Theory and Practice,’ free download courtesy of the Wellcome Collection:

https://wellcomecollection.org/works/y4f9srp7

*  The entity who allegedly conferred ‘The Book of The Law’ on Aleister Crowley, via his first wife Rose.

“The greatest trick the Devil ever pulled was convincing the world he didn’t exist”—Charles Baudelaire

“The second greatest trick the Devil ever pulled was convincing the world he is the good guy”—Ken Ammi”

SOURCES FOR THIS POST

Ansell, Robert.  The Bookplate Designs of Austin Osman Spare. Page 35.  The Bookplates Society with The Keridwen Press, 1988.

Ansell, Robert.  ‘The Neither-Neither I:  Spare’s Secret Ritual of Self-Love,’ in the Fulgur Edition of The Focus of Life by Austin Osman Spare.  2012

Cole, Richard.  Liber vel Bogus.  Privately published.  2014

Fuller, Jean Overton.  The Magical Dilemma of Victor Neuberg.  Mandrake, 1990.

Richmond, Keith.  ‘Discord in the Garden of Janus:  Aleister Crowley and Austin Osman Spare,’ in Austin Osman Spare:  Artist, Occultist, Sensualist.  Geraldine Beskin, John Bonner, Editors.  The Beskin Press, 1999.  (Beauty.  Highly recommended book, plentiful images, mostly in stunning color.  Excellent articles.)

Richmond, Keith, Editor.  Now for Reality.  Mandrake Press, 1991.

Sutin, Lawrence.  Do What Thou Wilt:  A Life of Aleister Crowley.  St Martin’s Griffin, 2000.  (Recommended biography of Crowley.  Well researched and well written.)

Wallace, William.  ‘A Grimoire for the Present Age:  Kali Sutra,’ in the Afterword to The Book of Pleasure, Revised Edition.  Jerusalem Press, 2023.

The ‘Sorcery’ of Austin Osman Spare, with a focus on ‘Theurgy’

Some Preliminaries

‘Atavistic Resurgence.’  Austin Spare never used this phrase, and it’s an example of Kenneth Grant’s having pulled a fast one over the occult world.  It’s a great phrase, mind you, and a neat pigeonhole for what Spare was trying to do – but, Spare didn’t like pigeonhole labels for his work.

Kenneth Grant did, though. 

The only time the phrase appears in Zos Speaks! , Grant’s record of his correspondence with Spare, is when Grant himself uses it retrospectively to describe Spare’s work (on pages 155, 158).  As far as I can tell, the phrase first turned up some twenty years after Spare’s death in 1956, two times in the 1970’s journal ‘Man, Myth and Magic.’  The first appearance was in Vol 04, No. 6, where it appears with single quotes, which mean ‘so to speak’ and not a direct quotation:

The second appearance was in Vol 04, No. 50, with no quote marks around it:

There is one, and as far as I know, only one, extant picture of Spare’s that uses the word ‘Resurgence,’ created some two decades before he met Kenneth Grant:

[Robert Ansell, 2012, ‘The Exhibition Catalogues of Austin Osman Spare, page 223]

There is no work of art by Austin Spare that is titled ‘Atavistic Resurgence,’ or ‘Atavistic’ anything else.

Grant uses the phrase in his essay on Spare in ‘Hidden Lore, Hermetic Glyphs,’ probably first published in the 1960’s, but, since Grant participated in the 2006 Fulgur edition, which was “revised and expanded,” it’s impossible for me to say if the phrase ever appeared in the first edition of ‘Hidden Lore.’

In the 2006 edition of ‘Hidden Lore,’ Grant asserts that:  “It is Zos’s [Spare’s] basic theory that all dream or desire, all wish or belief, anything in fact which a person nurtures in his innermost being may be called forth as a living truth by a particular method of magical evocation.  This he termed ‘atavistic resurgence’; [sic] it is a method of wish-fulfillment which involves the interaction of will, desire and belief.” [ page 21  ]

Yeah, great, and a fairly accurate general description of much of what Spare was trying to do in a ‘magical’ sense, except, Spare never said that.  It’s just barely possible he used the phrase ‘eternal recurrence,’ which shows up in ‘The Zoetic Grimoire of Zos,’ on page 222 of Zos Speaks! :  “By the conquest of fatigue Give us eternal resurgence!”  in the so-called ‘Witches Sabbath’ portion of Spare’s ‘writings.’  It’s not clear which of the two co-writers, Grant or Spare wrote that line.  If I had to call it, though, I’d say it was Grant who coined that one, too.

And this brings me to the next issue with respect to Spare’s work: the most famous work that he ‘co-wrote’ with Kenneth Grant, mostly, it would appear to me, by contributing sketches, supposedly of people at Sabbath gatherings.

“Oct. 9, 1950 e.v.

Dear ZOS :

Hope you are well and able to stomach the enclosed essay on the Sabbath. If its [sic] not what you want I’ll do another one. Its [sic] really too short but I was afraid of elaborating too much as this would make the thing too technical and the ordinary person would possibly lose interest. Please say what you think of it and send me your mss. for typing.Hope to see you on Thursday sometime – any time suits us; the afternoon would be better if possible.

Heaps of love from us both, K”  [Zos Speaks!  Page 62]

“The second section, The Zoetic Grimoire of Zos, contains magical formulae and The Witches ‘Sabbath, our collaboration mentioned in the letters.” [ibid] [Emphasis, mine.] 

[Zos Speaks!  Page 155]

INTRODUCTION

Atavistic Resurgence and Witch Paterson

Further on page 155 of the 2011 publication Zos Speaks! , Grant goes on to give a crystal-clear description of what he meant by the term ‘atavistic resurgence,’ and he also introduces the enigmatic figure of Spare’s supposed occult mentor, ‘Witch Paterson:’

“Briefly, the basis of Zos Kia Cultus is Spare’s thesis that belief (any belief) when entertained by the whole being (Kia) becomes vital or organic . If embodied in a particular form it is possible to reify wishes, dreams, desires etc , by means of an “atavistic resurgence ” of latent ability. His system derived from teachings received by him as a child from Mrs . Paterson, the elderly family acquaintance whom he described as his “second mother” and as an accomplished “witch” . He rarely spoke of her, but he never forgot her. The mechanics of this sorcery may be formulated as an ‘as if potential, latent and fictive, transforming into an ‘as now’ ecstasis, potent and actual – a threefold process involving Will, Desire and Belief. The Will, single-pointed and concentrated, probes the depths of memory until the required atavism is located. The desire for reification then clothes the Will in a form sufficiently attractive to “inspire nexus ” . The urgency of the desire’s fulfilment is thus rendered vital, or organic, after which it becomes free to activate and to incarnate the required atavism. In other words, in order vitally to believe in anything – a power for oneself, knowledge one wishes to possess, a sensation one yearns to re-live – one must be able so to visualize the belief, that it may illumine the appropriate stratum of memory charged with its vitality. Recognition ensues upon this backward-reaching, and the resulting ecstasy of identity flashes into actuality ‘as if it existed ‘as now’.  [ibid, pages 155 – 157]

I do think Kenneth Grant gives the best descriptions of Spare’s ‘magical methods;’ and I’m sure he meant no harm to Spare when he put words into his mouth.  On the contrary, he was trying to keep Spare’s legacy alive, and he understood the value of sound bites in making something memorable.  And I think he got conned by Spare sometimes, for instance, with the figure of Spare’s supposed mentor, ‘Witch Paterson.’  When you love someone, you can be a bit gullible, a bit blind to their faults.  Grant was also ever-greedy for ‘magical knowledge.’  He pushed Spare on everything, his supposed ‘magical alphabet,’ his supposed ‘system of sigils,’ and his supposed mentor, ‘Witch Paterson.’  He would push Spare relentlessly to give him more and more details, and Spare would oblige him – making them up if he had to.

WITCH PATERSON

I think the best discussion by far of Spare’s ‘mentor’ is William Wallace’s chapter ‘The Elusive Mrs [sic] Paterson’ on pages 35 – 46 in ‘The Catalpa Monographs,’ 2015, by Jerusalem Press.  It’s a fascinating and well-researched chapter, but, the single most intriguing thing Wallace says in it is a brief reminisce by Spare’s friend Frank Letchford given to Wallace in conversation with Letchford:  “… one of Spare’s abilities was a kind of creative daydreaming in which he could traverse the centuries in a form of reverie and sift through the veils of London’s stratified heritage…”  [ibid, page 39]

Wallace pretty much knocks out of the water any real possibility of Witch Paterson’s ever having been a person anywhere outside of Austin Spare’s own head; and the above comment by Letchford provides a key, in my opinion, to understanding both ‘Witch Paterson’ and also what Spare was trying to ‘do’ in an ‘occult’ sense.

It has often been suggested or said outright, even by his long-time friend Frank Letchford, that Austin Osman Spare was homosexual.  But I think it would be nearer the mark to say that what Spare wanted, was to be a woman – and a man. I think his desire to be unified with what he considered to be his feminine side manifests in picture after picture over the years, and this site has numerous examples:  https://ajl.smugmug.com/AustinOsmanSpare/Austin-Osman-Spare-Archive/

There is also https://www.sothebys.com/en/buy/auction/2020/made-in-britain-2/austin-osman-spare-glossolally-of-soliloquay

and of course, in ‘Theuray aka Theurgy: 

which clearly could have also been titled ‘Life is Real, only then, when I Am.’ 

In my previous post: https://marnietunay2.wordpress.com/2023/09/17/austin-osman-spare-his-art-oracles-and-sorcery-part-01/

I introduced ‘Theurgy’ and quoted Spare’s request to Frank Letchford not to alter any of his eccentric spellings. 

Frank Letchford agreed that the actual name designated by Spare for ‘Theurgy’ was indeed ‘Theuray.’ [Michelangelo in a Teacup, p. 128]

In ‘The Logomachy of Zos,’ Spare states:  “The shifting meaning of our intertwisted nomenclature, inexact references and ambiguities, have the virtue of spatial span and are evocative by selective expressionism having an emotional quality which gives aesthetic validity, whereas more formal expression would convey far less.”  [Zos Speaks!, page 772]

In Steffi Grant’s introduction to Zos Speaks! , she states on page 20:  ““Spare sent us countless sheets of paper, covered in his distinctive hand, about these matters.  Kenneth typed and returned each section many times over. Usually Spare just invented, amalgamated or altered words to fit his meaning, often to escape ” . . . the bloody cage of words – my sphinx catacomb . . . ” . Even what may – in print – seem the most curious constructions, become perfectly lucid when one recalls such sentences being voiced by him.  But sometimes his spelling was very odd, to put it mildly, and Kenneth made a lot of tactful enquiries about the meaning of some composite words and so on. Spare did the same with some of Kenneth’s ‘creations ‘.  Spare was truthful in an absolute sense, but an inventor of details. He went in for ‘creative lying’, a practice much affected by people who believe the universe to be subjective. With encouragement the simple thread of his story wove itself into the most elaborate fabrics…”    

I would say that ‘Theuray’ is an exemplar of Joseph Derrida’s “differànce,” as quoted by Ian C. Edwards, in ‘The Chiasmata of Austin Osman Spare: “Derrida, in Margins of Philosophy (1982) writes: “Already we have had to delineate that differànce is not, does not exist, is not a present-being (on) in any form; and we will be led to delineate also everything that it is not, that is everything; and consequently that it has neither existence nor essence.  It derives from no category of being, whether present or absent…””  [ibid, page 17]

Edwards goes on to say: “Differànce is otherwise than being; it is that which exceeds being and all essentialist thinking which attempts to reduce meanings to static concepts or notions.  Derrida indicates that it cannot be appropriated by any writing system, whether that system be theological or ontological, and I would add, philosophical, psychological, scientific, or spiritual.  Differànce is itself a misappropriation, a misspelling, an “error,” it is that irreducible otherness, an alterity that transcribes.  For Derrida, it is the “very opening of the space…”  What is most important here is to note that it is not the space itself but the opening of that space through which all writing systems appear.  In an occult grammatology, it can be described as the womb of the Void, where womb and tomb are intertwined.  The silence of the Void is as the ‘a’ of differànce…”  [ibid, page 18]

All of this would suggest that the naming of the picture was no accident and that Spare had a definite purpose in calling it ‘Theuray.’

THEURGY, THEURGIA

But, before we can look at what that purpose might have been, it’s important to know what Spare understood by the word he was bowdlerizing, ‘theurgy.’  In his essay Zos Khia, Gavin Semple quotes a standard dictionary meaning.  And, there’s nothing wrong with that.

However, there is no question that, from his early twenties at least, Austin Osman Spare considered himself to be a sorcerer, until the day he died, (his demurrals notwithstanding to his disapproving friend Frank Letchford – Spare knew how to play to the crowd – of patrons.)  Gavin Semple asserts, (without any supporting data, as is his irritating wont), [Introduction to ‘Two Tracts on Cartomancy’], that Spare was familiar with many of the old grimoires, and we have seen with his tarot deck in the previous post that he was certainly familiar with the Eliphas Levi grimoire, ‘Transcendental Magic.’ 

Moreover, the British sorcerer who pioneered modern research into ‘goetic’ sorcery, the late Jake Stratton-Kent, had this to say about Spare and sorcery in the first volume of his Encyclopedia Goetica in 2009:   “From one perspective the most relevant exponent of the magical revival when considering the grimoires is Austin Osman Spare.  His use of sigils and self-devised magical alphabets has many points of contact with goetia.  It is not unlikely that he intuitively grasped some principles of goetic magic underlying the Grimorium Verum itself…”  [page 13]  And Jake confirmed at the end of 2019 that this remained his opinion, saying:  “my [sic] opinion, in True Grimoire, that Spare ‘got’ the grimoires better than Crowley, Mathers and Waite combined, remains my opinion now.”   https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=10217925187374583&set=pb.1031274353.-2207520000&type=3

Therefore, given Spare’s allegiance to his life-long conviction that he was a sorcerer, I have gone first to the learned writing of Jake Stratton-Kent, a well-known and acclaimed sorcerer for some forty years before he passed away in January of 2023, for an examination of what the term ‘theurgy’ would have meant to a sorcerer. 

In Volume II of ‘Geosophia, the Argo of Magic, he has a whole chapter on the term.  The chapter is complex and difficult to reduce to sound bites.  However, the gist of it seems to be along these lines:  Theurgy was a controversial, (even back in 2^nd century C.E. Greece ), approach to invoking a communion with the ‘supernatural’ via incantation or image making, sigils, talismans and eventually, grimoires.  Moreover, there is no real distinction between classical perspectives on theurgy and those on ‘goetic sorcery’, essentially, grimoire sorcery, from the classical period and the Middle Ages.

For a more detailed description, I turned to the essay ‘Magic and Theurgy,’** by Sarah Iles Johnston, pages 694 – 719 in the book  Guide to the study of ancient magic. Religions in the Graeco-Roman world, volume 189.  David Frankfurter, Editor.  Leiden: Brill, 2019:

“So what is theurgy? ‘Theurgy’ (θεουργία) is a word that has been applied to a number of religious systems that share three traits. First, theurgy involves the performance of rituals much like those that characterize “magic,” especially in their reflection of some learned tradition. For example, theurgists were initiated into a mystery cult and acquired knowledge of its special rituals from other initiates who served as teachers—although they also relied on written sources that either were transcripts of mediumistic trances or had been composed by earlier theurgists.

“Secondly, theurgists claimed that the most important rituals they performed promoted the purification of their souls and, eventually, their ability to send them out of the material world into higher realms where they would interact with at least the lower ranks of the divine hierarchy. After death, a completely purified soul would escape reincarnation—the fate that awaited unpurified souls. Some of the theurgists’ other rituals worked on the material world: they claimed to be able to bring on rain during a drought, for example.

“And thirdly, theurgists understood themselves to pursue both their material and spiritual aims with the willing support of the gods and other benign entities such as daimones, angeloi, and archangeloi. The theurgists used this claim to set themselves apart from magoi, whom ancient critics—and sometimes, ancient magicians themselves—portrayed as coercing the higher powers. Indeed, some theurgists thought of themselves as having relatively little to do with the success of their rituals; rather, they understood that the gods (theoi) would charitably work (ergia) upon them as long as they had properly prepared themselves to receive the gods’ beneficence, which they could do by learning how to align themselves properly within the cosmos and its powers.1”

“While theurgists practiced rituals that we (or other ancient people) might identify as “magic”—that is, roughly evoking the features listed above—the theurgists themselves rejected that label. Later in this essay, I will look closely at some of the theurgic rituals that evoked the label ‘magic.’2   But the theurgists claimed that, in contrast to magoi, they worked with the cooperation of the gods rather than by coercing them, and that they worked for the higher purpose, ultimately, of purifying their souls, rather than towards quotidian purposes such as the magoi did (e.g., the incitement of sexual passion or the acquisition of wealth).”

[ibid, Pages 694 – 695].  **  This chapter has been uploaded by the author to academia.edu where you can read it for free, with a free academia account:  https://www.academia.edu/42029566/Magic_and_Theurgy

**********

In this essay, I’ve chosen to focus on the ca. 1928 picture widely known as ‘Theurgy,’ because it uses all of the ‘occult’ strategies Austin Spare utilized in his quest to encounter again what I think he saw as being his feminine ‘other,’ aka ‘Witch Paterson.’

Before I begin with a detailed description of ‘Theurgy,’ I want to clarify a couple more things about the man’s ‘magical’ endeavors, and this picture in particular.  Outside of two runes, we are never going to know for sure the meanings of the individual do-hickeys, the squiggles and the sigils, in this picture (or any others).  And the reason is, Spare never wanted us to.  In his ‘Book of Pleasure,’ he said he invented his ‘magical alphabet’ for his “foolish devotees.”  Yeah, to throw fools off the track.  I’m amazed at the people, like Kenneth Grant, who desperately tried to ‘get’ Spare’s supposed secrets of magic, and never got this:  What’s the First Principle of Magical Operations:  SILENCE.  And what happens to a worker of magic who gives out his secrets?  He/she Loses the magic for him/herself.

I think Spare used pictures like Theurgy as a kind of magical notation for himself. 

THEURGY:  A DETAILED DESCRIPTION

The Runes:

In the previous post, I said there was a hitherto unnoticed rune, the Anglo-Saxon rune Dagaz, under the head of the ‘woman.’  However, after I transcribed that part of the writing not transcribed or commented on by other researchers, I realized that the rune was actually doing double duty, both as a ‘D’ with respect to the overall theme of the picture, and as a runic ‘M’ which Spare had the effrontery to strip the legs off of, in the writing.

Here is that section, which I’ve transcribed and I’ve tried to stick as closely as possible to the same lay-out as in the picture: 

“I desire that [Dagaz/Mannaz rune] incarnates the belief that

  I am [a squiggle that is either a sigil, or, possibly, ‘sacred letters’] by virtue. May the mantle of  [Sigil, with possible Wunjo rune]

 become me.  I have sacrificed my

 multiformed desires [Dagaz/Mannaz rune] all beliefs.  My aeolist

is [cluster of sigils/’letters’] my soul.  [eye possibly styled after one in the ‘Anubis’ section of the Egyptian Book of the Dead]:  https://img1.dreamies.de/img/569/b/eyfpb44zsvn.png  ]  The omen shall be

[cluster of ‘letters’] I will  Austin Osman Spare

The only part of the foregoing that Spare expert William Wallace has commented on is the sentence ‘May the mantle of [sigil] become me,’ [Cockney Visionary, page 77], and he speculates that perhaps Spare was jesting.  I don’t know why he would think that, but I see nothing that suggests to me Spare was joking when he created ‘Theurgy.’

AUSTIN SPARE’S SIGILS

From ‘Sex in Art,’ by Clifford Bax, first published in ‘Ideas and People’ in 1936, and re-published in Borough Satyr: The Life and Art of Austin Osman Spare in 2005:  “… Becoming more involved within the folds of metaphysics, he [Austin Spare] expounded a theory that a man’s conditions are caused by his subconscious desires.  The subconscious mind, being all-wise (he) [Spare] told us, wills the environment that shall strengthen the weak places of the soul : and he commented with a smile,  “I suppose my own subconscious desire is to be poor!  Whatever you really want, you can get.  The want rises first in the conscious mind, but you have to make the subconscious desire it too.  And you can do this by inventing a symbol of the thing you want – wealth, a woman, fame or a country cottage, it’s all alike.  The symbol drops  down into the subconscious.  You have to forget all about it.  In fact, you must play at hide-and-seek with yourself.  And while you’re wanting that particular thing or person, you must resolutely starve all your lesser desires.  By doing that, you make the whole self, conscious and subconscious, flow towards your main object.  And you’ll obtain it.””  [Borough Satyr, page 52]

And that’s the best explanation you’ll get, of what Spare meant by the magic of sigils.  I will just add that, Gavin Semple’s Zos Khia does a brilliant job of explaining Spare’s reasoning behind his inventive methodology for sigils, his separation of the power of belief from any object.

The Other Squiggles – Spare’s ‘Alphabet of Desire’

In BP 2.0, William Wallace asserts that Spare created and used an ‘alphabet’ based on John Dee’s ‘Enochian Alphabet’ “up to the end of his life.” [The Book of Pleasure, 2023, page 98]  Wallace’s claim regarding the importance of the connection of Dee’s work to Spare’s is debatable, (and I will be examining it in my next blog-post, on Spare and Aleister Crowley).  In any case, it’s clear from Spare’s post-war correspondence with Kenneth Grant that he had forgotten all about the ‘alphabet of desire’ [‘sacred alphabet’ was a later term, writing to Steffi Grant in 1949], and, as Spare said, he’d “lost the key” to the alphabet in the war “during the Blitz.”  [Zos Speaks! page 93]  Moreover, his attempts to resurrect the alphabet for Grant show that he did not think of his ‘alphabet’ as being letters per se, but, as concepts.  [ibid, page 108, for example]: 

[From page 115, Zos Speaks!] :  “5 Wynne Rd. S. W. 9.

Sunday [Nov 21, 1954]

Dear Ken & Steffie,

So sorry Ken has been ill – hope better by the time this reaches you. I ‘ve had a wretched cold coming & going for the last two weeks .

The enclosed ‘Ritual ‘ is the ‘rough out’ for final – when I see it typed, be able to see the weak spots etc & add to. The Stele will explain a good deal & everything on it numbered with Ref:

This is important, let me know where you think it is remiss or not sufficiently clear. . .

I’ll alter etc . As I mention a good deal relating is scattered in text – if joined up helps .

haste

Love to you both yrs ZOS.”

Compare that out-of-the blue ‘ritual’ from Spare in ’54 with the Anubis section in the 1895 E. Wallace Budge Translation of The Book of Coming Forth:

Page 192:  “…Saith the majesty of Anubis:  Art thou knowing the name of this door to declare… to me?”  Saith Osirus the scribe Ani, triumphant in peace, triumphant: 

Page 193:  this.  “Driver away of Shu is the name of this door.”  Saith the majesty of Anubis:  “Art thou knowing the name of the leaf upper and the leaf lower?”  “Lord of right upon his two feet is the name of the leaf upper; Lord of might, the disposer of cattle is the name of the leaf lower.”  “Pass then, O Osiris, the divine accountant of the offerings of the gods, all of Thebes, Ani triumphant, lord of veneration.”

Additionally, the eye in Theurgy is distinctly reminiscent of the eye given on page 13 in Budge’s ‘Table of Plates,’ from Chapter XVIII, the Anubis chapter:

Internet archive link:  https://archive.org/details/TheBookOfTheDead-Budge-1895

(Public domain)

This edition has the plates in color, download for free:  https://digi.ub.uni-heidelberg.de/diglit/budge1894bd1?sid=e3bcbebfe1d118c347a3465eb2b77593&ui_lang=eng

(Public Domain)  50 MB

I’ve uploaded it to the Internet Archive, a 25 MB download:  https://archive.org/details/budge-1894-table-of-plates

******

It’s clear that Wallace Budge’s 1895 publication of ‘The Egyptian Book of the Dead aka ‘The Book of Coming Forth By Day’ had a deep and lasting influence on Austin Spare.  [The 2015 edition by Andrews, Faulkner and Goelet, of The Egyptian Book of the Dead: The Book of Going Forth by Day, The Complete Papyrus of Ani – the same version of the Book that Austin Spare had access to – is deeply touching in the elevation of its thought, the sonorousness of its prose and the sheer beauty of its images.]

‘Transverser of the Aeons,’ (cropped slightly at the bottom):

Conclusion: 

Austin Osman Spare had a screw loose, for sure.  Two world wars and grinding poverty for most of his life didn’t help his mental or physical condition, either.

But there was more to Spare than a mental imbalance. 

I think something really happened during one of his periods of ‘creative day-dreaming.’  I think that’s when he met ‘Witch Paterson.’  Far be it from me to label what he encountered, spirit, living archetype, ghost, but the encounter(s) affected him for the rest of his life. 

When I was in grade 3, I was targeted by a boy, Keith, who was twice my size.  I don’t think I knew even back then why I was targeted, but for months he terrorized me, telling me he was going to clobber me one day.  And then, one afternoon in class, he turned to me standing behind him at the pencil sharpener, and he raised his hand to stab me with the pencil.  And my right hand moved so fast, and Keith was on the floor, staring up at me in shock and fear.  And I was staring at my hand in shock, wondering how I’d done it.  I remember I spent the next three years looking at my hand occasionally, trying to work it out.  (Keith avoided me after that.)  And then I forgot about it.

See, something out of the ordinary also happened to Austin Spare, probably in his late teens.  But, unlike me, he never gave up trying to work out what had happened to him.  Everything else came from that.  He applied that relentless focus of a Vincent van Gogh https://www.vangoghmuseum.nl/en/collection?Q=yellow

that is one of the markers of genius, and subordinated everything else to it.

He had the true seer’s capacity to see beyond surfaces, for instance in this photo he took:  https://img1.dreamies.de/img/405/b/1sj3qq1vkd4.png

and turned into this picture, ‘woman with a dark background:’ 

The qualities in the painting Spare created, are there in the photo, but they are subtle, hard to see.  I myself am a specialist in discernment, but I wouldn’t have caught them, and I’m no artist. Spare’s powers of discernment far out-stripped my own.

In my next post, out hopefully before November’s end, I will examine the alleged influences on Spare’s art and sorcery, and the dynamic between Spare and Aleister Crowley.

Miskatonic Books – Caveat Emptor

UPDATE and EPILOGUE October 04, 2023: I was continuing to receive Miskatonic newsletters, and I was unable to unsubscribe as I just got bounced back from the site when I tried to do so. Yesterday, I contacted Larry Roberts on his Facebook profile and asked him to delete my subscription as I was unable to do it myself. This morning, I received another newsletter. This time, I was able to complete the unsubscribe request. Furthermore, it appears that my account has also been deleted. Wise choice. I really really hate to be crossed.

UPDATE: September 26, 2023: More caveats and transcripts for the emails below.

I worried about this order even after it arrived in Edmonton, particularly when I received notices from both Canada Post and USPS saying the order had “arrived” in Edmonton, and then, that it had departed again:

I was sure that if anything went wrong, I could probably go swing for my money. Turns out, my paranoia was justified. Once I was satisfied that it was staying put in my post office, I turned my attention yesterday to deleting my account at Miskatonic. But I had been blocked from my own account:

……..So I am apparently not to be allowed to delete my own account with my personal information in it. In Canada, it would be illegal for him to do that.

Caveat no 01: Do not store your credit card info with companies. I am glad I didn’t store mine with Miskatonic.

I noticed something on the web-page (I’ll get back to what in a moment), and when I went back to check what I’d seen, I got bounced out, ‘access denied.’ Bit by bit, the site dissolved in front of me.

What this tells me is that Larry put in a ‘kill’ order on any IP address visiting the Miskatonic site with ‘Edmonton’ and my ISP, ‘Shaw’ in its name. Ironically, he’s probably just banned half of Edmonton from his site, because Shaw uses ‘floating’ IP addresses as a security feature. So every time I visited the site yesterday, his ban would pounce on yet another IP address with the banned features.

What I had noticed was the price he was selling the ‘Green Mysteries’ hard-cover for. It caught my attention because I had seriously considered buying it from JD Holmes, who is selling it for about a hundred bucks U.S. cheaper than Miskatonic is:

……..

……… They’re both U.S. sellers. JD Holmes is a very pleasant and courteous seller whom I’ve been buying from for years, and he uses USPS all the way, who are very reliable.

Nor is this the only example I found yesterday of significant discrepancies in pricing. Consider the prices Miskatonic was listing the first editions of Underworld for, compared to what I paid JD Holmes for the same books:

………

My orders were this year and not special prices.

So, here is Caveat No 02: Consider carefully before you roll the dice and buy from Miskatonic. 9 times out of 10 it’ll probably turn out fine. But what about that 10th time? I suspect that there may be an underlying cause for Larry Roberts’ initial abrasiveness and his alacrity in blocking me: and it has to do with insurance. JD Holmes always insures the books he ships. It hit me today that if Larry Roberts is not insuring the books he sells, then that could account for his abrasiveness and defensiveness in the emails, and also his speed in ensuring that if my order never arrived, then I would never be able to ask for my money back. I think he probably operates this way on a personal level too. Anyone who decides to break off a relationship with him would do very well, in my assessment, to ensure they don’t leave any belongings behind under his control, if they ever want to see those things again.

End of update…

*****

Or, how to lose a customer in one day flat:

Yesterday, I became concerned when a book order from Miskatonic https://www.miskatonicbooks.com/ was apparently stalled in L.A. since September 16, not with USPS, which wouldn’t have worried me too much, but with Global Post, Miskatonix courier until it reaches USPS.

I emailed the orders person, who is also the founder of Miskatonix, Larry Roberts, https://www.facebook.com/larry.roberts.9003888

and here follows the exchanges by email:

……

My order has stalled at the border.

I wouldn’t worry about this if USPS had acknowledged it Has the order, but it appears to be stuck in some liminal space with Global Post.

Global Post is never speedy, but this particular kind of delay is unusual.

Please see if you can jump-start the passover to USPS.

Thank you.

Marnie Tunay

marnietunay@shaw.ca

…………………….

Hello Marnie,

This is quite common with Global Post. We have noticed some delays in packages even some that are coming our way from overseas. We’ll keep an eye on it on our end but in 99% of the cases it will start moving again soon. 

All the best

Larry

I don’t know what ‘soon’ means, Larry.

How long do you expect me to wait for USPS to even Accept the package that has been apparently stalled at their terminal since October 16?

I swear I’ve jinxed it; just two days ago I praised Miskatonic as a reliable shipper/

……….

……….

Hello Marnie,

I just called our Post Master and had her look into it. Looks like the package is currently waiting for Canada to release the package from customs. This is something even the US Postal Service has no control over. I know that things are slowing down again due to covid, distancing, etc which seems to be starting in Canada sooner than it is here in the states.

Also you package hasn’t been at their terminal since October 16th. You purchased the book on September 9th and it is now in customs on September 16th. 

.

………..

Hello, Larry. the data you supplied does not support the postmaster’s claim that my book order has even reached the USPS outlet, much less crossed the border into Vancouver.

I buy a lot of books, Larry, that have to cross the border, from Midian books in the UK and from JD Holmes in America.

The data you supplied is precisely what I told you, the books have Not been transferred as of yet even to USPS and they are certainly not in Customs.

I’m not going to argue with you, Larry; it’s instructive to see the Miskatonix response, when there’s an issue.

If the books don’t arrive I’m sure I can eventually get them from someone else.

I will ask Anathema Publishing if they can get me a copy.

Have a nice day, Larry.

Good to know you.

https://www.canadapost-postescanada.ca/track-reperage/en#/details/CY137876235US

If it was in Customs, Canada Post would Say so.

I base that on probably two hundred book orders over the  past several years, Larry.

…………..

Even though my books are apparently on the move now, and he was correct that they had actually arrived in Canada at least as of 13:30 today, I have zero plans to buy any more books from Miskatonix, even though I had previously bought several others with no problems.

I found his responses to be be dismissive of my concerns, and I was particularly frosted by the suggestion that Covid in Canada was somehow to blame for the delay. This tells me that if there are any more problems, I can expect Miskatonix to respond in the same manner.

It’s not a good way to keep customers. I’ve never ever had a delay to not be met with an apology or an expression of concern, before today. He was dismissive of my concern initially, even though I had specified the concern and asserted that it was not a usual concern (not for me, anyway).

Even though he turned out to be right, I wouldn’t be willing to entrust any more issues to his company.

See, you can be right, as a seller, and still be dead wrong in terms of how you handle a situation.

I was turning out to be a good customer for them. It was the first time I had ever contacted them about an order, and it’s a fairly stupid seller who’s willing to lose a good customer so easily.

I wanted to put this out there because I had just finished praising Miskatonix not three days ago as being a reliable seller and even promoted one of their books. So I feel I need to balance that picture.

Austin Osman Spare: His art, oracles and sorcery, part 01

Here are the posts I propose to compose regarding Austin Spare.  This first one is to introduce a few of what I consider to be his best and most accessible works.

Sections:  01    Some Highlights from Austin Spare’s Works

                  02    What Was Austin Spare trying to Do with his Art?

                  03    Austin Spare and Aleister Crowley

                  03B   Book Reviews:  Works on Austin Osman Spare

The circa 1909 tarot deck is a recent discovery by Jonathan Allen of ‘Strange Attractor Press.’ 

I’m posting a few samples from that deck, and including the same cards from fellow surrealist Salvador Dali’s deck done several decades later.  In my opinion, Spare’s cards, created when he was at most nineteen years of age, show a vitality, a dynamism and a brilliant exegesis of qualities unmatched in any other Tarot deck I’ve ever seen:

………

…….

……….

……..

………

………

…….

A unique feature of Spare’s deck is the so-called ‘Inquirer’ card:

composed of pictorial elements from Eliphas Levi’s ‘Transcendental Magic;’

Page 26

Title given by Levi: Figure II. Sacerdotal Esotericism making the sign of Excommunication

Page 54

Titled: Figure IV. The Four Great Kabbalistic Names

Page 281

Figure XV. The Key of Thoth

However, he was influenced influenced primarily as an artist by Levi’s TM; I see zero affinity with Levi’s magical ethos or ceremonial magic. 

Best Free downloadable copy of ‘Transcendental Magic:’  https://wellcomecollection.org/works/npaxcba4

94 MB file

‘Lost Envoy:  The Tarot Deck of Austin Osman Spare’ is a very fine book.  As I write this, it is out of print, but the publisher, ‘Strange Attractor’ recently crowd-funded its re-issue as a paperback and a deck of the cards, and hopefully those will be published in 2024.  You can re-order the book here:

Book Details

01.2  ‘Theurgy’ aka ‘Theuray’ (c. 1929)

………

In his essay ‘Zoz – Kia,’ Gavin Semple discusses the words running down the side of ‘Theurgy on pages 35 – 39 :  https://archive.org/details/gavin-semple-zos-kia

…and their significance as a process.

William Wallace also discusses the drawing in his article on page 77 of ‘Austin O. Spare:  Cockney Visionary’ as well as in his insightful short essay titled ‘The Geometry of Theurgy’ in the ‘Deluxe’ edition of ‘Cockney Visionary.’

Wallace points out in both of his ‘Cockney Visionary’ articles that the work was actually titled ‘Theuray.’  Aside from mentioning the fact, Wallace has not discussed its significance  and neither has anyone else that I’m aware of.  Semple calls it ‘Theurgy’ and carries on with comments on the meaning of ‘theurgy.’  The assumption appears to be that this was just another instance of Spare’s reputedly eccentric spellings for words.  However, in a letter dated April 11, 1955, in a letter to his friend and patron Frank Letchford, Spare asks him not to change spellings in a manuscript Letchford was typing up for Spare:

“P.S.  Please don’t alter ‘queer words’ not given in dictionary.  “Shiites’ is a correct work [sic] – nothing to do with excreta!”  [Source:  12 LETTERS:  Austin Spare to Frank Letchford, purchased from JD Holmes https://www.jdholmes.com/ ]

Wallace’s comments regarding the geometry underlying ‘Theurgy’ are fascinating and insightful.  However, in both of his essays, he asserts that the collage at the bottom of the picture, which shows the word ‘Refraction,’ ends with a ‘D’ and he goes on to read a great deal into this, interpreting it as a symbol for the earth.  However, the collage clearly does not in fact end with a ‘D;’ there is a half of another letter.  Moreover, nobody appears to have noticed that there is in fact an actual rune just below the woman’s head, and it is the ‘D’ rune, which, even in his day, Spare could readily have learned stood for ‘Daybreak, the Lord’s messenger,’ in the Anglo-Saxon rune poem.  The significance of that rune may be readily extrapolated to mean a spiritual wakening; and it’s not hard to see that quality in ‘Theurgy.’

See also (772) in ‘Logomachy,’ in 01.4

01.3  Selections from Spare’s writing ‘Fragmentum:’

Art could be defined as the coherence and alignment of asymmetrics and differentiations giving form, balanced by an axis, of which the seer becomes part.  Art is the great Allegory that conveys our ideas of creation, whether subjective or otherwise – the virtue is in our manner of approach and ability to exploit and portray them.

Preparation for prayer:  We can only pray of ourselves to our Self.  What self we reach depends on sincerity and ability to pray.  Be certain that the revelation disclosed is such as what you are fit to receive.  First purge your mind of all worry, the mind must be placid as vaccaries.  Solitude is essential.  Let the desire be vital, give reality to your sincerity by an act of sacrifice.  There is no forgiveness – how can you rectify your weaknesses if you forget them?  Make a sigil of your wish so that your consciousness may be free.

Believe, O my soul, in magic, ghosts, miracles, charms, omens, prophecy and revelation so that my convertibility becomes me to enter the house of mystery.

I am my Iconoclast:  reproach, curse and lash thy Gods as well as beg from them, but leave thy brother’s God alone, he may be leaving it.

He who puts off mediocrity makes the first step towards his soul.

Sacrifice is the first word of love.

The evil in us is ever intolerant of the good within others.

Not the object but the extent of our effort is of the greater importance.

…….

01.4  Selections from Spare’s writing ‘Logomachy:’

(36)   Things more excellent than themselves are expressed through Art when our selves are expressed in them.

(60)   Passion has no longevity whatever its object, and has direful awakening.

(118)  Look into your past to forecast your future.

(121)  The mystery of beauty, the undivulged of things, gives them their enchantment – not their known meanings.

(172)  The common stench – self-righteousness.

(189)  We cannot guess our purpose, and never surpass it, but it is imperative that we believe in one for it confers ability.

(195)  Whoever exploits the less probable as possible is a fine artist.

(388)  We do not live eternally yet seek knowledge of eternity.

(404)  Memories are the ghosts of experience seeking to revive, to re-birth in us.

(420)  We are a great company; none walks alone, but with a formidable host of familiars, however we may clothe, shut out, or prohibit them.  There is a veritable funeral procession of dead selves and loves always in attendance.

(652)  A genius is not a person who has more or finer ideas than another, but one who is able not only to visualize but to incarnate them.

(772)  The shifting meaning of our intertwisted nomenclature, inexact references and ambiguities, have the virtue of spatial span and are evocative by selective expressionism having an emotional quality which gives aesthetic validity, whereas more formal expression would convey far less.

(825)  Man ever aberrates – even his normalities!  – mainly to compensate for his deficiencies, and often founds a shadow-world that accepts and reflects the assured survival of his weaknesses.

………..

Additionally, this is my personal favorite of Spare’s pre-war paintings (1939); it is untitled:

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Austin Osman Spare posts, expect at least one of them by Halloween.

‘Goetic Atavisms’ by Frater Achad and Craig Slee arrived today, and I’ve taken a quick look. Especially Frater Achad has taken a keen interest in the sorcery and mind-set of Austin Spare, and his interest is deeply embedded in his side of the book. Yes, there are two sides, in what appears to be a hat-tip to Fulgur’s edition of ‘The Witches’ Sabbath’ with ‘Axiomata.’ https://www.jdholmes.com/pages/books/18476/austin-osman-spare/the-witches-sabbath-and-axiomata-deluxe-limited-edition-signed-by-kenneth-and-steffi-grant

Additonally, I’m expecting a set of letters from the early fifties written by Austin Spare to Frank Letchford, within the coming month.

Thanks for your interest and for your patience.

In the meantime, here’s another Spare picture:

‘Haunted Avenue,’ 1947.

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Austin Osman Spare posts: they’re coming. Really.

I bit off more than I could chew by taking on Austin Osman Spare’s work and legacy. I knew almost nothing about him, except for passing comments by Andrew Chumbley, and he was really the only solid reference Chumbley ever made to sorcerous antecedents. And meanwhile, experts have been churning out books on the man and his work, all of which I’ve felt a need to try to acquire and assimilate.

‘Imago,’ by Robert Allen. I had high hopes for that one, being the work of an artist, and the publisher’s promo blurb specifically mentioned Austin Spare. There is exactly one paragraph on Spare in the book, afaict. It’s an interesting book in and of itself, but if you’re looking for enlightenment on Spare, you’re not gonna get it there.

However, another book has just been published, ‘Goetic Atavisms,’ by Frater Acher and Craig Slee. It purports to have several chapters in connection with Spare. I have several other books by Frater Acher, and so I’m confident that this time I’m going to learn something.

My favorite seller, https://midianbooks.com/shop expects to be getting hard-cover editions of ‘Goetic Atavisms’ in, within the next week or so.

I want to read the book before I publish the first Spare post, but I’m already working on the post, have been for some time. The first post will cover some of the more accessible, IMO, highlights of Spare’s work, and briefly discuss influences and his purposes. The second post will go more deeply into influences and his aims. The third post will address his ‘relationship’ with Aleister Crowley.

In the meantime, here’s a nice picture to look at. Spare’s 1955 ‘The Mountain.’

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The plagiarism of Austin Osman Spare’s work in ‘Evolution’

I have previously enumerated some concerns I have regarding a drawing alleged to be by Austin Osman Spare, in the 2023 edition of his ‘Book of Pleasure’ published by Jerusalem Press.

Last month I purchased the 2012 ‘Limited Edition’ of ‘Evolution’ by Stephen Pochin, together with Anthony Naylor. Treadwell’s in England had advertised the volumes as being signed by Mr. Pochin.

I looked in vain for a signature in the two books. However, in Volume 2 there is an ‘ex-libris’ that consists of three ex-libris created by Austin Spare for Pickford Waller. Those three have been splotched together, and one of them has been reversed. Pochin has ‘signed’ that ex-libris with the intials ‘S’ and what is evidently intended to be a reversed ‘P’ at the bottom of the S, in the corner of the ex-libris; and in tiny letters at the bottom of the picture, there is a notice that the ‘ex-libris’ is copyrighted to Mr. Naylor. Both of those elements are part of the picture; someone was too lazy, apparently, to actually sign 300 books.

There is nothing whatsoever in terms of a signature, ersatz or not, in Volume 1.

The ‘ex-libris’ has been dyed pink, and is a tribute to bad taste.

When I told Chris Harrington at Treadwell’s that there was no signature, she told me that Stephen Pochin had specifically assured her that the (sealed) books were signed. She made me a very generous offer of a partial refund on the books, which I declined.

They’d had a terrible time getting the books to me, because I use a post office box. Their delivery service, DHL, got the thing to the Edmonton Airport, and then demanded a street address and for the duty to be paid in advance. I made DHL take it back, all the way to London. Treadwell’s then sent it by Royal Mail, who are eminently reliable. I know that must have cost Treadwell’s.

I don’t think initials on the poached ex-libris count as a signature. However, I assessed the situation as Pochin’s (and Naylor’s) having had monumental cheek and bad taste, with respect to their ‘ex-libris’ picture; and not as intending to actually deceive people as to the presence of his signature (at least in Volume 2, anyway.) He includes the three originals of the ‘ex-libris’ in Volume 2.

However, there is one piece of Spare’s work that is not attributed at all anywhere in either of the two volumes, and that is the squiggle in gold on both of the front covers; it also appears on that ghastly ‘ex-libris’ in Volume 2.

It is customary for books to attribute any pictures on their front cover. These ones do not.

Here is the squiggle:

and here is its source:

The detail is from the 1928 picture by Austin Osman Spare, commonly known as ‘Theurgy:’

which is nowhere mentioned in either volume of Evolution.

Damned cheek and plagiarism, in my opinion.

But, it also raises the question in my mind: That was in 2012. Ten years later, did the line get crossed even more?