Austin Osman Spare (1886-1956) ... Profile of a woman, pencil and watercolour, date unknown

Born Today... Austin Osman Spare , December 30, 1886, London, United Kingdom

"My desires sprang forth as a mighty sun - all embracing - associating in the form - vortex, to enjoy ALL consciousnes"
AOS 

Austin Osman Spare... self portraits...

published in The Focus of Life (Redux) by Fulgur

Austin Osman Spare...Two Figures With Moon...1945

Two Figures With Moon  from 'Satyros Dux' 1945; original artwork for illustration, pencil with blue crayon

Austin Osman Spare... Funamblatory Ecstasy ... 1953

Funamblatory Ecstasy  ~ Pencil on board 1953

Austin Osman Spare ... pencil drawing... Angel and Devil

Others say knowledge only is eternal, it is the eternal illusion of learning-the Ukase of learning what we already know. Directly we ask ourselves "how" we induce stupidity; without this conception what is there we could not know and accomplish? Others for concentration, it will not free you, the mind conceiving the law is bondage. Arrived at that, you will want deconcentration. Dissociation from all ideas but one is not release but imaginative fulfilment, or the fury of creation. Others again, that all things are emanations of the Divine Spirit, as rays from the Sun, hence the need of emancipation? Verily, things are of necessity through their conception and belief. Then let us destroy or change conception, and empty the belief.

The Book of Pleasure (self-love), The Psychology of Ecstasy

 Austin Osman Spare

Austin Osman Spare... pencil drawing ... 1944-1945

Enthosthorasis

Dolorosa... happy birthday... Austin Spare 2012

Pastel on Paper No 1 of 9  A4

The fractional second is the path I would open...
Magic is but one's natural ability to attract without asking.
AOS

Austin Osman Spare... illustration...Mutations... 1950

illustration for  Martin Gardener's Horrible Horns published by
London Mystery Magazine 

Austin Osman Spare... Satyr c1920

"By turning my head involuntary... I can always see my alter ego, familiars or the gang of elementals that partly constitute my being." AOS

from Austin Osman Spare, Fallen Visionary, Refractions published by Jerusalem Press

Austin Osman Spare... Self Portrait... 1908

click on image to enlarge

a scan from a new title by Fulgur

The Exhibition Catalogues of Austin O. Spare

compiled and edited by Robert Ansell

As an Individual I resent this cant re "self -expression." a catch phrase to hide every form of delinquency -- the excuse to perpetuate the worst whithin us at other's expense.

"Looking within, to the depths of one's Soul" is another inverse cliche: personally, my experience of  "looking within" has been exactly like looking into an empty bucket!

As an inveterate believer in the Soul, I have experienced the "Touch"... and all stimuli of inspiration at any level are an effulgent refraction from something we have glimpsed from without and excreated from the machine within. So far

we have made a sorry mess of the Anatomy of the Mind. The Soul is apart--becoming

tactual of sincerity when our level of values is near equity -- its language is a baffling symbolism to all untruth: human nature being the most unstable thing known -- correspondance is rare 

Austin Osman Spare 1951

Austin O Spare...

We who seek—whether we know or not what we seek or find, seem forced to face divergent paths; and ever inviting is the non-resistant blind alley to all sameness, to sick and weary life. Other paths, rougher, lead who so willeth to new pleasures: verily they lead the life-force with ever-open eye to the awaiting disaster or to chaos—never bathos, self-pity. The brave care nothing.

The wise man often exuviates his knowledge, rectifies his pastiche of acceptances and reverts to simple fundaments. By courage his eye is never stale and his levels become as steps. He again reorientates by oblique divagation, new asymmetries, dynamics, complexities and funambulatory compositions; never destroying his essential dis-symmetry.

Love for all things is integral beauty; it has no hate or possessiveness; its law is its own causality. Passions may be controlled but we best love by non-will as inclination dictates: so accept love wherever you may find it. It is difficult to recognize because it never asks.

All our denials, even of ourselves, come from non-acceptance: the unrealisation of otherness in self; of the Absolute in the non-absolute. 

from Austin Osman Spare,The Logomachy of ZOS ~ ZOS Speaks! Encounters with AOS. Fulgur, 1998

previous Austin O Spare

In our solitariness... great depths are sometimes sounded. Truth hideth in company.

Dolorosa... a drawing for Austin O Spare ..2011

to  Cabinet Readers Love and Magick to accompany you in the mystery tour of 2012! ♥

Dolorosa  ~ A drawing for AOS on his birthday ~ Raving Mouthed 30th Dec 2011

                                                              White pencil on black paper

Austin Osman Spare... Happy Birthday!

click on image to enlarge

Stealing the Fire from Heaven 1911-12

 

The Complete Ritual and Doctrine of Magic

Ecstasy in Self-love the Obsession

My dearest, I will now explain the only safe and true formula, the destroyer of the darkness of the World, the most secret among all secrets. Let it be secret to him who would attain. Let it cover any period of time, depending on his conception. There is no qualification, nor ritual or ceremony. His very existence symbolising all that is necessary to perfection. Most emphatically, there is no need of repetition or feeble imitation. You are alive!

from my favourite AOS book The Book of Pleasure (self-love) The Psychology of Ecstasy

more > AOS 

Austin Osman Spare ... Illustration...1909

click here for larger image

Cujus est solum ejus est usque ad coelum 1909

from

On the Oxford circuit, and other verses  by Mr Justice Darling 1909

CUJUS EST SOLUM EJUS EST USQUE 
AD COELUM 

'ELUSIVE maxim! Hardly Heaven 
they hold 
Whose lands in fee to central Hell 

descend. 
Though from the soil its lords the 
stars behold, 
With the thick air extremest titles end. 

Austin Osman Spare ... The Formula of Atavistic Resurgence...

~ Austin Osman Spare ~

30 December 1886 – 15 May 1956

The Formula of Atavistic Resurgence
Zos-Kia Cultus

 Austin Osman Spare created this Stele embodying the secret glyphs and sigils of the Cultus.

"There is a Grimoire of symbology, of vague phonic nuances that conjoins all thoughts and is the cryptic language of the subconscious world." AOS

"I teach the equal reality of all things, man and his illusions: Dreams shall flesh ...some day." AOS

Whatever the value of Spare’s contribution to art and psychology, his contribution to experimental occultism is supreme, for he discovered a method of reifying the dream world under the controlling aegis of the fully conscious will.

KENNETH GRANT

Austin Osman Spare ... Ugly Ecstasy ...Satyr...

from the Book of Ugly Ecstasy 1924 - Fulgur 1996

it would be sentimental to say that the figures in Ugly Ectasy and Automatic Drawings

are happy despite theirhideous appearances....in the words of WH Audens poem, 'In Memory of Sigmund Freud' -

Down among the lost people like Dante, down

To the stinking fosse where the injured

Lead the ugly life of the rejected.

Nevertheless, Spare signed off Automatic Drawing on a defiant and innuendo-laden note: "Great is he who pleasures this difficult life," he wrote, and  "He has found wisdom who knows how to spend"*

*Victorian euphemism for ejaculation.

excerpt from Austin Osman Spare - The Life and Legend of London's Lost Artist

by Phil Baker

Austin Osman Spare ... Satyr... Happy Birthday!

Austin Osman Spare ~ 30 Dec 1886 –15 May 1956

O Give Thanks Unto!

:

O Give Thanks Unto scanned from a set of postcards from recent "Fallen Visionary" exhibition 2010

The Psychology of Believing.

If the "supreme belief" remains unknown, believing is fruitless. If "the truth" has not yet been ascertained, the study of knowledge is unproductive. Even if "they" were known their study is useless. We are not the object by the perception, but by becoming it. Closing the gateways of sense is no help. Verily I will make common-sense the foundation of my teaching. Otherwise, how can I convey my meaning to the deaf, vision to the blind, and my emotion to the dead? In a labyrinth of metaphor and words, intuition is lost, therefore without their effort must be learned the truth about one's self from him who alone knows the truth . . . . yourself. 

from The Book of Pleasure (self-love) ~

The Psychology of Ecstasy

previous AOS

Fulgur...Austin Osman Spare catalogue 8

Savonarola c 1907 - study of Girolamo Savonarola © Fulgur

preliminary sketch ' Desire for Psycho-somatic strength’ 1953 © Fulgur

It's drooling time again, but xmas is coming if anyone is looking for present ideas for me ;)

Austin Osman Spare... drawings & paintings

in the anticipation of attending the exhibition of the year

at the Cuming Museum in London, here are a few Spare treats!

 Idiocy - Automatic Drawing

As above so below, this is never sufficiently realized. . . . Remorse? Nay, do unto thyself all things, fearlessly. Finality is reached when ye have learned to digest everything. What is all man-slaughter but what ye have done unto yourself? Only where there is necessity is ther death. Dispense with all 'means' to an end. There is nothing higher than joyous sensation. Eternal Self! these millions of bodies I have outworn! Oh, sinister ecstasy. I am thy vicious self pleasure that destroyeth all things. Distrust thy teacher, for 'divine truth' has prevented better men from wisdom. In such revelation there is no suggestion. Do thy utmost unto others: But be surely what thou wilt: and keep thy belief free of morality. Observe thyself by sensation: thus know the finer perturbations and vibrations. This much shalt thou learn: To love all men, for there will be compulsion.

from The Focus of Life ~ AOS

previous  AOS POSTS