Austin Osman Spare Quotes

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The more Chaotic I am, the more complete I am.
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Austin Osman Spare
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For I am I: ergo, the truth of myself; my own sphinx, conflict, chaos, vortexβ€”asymmetric to all rhythms, oblique to all paths. I am the prism between black and white: mine own unison in duality.
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Austin Osman Spare
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And remember, you shall suffer all things and again suffer: until you have sufficient sufferance to accept all things.
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Austin Osman Spare
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Great thoughts are against all doctrines of conformity
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Austin Osman Spare
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Only Art is Eternal Wisdom; what is not Art soon perishes. Art is the unconscious love of all things. β€˜Learning’ will cease and Reality will become known when it comes to pass that every human being is an Artist.
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Austin Osman Spare (Book of Pleasure in Plain English)
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In our solitariness... great depths are sometimes sounded. Truth hideth in company.
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Austin Osman Spare
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Darken your room, shut the door, empty your mind. Yet you are still in great company - the Numen and your Genius with all their media, and your host of elementals and ghosts of your dead loves β€” are there! They need no light by which to see, no words to speak, no motive to enact except through your own purely formed desire.
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Austin Osman Spare (The Logomachy of Zos)
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The soul is the ancestral animals. The body is their knowledge.
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Austin Osman Spare (The Focus of Life)
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Other than damnation I know no magic to satisfy your wishes; for ye believe one thing, desire another, speak unlike, act differently and obtain the living value.
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Austin Osman Spare (Rebels & Devils; A Tribute to Christopher S. Hyatt)
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The learning of β€˜How’ is the eternal β€˜Why’ – unanswered! A genius is such, because he does not know how or why.
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Austin Osman Spare (Book of Pleasure in Plain English)
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Others believe in prayer . . . . have not all yet learnt, that to ask it to be denied? Let it be the root of your Gospel. Oh, ye who are living other peoples lives! Unless desire is subconscious, it is not fulfilled, no, not in this life. Then verily sleep is better than prayer. Quiescence is hidden desire, a form of "not asking"; by it the female obtains much from man.
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Austin Osman Spare (The Book of Pleasure (Self-Love): The Psychology of Ecstasy)
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The one law of Art is its own spontaneity, its pleasure and freedom. How mystic, pure and simple is its wish; it has no idea of potential divinity! Decoration is its creed and vital allegory is its belief. Being the β€˜Free Morality,’ it has no sin – then most assuredly Art is all we dare express without excuse.
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Austin Osman Spare (Book of Pleasure in Plain English)
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There is no illusion but consciousness! This consciousness is ever the smiling monument commemorating "Whether you ever really enjoyed Life"!Β 
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Austin Osman Spare (The Book of Pleasure (Self-Love): The Psychology of Ecstasy)
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reject expressed belief – and exchange it for the possibility of genuine change.The believers’ formula is a deception and they are deceived – which is a negation of their purpose. Faith is denial, and the metaphor for faith is idiocy, hence it always fails. To make their power more secure, governments force religion down the throats of their slaves, and it always succeeds. Few people escape it; therefore the honour of those who do is all the greater. When faith perishes, the β€˜Self ’ comes into its own.
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Austin Osman Spare (Book of Pleasure in Plain English)
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Alas!’ he writes, β€˜I am morbid, And have put a purple colour about my brow. All men seem eating and drinking the β€œJoy of the Round Feast,” while I am Melancholy and silent, as though in a Gloomy wood, astray. Strange images of myself did I create, As I gazed into the seeming pit of others, Losing myself in the thoughtfulness Of my unreal self, as humanity saw me. But alas ! on entering to the consciousness Of my real being to find fostering "The all-prevailing woman,” And I strayed with her, into the path direct. β€œHail! the Jewel in the Lotus.
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Austin Osman Spare
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The conception of "I am not" must of necessity follow the conception of "I am," because of its grammar, as surely in this world of sorrow night follows day. The recognition of pain as such, implies the idea of pleasure, and so with all ideas. By this duality, let him remember to laugh at all times, recognize all things, resist nothing; then there is no conflict, incompatibility or compulsion as such.Β 
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Austin Osman Spare (The Book of Pleasure (Self-Love): The Psychology of Ecstasy)
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The wise pleasure seeker, having realised they are "different degrees of desire" and never desirable, gives up both Virtue and Vice and becomes a Kiaist. Riding the Shark of his desire he crosses the ocean of the dual principle and engages himself in self-love.Β 
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Austin Osman Spare (The Book of Pleasure (Self-Love): The Psychology of Ecstasy)
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Servitude to law is the hatred of Heaven.58 Only self-love is the eternal all-pleasing, which is achieved by meditation on this radiant self which is mystic joyousness.
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Austin Osman Spare (Book of Pleasure in Plain English)
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It was the straying that found the path direct.
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Austin Osman Spare
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Quietism, Buddhism, and other religions, everything which denies the fleshβ€”is the great inferiority to God in ourselves, an escapism seeking sanctuary through fear of life and inability to accept 'this reality'. They were hurt? Or was the odalisque unsatisfactory or too expensive? They expected too much for too little, or were too mean to payβ€”therefore: "All is illusion". But the Stoic smilingly awaits the next shower of shit from heaven. Stoics are not Saviours, Saints or Heroes and are often confused and weary, yet they prefer to find their own way and to accept life as they find it. The schizophrenics, the melancholics and psychoticsβ€”they at least are secretive and inflict no religions on others. They prove the possibilities and utilities of 'as if' when totally accepted.
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Austin Osman Spare
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The difference between good and evil is a matter of profundity. Which is nearer you, self-love and its immorality or love and morals? Not conscious of desert the compeer of Heaven, and constant happiness in wisdom is the capacity of direction. From self-glorification, from self-exaltation we rise superior to the incapacity of disquieting fear: the ridiculer to destruction of humility in repentance. This "self-love" that does not give but is glad to receive is the genuine opportunity for freedom from covetousness, from the militant amusement of Heaven. He who subordinates animal instincts to reason, quickly loses control.
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Austin Osman Spare (The Book of Pleasure (Self-Love): The Psychology of Ecstasy)
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He who deceives another deceives himself much more. Therefore know the Charlatans by their love of rich robes, ceremony, ritual, magical retirements, absurd conditions, and other stupidity, too numerous to relate. Their entire doctrine a boastful display, a cowardice hungering for notoriety; their standard everything unnecessary, their certain failure assured. Hence it is that those with some natural ability quickly lose it by their teaching. They can only dogmatise, implant and multiply that which is entirely superficial. Were I a teacher I should not act as master, as knowing more, the pupil could lay no claim to discipleship. Assimilating slowly, he would not be conscious of his learning, he would not repeat the vital mistake; without fear he would accomplish with ease. The only teaching possible is to show a man how to learn from his own wisdom, and to utilise his ignorance and mistakes. Not by obscuring his vision and intention by righteousness.Β 
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Austin Osman Spare (The Book of Pleasure (Self-Love): The Psychology of Ecstasy)
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The Ego is ignorant towards both sigils and symbols, but they both give the Ego a flow of knowledge from themselves. All knowledge of ideas, gained by means of sigils, should be re-clothed in pure symbolism to designate and stimulate its own wisdom. Symbolism is also a means of accelerating and exhausting by living a belief instead of repressing it by choice rather than of necessity, which serves its own time. All begging, self-punishment, sacrifice, etc., is but an attempt to escape the law of reaction or Karma, and by symbolising the reading of these laws, they hope to take that power from nature.
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Austin Osman Spare (Book of Pleasure in Plain English)
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ZOS and Scire had a fierce argument as to who had been to the Witches’ Sabbath, what the Witches’ Sabbath actually was, and so on. Scire drew his magical athame and showed ZOS the strange characters on the hilt. ZOS should have blanched before them but he didn’t, saying he β€œknew all them symbols and more
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Kenneth Grant (Zos Speaks!: Encounters With Austin Osman Spare)
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Theosophists refer to the Knowledge and Conversation of the Holy Guardian Angel as the Silent Watcher (the reader might here recall the author's suggestion to make self-observation or self-watching a major magickal goal). Another term for It is the Great Master. The Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn call It the Genius. Gnostics say the Logos. Zoroaster talks about united all these symbols into the form of a Lion (see Austin Osman Spare's work). Anna Kingsford calls It Adonai (Clothed with the Sun). Buddhists call It Adi-Buddha. The Bhagavad-gītā calls It Vishnu (Krishna is an Avatar of Vishnu). The Yi King calls him The Great Person. The Kabbalah calls It Jechidah.
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Laurence Galian (666: Connection with Crowley)
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Farewell antithesis. I have suffered. All is paid. Let me go forth to recreate my sleep
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Austin Osman Spare (Anathema of Zos: The Sermon to the Hypocrites)
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Servitude to law is the hatred of Heaven. Self-love only is the eternal all pleasing, by meditation on this effulgent self which is mystic joyousness. At that time of bliss, he is punctual to his imagination, in that day what happiness is his! A lusty innocent, beyond sin, without hurt! Balanced by an emotion, a refraction of his ecstasy is all that he is conscious of as external.[16] His vacuity causes double refraction, "He," the self-effulgent lightens in the Ego. Beyond law and the guest at the "Feast of the Supersensualists."[17] He has power over life and death.[18]
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Austin Osman Spare (The Book of Pleasure (Self-Love): The Psychology of Ecstasy)
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Man in the misery of his illusions and unsatisfied desires, wings his flight to different religions, and doctrines, seeks redeception, a hypnotic, a palliative from which he suffers fresh miseries in exhaustion. The terms of the cure are new illusions, greater entanglement, more stagnant environment.Β  Having studied all ways and means to pleasure and pondered over them well again and again, this self-love has been found by me to be the only free, true and full one, nothing more sane, pure, and complete. There is no deceit: when by this all experience certainly is known, everything sublimely beautiful and exceedingly amiable: where is the necessity of other means? Like the drink to the drunkard everything should be sacrificed for it. This Self-love is now declared by me the means of evolving millions of ideas for pleasure without love, or its synonyms- self-reproach, sickness, old-age, and death. The Symposium of self and love. O! Wise Man, Please Thyself.Β 
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Austin Osman Spare (The Book of Pleasure (Self-Love): The Psychology of Ecstasy)
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Honest was Sodom! YOUR theology is a slime-pit of gibberish become ethics. In YOUR world, where ignorance and deceit constitute felicity, everything ends miserably besmirched with fratricidal blood.
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Austin Osman Spare (Anathema of Zos: The Sermon to the Hypocrites)
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Sigils are the means of guiding and uniting the partially free belief[27] with an organic desire, its carriage and retention till its purpose served in the sub-conscious self, and its means of reincarnation in the Ego. All thought can be expressed by form in true relation. Sigils are monograms of thought, for the government of energy (all heraldry, crests, monograms, are Sigils and the Karmas they govern), relating to Karma; a mathematical means of symbolising desire and giving it form that has the virtue of preventing any thought and association on that particular desire (at the magical time), escaping the detection of the Ego, so that it does not restrain or attach such desire to its own transitory images, memories and worries, but allows it free passage to the sub-consciousness.
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Austin Osman Spare (The Book of Pleasure (Self-Love): The Psychology of Ecstasy)
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If you could truly believe, we should realise the virtue of it. We are not free to believe .Β  .Β  .Β  .Β  however much we so desire, having conflicting ideas to first exhaust. Sigils are the art of believing; my invention for making belief organic, ergo, true belief.Β 
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Austin Osman Spare (The Book of Pleasure (Self-Love): The Psychology of Ecstasy)
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This conglomeration of decayed antiquity, collected with the disease of greed, surely invites our charity. It would be better to forget these trumpery ideas, and learn the best of traditions by observing your own functions, and regarding modernity in an unbiased way.10
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Austin Osman Spare (Book of Pleasure in Plain English)
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Hidden treasure does not come at your word or by digging with your hands in the main road. Even with the proper implements and accurate knowledge of place, etc., you may just end up re-acquiring what you possessed long ago. There is a great doubt as to whether it is hidden, except by the strata65 of your experiences and atmospheres of your belief. So how does one become a genius? My reply is like the mighty germ: it is in agreement with the Universe, is simple and full of deep import, yet it is for a time extremely objectionable in terms of your ideas of good and beauty. So listen attentively, O aspirant, to my answer, for by living its meaning you shall surely become freed from the bondage of constitutional ignorance. You must live it yourself: I cannot live it for you. The chief cause of genius is the realization of β€˜I’ by an emotion that allows the instant assimilation of what is perceived. This emotion could be called β€˜immoral’ in that it allows the free association of knowledge without being encumbered by belief. Its condition is therefore ignorance of β€˜I am’ and β€˜I am not’: instead of believing, there is a kind of absentmindedness. Its most excellent state is the β€˜NeitherNeither’, the free or atmospheric β€˜I’.
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Austin Osman Spare (Book of Pleasure in Plain English)
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You are alive! True magic involves the reduction of properties to simplicity – making them transmutable so that they can be utilized in fresh directions, bearing fruit many times. Know deliberation, self-consciousness and concentration to be antithetical to magic, and sycophancy to be a way of making stupid.
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Austin Osman Spare (Book of Pleasure in Plain English)
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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.
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Austin Osman Spare (The Writings of Austin Osman Spare: Automatic Drawings, Anathema of Zos, The Book of Pleasure, and The Focus of Life)
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belief, to be true, must be organic and sub-conscious. The desire to be great can only become organic at a time of vacuity, and by giving it (Sigil) form. When conscious of the Sigil form (any time but the Magical) it should be repressed, a deliberate striving to forget it, by this it is active and dominates at the unconscious period, its form nourishes and allows it to become attached to the sub-consciousness and become organic, that accomplished, is its reality and realization. He becomes his concept of greatness.Β  So belief becomes true and vital by striving against it in consciousness and by giving it form. Not by the striving of faith. Belief exhausts itself by confession and non-resistance, i.e., consciousness. Believe not to believe, and in degree you will obtain its existence.
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Austin Osman Spare (The Book of Pleasure (Self-Love): The Psychology of Ecstasy)
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You remember in your youth the thought "that this world is a curious place" in the emotion when you felt "why" as to whether this life is a reasonable development? What was the cause of this and of your summarily dismissing it from your mind? Again the feeling that the most commonplace object is magnificently strange and the vague emotion of co-relation between the incompatible (exhaustive arguments often see this, but always excuse it); the curiosity and shock with a more intimate association with the wonders of creation. What is it that prevents you following investigation into "what exactly is surprise," etc.? What is the cause of your believing more in God than a dog-fight? Yet you fear dogs more than God! Where is the difference between yourself choked with disquieting piety, and the innocence of a babe? Perhaps in these is the cause of ignorance.Β 
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Austin Osman Spare (The Book of Pleasure (Self-Love): The Psychology of Ecstasy)
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desire are united to his purpose by the use of Sigils, or sacred letters. By projecting consciousness into one object, sensation becomes intensified because not dissipated by the usual distractions.This intensification is attained by abstaining from desire in anything but the object [i.e. the Sigil]. By non-resistance (involuntary thought and action), any worry or apprehension of it not working, being transient, find no permanent abode, and the practitioner desires everything. Anxiety defeats the purpose, because it retains and exposes the desire; desire is non-attraction. When the mind is quiet and focused, and undisturbed by external images, there is no distortion of the sense impression (there should be no hallucination: that could end in fulfilment of whatever it is that is imagined). Instead, the mind magnifies the existing desire, and joins it to the object in secret.
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Austin Osman Spare (Book of Pleasure in Plain English)
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MAGICAL obsession is that state when the mind is illuminated by sub-conscious activity evoked voluntarily by formula at our own time, etc., for inspiration. It is the condition of Genius.Β  Other obsession is the "blind leading the blind," caused by quietism, known as mediumism, an opening out of the Ego to (what is called) any external influence, elementals, or disembodied energy. A transmutated consciousness that is a resistance to "true" sub-conscious activity, it being a voluntary insanity, a somnambulation of the Ego with "no form" or control to guide it: hence its emanations are stupid in suggestion, or memories of childhood.Β 
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Austin Osman Spare (The Book of Pleasure (Self-Love): The Psychology of Ecstasy)
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The "I" principle has reached the "Does not matter- need not be" state, and is not related to form. Save and beyond it, there is no other, therefore it alone is complete and eternal. Indestructible, it has power to destroy- therefore it alone is true freedom and existence. Through it comes immunity from all sorrow, therefore the spirit is ecstasy. Renouncing everything by the means shown, take shelter in it. Surely it is the abode of Kia? This having once been (even Symbolically) reached, is our unconditional release from duality and time- believe this to be true. The belief free from all ideas but pleasure, the Karma through law (displeasure) speedily exhausts itself. In that moment beyond time, a new law can become incarnate, without the payment of sorow, every wish gratified, he[9] having become the gratifier by his law. The new law shall be the arcana of the mystic unbalanced "Does not mattter- need not be," there is no necessitation, "please yourself" is its creed.[10]
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Austin Osman Spare (The Book of Pleasure (Self-Love): The Psychology of Ecstasy)
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In what way can it act as master? Through scores of incarnations, the β€˜self ’ we end up with is derived from the attributes with which we endow our God, the abstract Ego or conceptive principles. All conception is a denial of the KiΓ£, and hence we human beings are its opposition, our own evil. As we are the offspring of ourselves, we are the conflict between whatever we deny and assert of the KiΓ£. It would seem that we cannot be too careful in our choice, for it determines the body we inhabit. Thus forever from β€˜self ’ do I fashion the KiΓ£, which may be without likeness, but which may be regarded as the truth. From this process is the bondage made, and not through intellect shall we be free from it. The law of KiΓ£ is always its own original purpose, undetermined by anything else, and its emanations are unchanging. Through our own conceptive process things materialize, and take their nature from that duality. Human beings take their law from this refraction, and their ideas create their reality. With what do they balance their ecstasy? They pay measure for measure with intense pain, sorrow, and miseries. With what do they balance their rebellion? Of necessity, with slavery! Duality is the law, and realization by experience relates and opposes by units of time. Ecstasy for any length of time is difficult to obtain, and takes a lot of work. The conditions of consciousness and existence would seem to be various degrees of misery alternating with gusts of pleasure and some more subtle emotions. Consciousness of existence consists of duality in some form or other. From it are created the illusions of time, size, entity, etc.: the world’s limit. The dual principle is the quintessence of all experience, and no ramification has enlarged its primordial simplicity, but can only be its repetition, modification or complexity: its evolution can never be complete. It can never go further than the experience of self, so returns and unites again and again, ever an anti-climax. Its evolution consists of forever returning to its original simplicity by infinite complication. No man shall understand its β€˜reason why’ by looking at its workings. Know it as the illusion that embraces the learning of all existence. It is the most aged one who grows no wiser, and is the mother of all things. Therefore believe all β€˜experience’ to be an illusion, and the result of the law of duality. Just as space pervades an object both inside and outside it, similarly within and beyond this ever-changing cosmos, there is this single principle.
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Austin Osman Spare (Book of Pleasure in Plain English)
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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 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 their bad taste and mongering for advertisement. The freedom of energy is not obtained by its bondage, great power not by disintegration. Is it not because our energy (or mind stuff) is already over bound and divided, that we are not capable, let alone magical?Β 
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Austin Osman Spare (The Book of Pleasure (Self-Love): The Psychology of Ecstasy)
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The intrinsic non-existence at the heart of entity is what Spare designated the KiΓ£, and he strove to convey his vision in a theory enshrined as the very keystone of the Book of Pleasure.To this, he wedded a new and radical model of transcendental sorcery that completely rejected all religious ethos and utilised instead those techniques that were most familiar to him, and most fully within his mastery as an artist and designer: for its language, line and letter synthesized as the Sigil and the Sacred Alphabet; for its praxis, the sense of sight extended through touch, emotion and profound nostalgia into a willed and magically fecund synaesthesia that attains its apotheosis in the Death Posture. The Book of Pleasure was a radical departure for magic when it was published in 1913, in its refusal to advance a new dispensation or β€˜doctrine’ (as Crowley had done) – indeed, in its intent to overcome the bonds imposed upon raw sorcery by traditional religious thinking. Its concepts remain as radical today, whether applied in a strictly magical or psychological context. Why, then, did Spare’s ideas fail to gain any currency until around sixty years after his exposition? Was it purely because the work itself remained inaccessible until the books of Kenneth and Steffi Grant, and later Francis King and Neville Drury, brought them into wider circulation? In part, yes, but that is not the sole reason. Even given the masterly expositions of Spare’s creed from these authors, the work itself is yet little understood or applied.
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Austin Osman Spare (Book of Pleasure in Plain English)
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The law of Kia is its ever original purpose, undetermined, without change the emanations, through our conception they materialize and are of that duality, man takes this law from this refraction, his ideas-reality. With what does he balance his ecstasy? Measure for measure by intense pain, sorrow, and miseries. With what his rebellion? Of necessity slavery! Duality is the law, realization by suffering, relates and opposes by units of time. Ecstasy for any length of time is difficult to obtain, and laboured heavily for. Various degrees of misery alternating with gusts of pleasure and emotions less anxious, would seem the condition of consciousness and existence. Duality in some form or another is consciousness as existence. It is the illusion of time, size, entity, etc.-the world's limit. The dual principle is the quintessence of all experience, no ramification has enlarged its early simplicity, but is only its repetition, modification or complexity, never is its evolution complete. It cannot go further than the experience of self-so returns and unites again and again, ever an anti-climax. Forever retrogressing to its original simplicity by infinite complication is its evolution. No man shall understand "Why" by its workings. Know it as the illusion that embraces the learning of all existence. The most aged one who grows no wiser, it may be regarded as the mother of all things. Therefore believe all experience to be illusion, and the law of duality. As space pervades an object both in and out, similarly within and beyond this ever-changing cosmos, there is this secondless principle.
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Austin Osman Spare (The Book of Pleasure (Self-Love): The Psychology of Ecstasy)
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Belief is ever its own tempter to believe differently
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Austin Osman Spare (The Book of Pleasure (Self-Love): The Psychology of Ecstasy)
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The law of Kia is its own arbiter, beyond necessitation, who can grasp the nameless Kia? Obvious but unintelligible, without form, its design most excellent. Its wish for superabundance, who can assert its mysterious purpose? By our knowledge it becomes more obscure, more remote, and our faith-opacity. Without attribute, I know not its name. How free it is, it has no need of sovereignty! (Kingdoms are their own despoilers.) Without lineage, who dare claim relationship? Without virtue, how pleasing in its moral self-love! How mighty is it, in its assertion of "Need not be-Does not matter!
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Austin Osman Spare (The Book of Pleasure (Self-Love): The Psychology of Ecstasy)
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Self-love in complete perspective, serves its own invincible purpose of ecstasy. Supreme bliss simulating opposition is its balance. It suffers no hurt, neither does it labour. Is it not self-attracting and independent? Assuredly we cannot call it balance.
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Austin Osman Spare (The Book of Pleasure (Self-Love): The Psychology of Ecstasy)
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Kia transcending conception, is unchanging and inexhaustible, there is no need of illumination to see it. If we open our mouths to speak of it, it is not of it but our duality, mighty though it be in its early simplicity! Kia without conceiving, produces its rendezvous as the fulness of creation. Without assertion the mightiest energy, without smallness it may appear as the least among things. Its possession is ours without asking, its being free, the only thing that is free.
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Austin Osman Spare (The Book of Pleasure (Self-Love): The Psychology of Ecstasy)
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The law of Kia is its ever original purpose, undetermined, without change the emanations, through our conception they materialize and are of that duality, man takes this law from his refraction, his ideas-reality. With what does he balance his ecstasy? Measure for measure by intense pain, sorrow, and miseries. With what his rebellion? Of necessity slavery! Duality is the law, realization by suffering, relates and opposes by units of time. Ecstasy of any length of time is difficult to obtain, and laboured heavily for. Various degrees of misery alternating with gusts of pleasure and emotions less anxious, would seem the condition of consciousness and existence.
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Austin Osman Spare (The Book of Pleasure (Self-Love): The Psychology of Ecstasy)
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The dual principle is the quintessence of all experience, no ramification has enlarged its early simplicity, but is only its repetition, modification or complexity, never is its evolution complete. It cannot go further than the experience of self-so returns and unites again and again, ever an anti-climax. Forever retrogressing to its original simplicity by infinite complication is its evolution. No man shall understand "Why" by its workings. Know it as the illusion that embraces the learning of all existence. The most aged one who grows no wiser, it may be regarded as the mother of all things. Therefore believe all experience to be illusion, and the law of duality.
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Austin Osman Spare (The Book of Pleasure (Self-Love): The Psychology of Ecstasy)
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Ideas of Self in conflict cannot be slain, by resistance they are a reality- no Death or cunning has overcome them but is there reinforcement of energy. The dead are born again and again lie in the womb of conscience. By allowing maturity is to predicate decay when by non-resistance is retrogression to early simplicity and the passage to the original and unity without idea. From that idea is the formula of non-resistance germinating "Does not matter- please yourself.
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Austin Osman Spare (The Book of Pleasure (Self-Love): The Psychology of Ecstasy)
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But the "Neither-neither" principle of those two, is the state where the mind has passed beyond conception, it cannot be balanced, since it implies only itself. The "I" principle has reached the "Does not matter- need not be" state, and is not related to form. Save and beyond it, there is no other, therefore it alone is complete and eternal. Indestructible, it has power to destroy-therefore it alone is true freedom and existence. Through it comes immunity from all sorrow, therefore the spirit is ecstasy.
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Austin Osman Spare (The Book of Pleasure (Self-Love): The Psychology of Ecstasy)
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As for a glimmering of a knowledge of the occult, I have always had it in me from my childhood. [...] She was a natural hypnotist. She would say, 'Look in that dark corner,' and, if you obeyed, she could make you visualise what she was telling you your future.
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Gavin W. Semple (Zos-Kia: An Introductory Essay on the Art and Sorcery of Austin Osman Spare)
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All faiths are to me the same. I go to the Church in which I was bom - the Established -but without the slightest faith. In fact, I am devising a religion of my own which embodies what we were, are and shall be in the future.
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Gavin W. Semple (Zos-Kia: An Introductory Essay on the Art and Sorcery of Austin Osman Spare)
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It is the cover for the writings of a new religion I have dreamed about," explained the artist. "I go to church near here, but I don't believe in their doctrine. I have my own ideas of what we are and what we may become, and all my sketches are alive with my religion.
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Gavin W. Semple (Zos-Kia: An Introductory Essay on the Art and Sorcery of Austin Osman Spare)
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The perpetual youth of man arises, draws aside the curtain - Faith (a token of humanity's LIMITED knowledge), and exposes the inferno of the NORMAL. Oh! come with me, the KIA and the ZOS, to witness this extravagance...
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Gavin W. Semple (Zos-Kia: An Introductory Essay on the Art and Sorcery of Austin Osman Spare)
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...When we gaze into the mirror of our-SELF, And see our works as others judge them, Then we realise our insignificance to the incomprehensible intellect of the absolute KIA (the omniscient), and find how subcutaneous our attainments are. Alas! we are children of EARTH.
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Gavin W. Semple (Zos-Kia: An Introductory Essay on the Art and Sorcery of Austin Osman Spare)
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Kia is the absolute freedom which being free is mighty enough to be 'reality' at any time: therefore is not potential or manifest (except as its instant possibility) by ideas of freedom or 'means,' but by the Ego being free to receive it, by being free of ideas about it and not believing. The less said of it (Kia) the less obscure.
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Gavin W. Semple (Zos-Kia: An Introductory Essay on the Art and Sorcery of Austin Osman Spare)
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The body considered as a whole I call "ZOS"; Zos therefore designates all that which is embodied or manifest - the apperceptive or conative Ego that 'receives' Kia, and is indeed the bodying forth of the Absolute into being.
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Gavin W. Semple (Zos-Kia: An Introductory Essay on the Art and Sorcery of Austin Osman Spare)
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What is unmanifest is Absoluteness; what is manifest is reality as all differentiations of that.
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Gavin W. Semple (Zos-Kia: An Introductory Essay on the Art and Sorcery of Austin Osman Spare)
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This dualism of Being and Non-Being, Illusion and Reality, I and All-Otherness is a fundamental doctrine of gnostic philosophy, and Spare had seized upon it.
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Gavin W. Semple (Zos-Kia: An Introductory Essay on the Art and Sorcery of Austin Osman Spare)
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Who doth know what his own subconsciousness contains? Still less his own Arcana. They are the great who allow its operation by silence." THE FOCUS OF LIFE
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Gavin W. Semple (Zos-Kia: An Introductory Essay on the Art and Sorcery of Austin Osman Spare)
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Sigils are monograms of thought, for the government of energy.
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Gavin W. Semple (Zos-Kia: An Introductory Essay on the Art and Sorcery of Austin Osman Spare)
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An artist, can't understand organisation, or would have passed.
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Gavin W. Semple (Zos-Kia: An Introductory Essay on the Art and Sorcery of Austin Osman Spare)
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Sigils are made by combining the letters of the alphabet simplified... The idea being to obtain a simple form which can easily be visualised at will, and has not too much pictorial relation to the desire... Verily, what a person believes by Sigils, is the truth, and is always fulfilled. -The Book of Pleasure (p.50)
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Gavin W. Semple (Zos-Kia: An Introductory Essay on the Art and Sorcery of Austin Osman Spare)
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Hidden in the labyrinth of the Alphabet is my sacred name, the SIGIL of all things unknown. On Earth my kingdom is eternity of DESIRE. My wish incarnates in the belief and becomes flesh, for, I AM THE LIVING TRUTH." ANATHEMA OF ZOS P. 15
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Gavin W. Semple (Zos-Kia: An Introductory Essay on the Art and Sorcery of Austin Osman Spare)
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Death is named the great unknown. Assuredly, death is the great chance. An adventure in will, that translates into body." THE FOCUS OF LIFE
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Gavin W. Semple (Zos-Kia: An Introductory Essay on the Art and Sorcery of Austin Osman Spare)
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What is there to believe, but in Self?"-The Book of Pleasure
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Gavin W. Semple (Zos-Kia: An Introductory Essay on the Art and Sorcery of Austin Osman Spare)
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The Self is always 'upstream' of what is conceived by it, or what we perceive of that. "Ideas of Self in conflict cannot be slain, by resistance they are a reality - no Death or cunning has overcome them but is their reinforcement of energy" {The Book of Pleasure p. 17).
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Gavin W. Semple (Zos-Kia: An Introductory Essay on the Art and Sorcery of Austin Osman Spare)
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Spare calls the 'NeitherNeither' principle: "The Absolute appears to become other than itself, for it is sufficient; it is and is not, neither is it beyond, nor in, nor of me or anything: it is 'Neither-Neither'" (The Logomachy of Zos).
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Gavin W. Semple (Zos-Kia: An Introductory Essay on the Art and Sorcery of Austin Osman Spare)
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Through it comes immunity from all sorrow, therefore the spirit of ecstasy. Renouncing everything by the means shown, take shelter in it. Surely it is the abode of the CIA?" THE BOOK OF PLEASURE P. 17
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Gavin W. Semple (Zos-Kia: An Introductory Essay on the Art and Sorcery of Austin Osman Spare)
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[...] Forgeting time with those things which were essential reflecting their meaninglessness, the moment is beyond time and its virtue has happened. [...] With a smile and a mighty sigh that awakens nostalgias of the infinite.
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Gavin W. Semple (Zos-Kia: An Introductory Essay on the Art and Sorcery of Austin Osman Spare)
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The 'Self is the 'Neither-Neither,' nothing omitted, indissoluble, beyond prepossession... The desire, will and belief ceasing to exist as separate.
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Gavin W. Semple (Zos-Kia: An Introductory Essay on the Art and Sorcery of Austin Osman Spare)
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The new law shall be the arcana of the mystic unbalanced 'Does not matter - need not be,' there is no necessitation, 'please yourself is its creed."THE BOOK OF PLEASURE P. 17
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Gavin W. Semple (Zos-Kia: An Introductory Essay on the Art and Sorcery of Austin Osman Spare)
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Shall I speak of that unique intensity without form? Know ye the ecstasy within? The pleasures between ego and self? At that time there is no thought of others; there is NO THOUGHT. Thither I go and none may lead..." ANATHEMA OF ZOS P. 16
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Gavin W. Semple (Zos-Kia: An Introductory Essay on the Art and Sorcery of Austin Osman Spare)
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Directly we desire, we have lost all; 'we are' what we desire, therefore we never obtain. Desire nothing, and there is nothing that you shall not realise." - THE BOOK OF PLEASURE P.30
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Gavin W. Semple (Zos-Kia: An Introductory Essay on the Art and Sorcery of Austin Osman Spare)
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Whatever you really want, you can get. The want first rises 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. The symbol drops down into the subconscious. You have to forget all about it. In fact, you must play at hideand seek with yourself. And while you're wanting that particular thing, you must resolutely starve all your lesser desires. By doing that, you make the whole self, conscious and subconscious, flow toward your main object. And you'll obtain it.
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Gavin W. Semple (Zos-Kia: An Introductory Essay on the Art and Sorcery of Austin Osman Spare)
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Dreams are translated by a parallelism, not by free association: there is no dream censor, but an amoral thinking by symbol, ideograph and metaphor..."-THE LOGOMACHY OF ZOS
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Gavin W. Semple (Zos-Kia: An Introductory Essay on the Art and Sorcery of Austin Osman Spare)
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Conscious desire is the negation of possession: the procrastination of reality. Make thy desire subconscious; the organic is creative impulse to will." -The Focus of Life (p.9)
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Gavin W. Semple (Zos-Kia: An Introductory Essay on the Art and Sorcery of Austin Osman Spare)
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What has orbit is negative to a converse experient: when and where you are positive, Otherness becomes rotative to you."-THE LOGOMACHY OF ZOS
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Gavin W. Semple (Zos-Kia: An Introductory Essay on the Art and Sorcery of Austin Osman Spare)
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Union of 'Self to Ego' is commanded by obeying our more latent ideas. Self is the real thing, Ego what we realise of it."- THE LOGOMACHY OF ZOS
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Gavin W. Semple (Zos-Kia: An Introductory Essay on the Art and Sorcery of Austin Osman Spare)
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Freedom from the necessity of law, realisation by the very wish, is the ultimate goal."- The Book of Pleasure
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Gavin W. Semple (Zos-Kia: An Introductory Essay on the Art and Sorcery of Austin Osman Spare)
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Does an abstract, when symbolised, take on sentience? Yes, inasmuch as we react and feel the same as from an actual. When we so formulate ideas they become as finite automata (familiars) that will react 'as if sentient; thereof, 'sentient symbols.'" THE LOGOMACHY OF ZOS
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Gavin W. Semple (Zos-Kia: An Introductory Essay on the Art and Sorcery of Austin Osman Spare)
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Verily he steals the fire from heaven: the greatest act of bravery in the world" {The Book of Pleasure p. 3 8).
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Gavin W. Semple (Zos-Kia: An Introductory Essay on the Art and Sorcery of Austin Osman Spare)
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The effort of remembering- the ecstasis of trance, ritual or dreaming we may experience spontaneous impressions of deep memories. Some are remote, elusive and barely sensed, while others have the vivid impact of reality. They may summon no image, but linger as haunting nostalgias of prescience. Always they are obsessively familiar yet unknown, somehow strangely 'other'; unbidden they reach forth to touch us like fond, half remembered lovers.
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Gavin W. Semple (Zos-Kia: An Introductory Essay on the Art and Sorcery of Austin Osman Spare)
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Moreover, each one of us recapitulates the entire order of evolution on Earth, from protozoa to human, during the nine months of our incubation within the womb; indeed, throughout our lives we carry our ancestors and their wisdom with us.
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Gavin W. Semple (Zos-Kia: An Introductory Essay on the Art and Sorcery of Austin Osman Spare)
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Atavistic Nostalgia' - literally the 'homesickness of ancestry'. In The Book of Pleasure he describes subconsciousness as 'The Storehouse of Memories with an Ever-Open Door'.
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Gavin W. Semple (Zos-Kia: An Introductory Essay on the Art and Sorcery of Austin Osman Spare)
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Everything happens at all times
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Gavin W. Semple (Zos-Kia: An Introductory Essay on the Art and Sorcery of Austin Osman Spare)
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Out of the past cometh this new thing...
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Gavin W. Semple (Zos-Kia: An Introductory Essay on the Art and Sorcery of Austin Osman Spare)
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Inspiration is a minor mutation evoked by a passionate nostalgia from our heritage." THE LOGOMACHY OF ZOS
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Gavin W. Semple (Zos-Kia: An Introductory Essay on the Art and Sorcery of Austin Osman Spare)
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In truth, as sentient creatures we are creative all the time, and we are all much better artists than we think. It is the unwilled artistry of our believing that creates the fiction we inhabit, the web of illusion that ensorcels us: "Your desires shall become flesh, your dreams reality and no fear shall alter it one whit." ANATHEMA OF ZOS P. 10
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Gavin W. Semple (Zos-Kia: An Introductory Essay on the Art and Sorcery of Austin Osman Spare)
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The chief cause of genius is realisation of 'I' by an emotion that allows the lightning assimilation of what is perceived. This emotion is immoral in that it allows free association of knowledge without the accessories of belief. Its condition is, therefore, ignorance of 'I am' and 'I am not' with absentmindedness as believing. Its most excellent state is the 'Neither-Neither,' the free or atmospheric 7."' THE BOOK OF PLEASURE P.43
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Gavin W. Semple (Zos-Kia: An Introductory Essay on the Art and Sorcery of Austin Osman Spare)
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In the temporal and spatial duality which is our habitual perception, we are never entirely 'here and now', but then and gone, or yet to be; therefore, as we experience it, all Self is atavism.
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Gavin W. Semple (Zos-Kia: An Introductory Essay on the Art and Sorcery of Austin Osman Spare)
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Yet Self has no past or future, it is eternal present, eternally recurring.
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Gavin W. Semple (Zos-Kia: An Introductory Essay on the Art and Sorcery of Austin Osman Spare)
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This focus 'I' called consciousness is unaware of its entire living embodiments but alternates and epitomises their personalities"- The Focus of Life (p. 19)
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Gavin W. Semple (Zos-Kia: An Introductory Essay on the Art and Sorcery of Austin Osman Spare)
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[...] for Death is not an end, but a posture; the poising of awareness upon the knife-edge of Neither-Neither, at the very threshold of rebirth.
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Gavin W. Semple (Zos-Kia: An Introductory Essay on the Art and Sorcery of Austin Osman Spare)
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We who are fragmented, dismembered, seek ever to complete our unity.
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Gavin W. Semple (Zos-Kia: An Introductory Essay on the Art and Sorcery of Austin Osman Spare)
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Our amnesia covers so much: all our early history and potentials - now latent, unknown yet..." THE LOGOMACHY OF ZOS
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Gavin W. Semple (Zos-Kia: An Introductory Essay on the Art and Sorcery of Austin Osman Spare)
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The nostalgic yearning of Zos for re-union with Kia compels the 'effort of remembering' which is the key of Spare's doctrine. Yet our remembering is in truth an 'un-forgetting' - a drawing back of the veil of our inmost nature, to dispel the "cloudy enemies bom of stagnant self-hypnotism
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Gavin W. Semple (Zos-Kia: An Introductory Essay on the Art and Sorcery of Austin Osman Spare)
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[...] the crooked path uncoiling endlessly from the foot that treads it - this is the task of the sorcerer: a star-guided wanderer in the labyrinth of 'I'.
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Gavin W. Semple (Zos-Kia: An Introductory Essay on the Art and Sorcery of Austin Osman Spare)