Austin Osman Spare Quotes

The more Chaotic I am, the more complete I am.

For I am I: ergo, the truth of myself; my own sphinx, conflict, chaos, vortex—asymmetric to all rhythms, oblique to all paths. I am the prism between black and white: mine own unison in duality.

And remember, you shall suffer all things and again suffer: until you have sufficient sufferance to accept all things.

Great thoughts are against all doctrines of conformity

Only Art is Eternal Wisdom; what is not Art soon perishes. Art is the unconscious love of all things. ‘Learning’ will cease and Reality will become known when it comes to pass that every human being is an Artist.

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

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 — 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.

The soul is the ancestral animals. The body is their knowledge.

The learning of ‘How’ is the eternal ‘Why’ – unanswered! A genius is such, because he does not know how or why.

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.

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.

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 ‘Free Morality,’ it has no sin – then most assuredly Art is all we dare express without excuse.

There is no illusion but consciousness! This consciousness is ever the smiling monument commemorating "Whether you ever really enjoyed Life"! 

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 ‘Self ’ comes into its own.

Alas!’ he writes, ‘I am morbid, And have put a purple colour about my brow. All men seem eating and drinking the “Joy 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. “Hail! the Jewel in the Lotus.

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. 

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.

Quietism, Buddhism, and other religions, everything which denies the flesh—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 pay—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 psychotics—they at least are secretive and inflict no religions on others. They prove the possibilities and utilities of 'as if' when totally accepted.

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.

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. 

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. 

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.

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 “knew all them symbols and more

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.

It was the straying that found the path direct.

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]

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.  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. 

If you could truly believe, we should realise the virtue of it. We are not free to believe .  .  .  .  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. 

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

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 ‘I’ by an emotion that allows the instant assimilation of what is perceived. This emotion could be called ‘immoral’ in that it allows the free association of knowledge without being encumbered by belief. Its condition is therefore ignorance of ‘I am’ and ‘I am not’: instead of believing, there is a kind of absentmindedness. Its most excellent state is the ‘NeitherNeither’, the free or atmospheric ‘I’.

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.

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.

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.  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.

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.  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. 

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. 

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.

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]

In what way can it act as master? Through scores of incarnations, the ‘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 Kiã, 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 Kiã. It would seem that we cannot be too careful in our choice, for it determines the body we inhabit. Thus forever from ‘self ’ do I fashion the Kiã, 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 Kiã 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 ‘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 ‘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.

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? 

The intrinsic non-existence at the heart of entity is what Spare designated the Kiã, 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 ‘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.

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.

Assimilated by the deceit of its divine origin, its tenets are reward for obedience, punishment for transgression, both holding good for all time (this world and another).  This moral code is a dramatised burlesque of the conceptive faculty, but is never so perfect or simple in that it allows latitude for change in any sense, so becomes dissociated from evolution, etc; and this divorce loses any utility and of necessity for its own preservation and the sympathy desired, evolves contradictions or a complication to give relationship. Transgressing its commandments, dishonesty shows us its iniquity, for our justification; or simultaneously we create an excuse or reason for the sin by a distortion of the moral code, that allows some incongruity. (Usually retaing a few unforgiveable sins- and an unwritten law.)

Faith is denial, or the metaphor Idiotcy, hence it always fails. To make their bondage more secure Governments force religion down the throats of their slaves, and it always suceeds; those who escape it are but few, therefore their honour is the greater. When faith perishes, the "Self" shall come into its own.

Belief is ever its own tempter to believe differently. You cannot believe freedom into existence, but can you free yourself from belief ? You cannot believe the ‘Truth’ into existence either, but you need not compromise yourself. The Way of Life is not by ‘means’, not even of my own doctrines, though they may allow the self-appointed to emulate my own realisation – may I never cease to be embarrassed by this! How ironic it is that the Man of Sorrows is here the teacher! I have taught – would I choose to teach myself or yourself again? No – not even for a gift from heaven! Mastership equals learning and constant unlearning! Almighty is he who has not learned – and Almighty also is the baby, who only assimilates! The most uncouth of fools now asks: ‘But how can we escape the inevitable evolutions of conception, since all is forever conceiving?’ My answer is true for all situations: listen, you who are God already, yet still want to be God. When the mind is confused to the point that it comes to a standstill,it is then that the capability of attempting the apparently impossible becomes known: by that simple state of ‘Neither-Neither’ the Ego becomes the ‘Silent Watcher’ or ‘Observer’ and understands it all!29 The ‘Why’and ‘How’of desire are contained within the mystic state of ‘Neither-Neither’, and it is such a source of nutrition to life that it may be called the ‘milk state’. Although I am but a clownish fool, all my ideas and yours have come out of it, and although I myself am lazy, regard me as an old sinner who would see others exalted before himself.

I deas about the ‘self ’ conflict with each other and cannot be slain – their very resistance is what gives them the appearance of reality. Neither death nor cunning can overcome them, but only reinforce their energy. The dead are reborn again, and find themselves lying in the womb of conscience. To allow full development is to assert decay. On the other hand, non-resistance to these ideas represents a regression to primordial simplicity, and to the original unity, uncontaminated by ‘ideas’. In this way, non-resistance to these ideas creates the state of ‘does not matter – please yourself ’. The conception ‘I am not’ necessarily follows “I am’as surely as night follows day.The idea of pain implies the idea of pleasure, and so it is with all ideas. By means of this duality, remember to laugh at all times, recognise all things, resist nothing, and there will then be no conflict, incompatibility or compulsion.

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.

Sigils are made by combining the letters of the alphabet after a process of simplification. For example, the word ‘Woman’ in Sigil form is or or , etc. The word ‘Tiger’ or , ‘Hat’ , ‘Come’ , ‘Moon’ , ‘It ’ or , etc. The idea is to obtain a simple form that can be easily visualised at will, yet has not too much pictorial relation to the desire. The true method has a much greater virtue, which cannot be explained briefly, being the secret of thought form, as degrees of suggestion, and what is in a name.74 We have now agreed as to how a Sigil is made, and what virtue it has. Verily, whatever a person believes by sigils is the truth, and is always fulfilled. This system of sigils is believed

agical obsession is that state of mind when the mind is illuminated by sub-conscious activity evoked voluntarily by means of deliberate magical formula at a time of our own choosing, for the purpose of inspiration. It is the condition of genius. Any other form of obsession is a matter of ‘the blind leading the blind’, known as mediumism, a passive opening out of the ego to any external influence, elementals or disembodied energy. Such a transmuted consciousness actually constitutes a resistance to ‘true’ unconscious activity. It is a form of voluntary insanity, a sleep-walking of the Ego with no kind of form or control to guide it, hence its emanations tend to be either stupid in suggestion, or memories of childhood.

Remember, time is an easy, natural and spontaneous imagination of the experienced. What may be called the primordial experience was its completion, so there is no end to learning. What you learn tomorrow is determined by what you have done, so is the accomplished lesson of yesterday. Never learning today what you can do tomorrow is called loss, but is theft from time, wholesomeness and rejuvenation. Repeat this delay again and again until you arrive at spontaneity, and can accept chance in safety. The pursuit of learning by believing is the grotesque incubator of stupidity.

Sigils are the art of believing; my invention for making belief unconscious66 and therefore true belief. A wish to believe something is of necessity incompatible with the existing belief it is to replace, and cannot be realized through the inhibition of the unconscious belief – the negation of the wish. Faith moves no mountains, not until it has removed itself. Supposing I wish to be ‘great’ (nevermind that I am): to have ‘faith’ and believe that I am does not make me great, even if I were to keep up the pretence to the end… it would be ceremonial insincerity, the affirmation of my incapacity. I am incapable, because that is the true belief, and the one imprinted on my unconscious. To believe differently is but affectation. Therefore imagining or having ‘faith’ that I am ‘great’ is a superficial belief. The reaction and denial is caused by the troublesome welling up of the unconscious incapacity. Denial or faith does not change or annihilate it, but reinforces it and preserves it.

Belief well earns the terrible hatred of the vitality. Belief is not freedom. Belief creates its necessary experience, progress germinates in retrogression. Consider the reality is somewhere: and your belief may be too small for its habitation. Oh, ye of much faith in God, merge into it by the worship of self! Ah! foolish man, worship the glorious in freedom. When death approaches the faith in God and desire of woman will not save you, what are their use when withering and decay sets in and the body is an object of disgust? And what is the use of knowledge and charity when reality is known? Unsheathe the sword of self; ideas of the Almighty should be constantly slain and righteousness should be inquired into.

Oh God, thou art the stagnant environment’.12 All is quackery: these religions, whose very existence depends on their failure, are full of misery and confusion. They have only multiplied arguments, and are as full of argument as they are evil. They are crowded with non-essentials, yet are so barren of any free pleasure in either this life or another, that I cannot uphold their doctrine. Their criterion for enjoyment is death! It would be better for a man to renounce them all, and embrace his own invincible purpose. He cannot go any further than that, and this is his only real release. By it he may put his pleasure where he will, and find satisfaction.

The Ego is swept up like a leaf in a gale, and in the swiftness of the indeterminable, that which is always about to happen becomes truth to the Ego. Things that were obscure now become self- evident, as the Ego pleases itself by its own will. This is the end of the duality of the consciousness: it is the negation of all faith by simply living. In place of belief is a positive death state, and all that remains of belief is sleep, a negative state. This sleep is the dead body of all we believe. The Ego, which was previously subjected to law, now seeks stillness in sleep and death. The Death Posture and its alternative reality represent freedom from law, and ascension from duality. In the final cataclysm, the universe may be reduced to ashes, and noone will be sorry, but the Ego will escape the Judgement! In that final freedom there is nothing that is ‘necessary’ – dare I say more? I would rather commit a sin than compromise myself.

Oh, you men of small pleasure and enterprise, oblivious to your purpose, fault-finding, avaricious and sinful, who cannot live without women and cannot enjoy without pain, fearsome, inconstant, diseased and withered, dependent, cruel, deceived and liars, the worst of men!

Know all ritual, ceremony, and conditions to be arbitrary (you have yourself to please): in the end, they are just a hindrance and a confusion; their origin was as an amusement, but they were later used for the purpose of deceiving others from knowing the truth and inducing ignorance and ,as always, the high priests involved were the most deceived themselves. 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 stupidities too numerous to relate. Their entire doctrine is 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 lose it by their teaching. They can only dogmatise, implant and multiply that which is entirely superficial. Were

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 ideas of ‘right’ and ‘wrong’.73

I f 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 perceiving it, but by becoming it. Closing the gateways of sense is of 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 using them, you must learn the truth about oneself from him alone who knows the truth… yourself.

Something is causing Pain and something energizes the Agony: may it not be caused through the latent Idea of Supreme Bliss? And this eternal expectation, this amassing of ornament on decay, this ever-abiding thought- is coincidental with the vanity preceding death? O, squalid thought from the most morbid spleen how can I devour thee and save my Soul? Ever did it answer back-"Pay homage where due: the Physician is the Lord of existence!" This superstition of medicine-is it not the essence of cowardice, the agent of Death?  Strange no one remembers being dead? Have you ever seen the Sun?-If you have then you have seen nothing dead-in spite of you different belief! Which is the more dead "you" or this corpse? Which of you has the greater degree of consciousness? Judging by expression alone-which of you appears enjoying Life most? May not this "belief" in death be the "will" that attempts "death" for your satisfaction, but can give you no more than sleep, decay, change-hell? This constant somnambulism is "the unsatisfactory.

let the practitioner imagine within himself the mystic union of the Ego and Absolute. When the resulting nectar of ecstasy is emitted, let him drink of it again and again. If this sexual ecstasy manifests itself physically, let him imagine another’s body; he has that Sigil for just such an emergency. Although this is not the primary purpose of the exercise, he will find it exceedingly agreeable. After this astonishing experience his passion is incomparable: there is nothing in the world he will desire unless he wills. That is why people do not understand me. The ecstasy in its emotion generates everything. Know it as the nectar of life, the Syllabub61 of Sun and Moon. Verily he steals the fire from heaven: the greatest act of bravery in the world.

The desire to be ‘great’can only become unconscious at a time of vacuity67 and by giving it (Sigil) form. If you become conscious of the Sigil form at any time (other than in a specifically magical context), you should suppress it, by deliberately striving to forget it. By this means it becomes active and dominates the unconscious: its form is nourished and is allowed to become attached to the unconscious mind. It thus becomes an unconscious belief, and once this has been accomplished, it has a chance to be realized and become reality. You become your concept of ‘greatness’.68

a process of self-deception to satisfy and summarily persuade yourself of righteousness. What one among us has any excuse but self-love? We do not create or confess a morality that is convenient, that lends itself to growth, and remains simple, that allows transgression without excuse or punishment. It would be wise and commonsense to do so, whatever the state of affairs in your mind. Nature eventually denies that which it affirms: Through permanent association with the same moral code we help desire to transgress. Desire of those things denied, the more you restrict the more you sin, but desire equally desires preservation of moral instinct, so desire is its own conflict (and weakly enough). Have no fear, the Bull of earth has long had nothing to do with your unclean conscience, your stagnant ideas of morality. The microbe alone would seem without fear!

beyond Will and Belief is Self-Love. Self-love is free to believe what it desires. You are free to believe in nothing related to belief. The ‘Truth’ is not difficult to understand: the Truth has no will, and will no truth! The truth is that ‘will’ has never believed. ‘Could be’ is the only immediate thing we can say with certainty. Does this haunting Sphinx teach us the value of the ‘will to...’ anything? Then there can be no greater risk than ‘absolute Knowledge’: if only a little knowledge of it is dangerous, then what about Omniscience? There is nothing one can add to an already mighty power!

The ‘I’ principle has reached the ‘does not matter, need not be’ state, and is not related to form. There is nothing but it, and nothing beyond it, so therefore it alone is complete and eternal. It is indestructible itself, but has the power to destroy – therefore it alone is true freedom and existence. Through it comes immunity from all sorrow: therefore its spirit is ecstasy. Renounce everything by the Neither-Neither meditation, and take shelter in the Neither-Neither state. Surely it is the abode of the Kiã? It is our unconditional release from duality and time: it is effective even if only symbolically reached. Once the belief is free from all ideas except pleasure, the Karma of displeasure speedily exhausts itself through Karmic law. In that moment beyond time, the ego becomes its own gratifier by its own law, its every wish gratified without the payment of sorrow. Here, there is no necessitation; ‘does not matter-need not be’ and ‘please your self ’ are its creeds. In that state, what you wish to believe can be true, without subjection to beliefs from outside. The Ego has now become the Absolute, and can be pleased by this imitation of the means of government: he uses these means, but is himself ungoverned. Kiã is the supreme bliss; this is the psychology of ecstasy by non-resistance.

Sigils are monograms of thought, for the government of energy (all hereditary crests, monograms, etc., are Sigils and represent 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 with that particular desire (at the magical time).The desire is thus protected from detection by the Ego, which cannot then restrain or attach the desire to its own transitory images, memories and worries, but allows it free passage to the unconscious.

The meat market itself was probably a greater influence on Spare than his first school. It offered a spectacle of thousands of animal carcasses, which arrived under the market by a specially built railway before being displayed and disposed of at ground level.

Virtue: Pure Art 

Oh, God, thou art the stagnant environment." All is quackery: these religions whose very existence depend on their failure, are so full of misery and confusion, have only multiplied arguments, as full of argument as they are evil, so crowded with non-essentials, being so barren of any free pleasure in this life or another, I cannot uphold their doctrines. Their criterion for enjoyment-death! Better it were a man renounce them all, and embrace his own invincible purpose. He cannot go further, and this is his only release. By it he may put his pleasure where he will, and find satisfaction. 

É através dos enganos que se acha o caminho correto.

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.

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.

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.

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!

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.

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.

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.

The nature of belief equals all possibilities ultimately true by identification through culture to an idea of time, so what is not timely is not true, and what is not true, prognostication. Thought of one thing, implies the possibility of another idea as contradicting but not dissociated, belief is to make “one” more convincing. The condition of belief is the denial or limit imposed on the capability of the vitality. To believe at all as such is a concentration and schooling to exclude the implied by adopting a a hypothesis or faith that reflects non-worryingly or deceitfully rationalizes the rejected. Truth is not the truth of formula.

He that entirely loves himself induces self-love only. He is akin to the great purpose, his actions explained for him, good seen of his evil, without knowing, everyone satisfied with his will. Do not Heaven and Earth unite daily in spontaneous homage to this will of self-love? No man can show greater self-love, than by giving up all he believes. Why do I value this self-love before all else? Is it not because I may be free to believe in evil, but have no thought that anything can do me injury? All is self-love, the people of the world, if they only knew, are its devotees. My new law is the great clue to life. If the world could understand this, the rotten fabric discarded, they would diligently follow the way in their own hearts, there would be no further desire for unity . . . . Try and imagine what this implies.

Belief is ever its own tempter to believe differently

He who is lawless is free. Necessity and time are conventional phenomena. Without hypocrisy or fear ye could do as ye wish

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.

Unworthy of a soul-your metamorphosis is laborious of morbid rebirth to give habitance to the shabby sentiments, the ugly familiarities, the calligraphic pandemonium-a world of abundance acquired of greed. Thus are ye outcasts! Ye habitate dung-heaps; your glorious palaces are hospitals set amid cemeteries. [...] Can you realize of Heaven when it exists WITHOUT?

To believe or unbelieve is the question. Verily, if you believe of the least-ye needs must thrive all things. Ye are of all things, of all knowledge, and, be like, will you or stupidity to further self- misery!

Know ye what ye want? What ye ask? Know ye virtue from maniacal muttering? Sin from folly? Desiring a teacher, who among ye are worthy to learn? Brutally shall I teach the gospel of soul-suicide, of contraception, not preservation and procreation. Fools! Ye have made vital the belief the Ego is eternal, fulfilling a purpose, not lost to you.

Know my purpose: To be a stranger unto myself, the enemy of truth. Uncertain of what ye believe, belike ye half-desire?

Empty of cosmos are they who hunger after righteousness. Already are the merciful spent. Extinct are the pure in heart. Governed are the meek and of Heaven earn similar disgust. Your society is a veneered barbarity. Ye are precocious primitives. Where is your success other than through hatred? There is no good understanding in your world.

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.

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...

...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.

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)

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

Death is named the great unknown. Assuredly, death is the great chance. An adventure in will, that translates into body." THE FOCUS OF LIFE

What is there to believe, but in Self?"-The Book of Pleasure

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).

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).

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

The 'Self is the 'Neither-Neither,' nothing omitted, indissoluble, beyond prepossession... The desire, will and belief ceasing to exist as separate.

Freedom from the necessity of law, realisation by the very wish, is the ultimate goal."- The Book of Pleasure

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

Verily he steals the fire from heaven: the greatest act of bravery in the world" {The Book of Pleasure p. 3 8).

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.