The
Sorceries of Zos
Liber XII
From Cults of the Shadow
By Kenneth Grant
Presented by Frater Caeruleus
Orgone Farming by
Clever "E.T." Succubae
Sorcery and witchcraft are the degenerate offspring of occult
traditions coeval with those described in the second chapter. The
popular conception of witchcraft, shaped by the anti-Christian
manifestations that occurred in the Middle Ages is so distorted and
so inadequate that to try and interpret the symbols of its
mysteries, perverted and debased as they are, without reference to
the vastly ancient systems from which they derive is like mistaking
the tip of an iceberg for its total mass.
It has been suggested by some authorities that the original witches
sprang from a race of Mongol origin of which the Lapps are the sole
surviving remnants. This may or may not be so, but these ’mongols’
were not human. They were degenerate survivals of a pre-human phase
of our planet’s history generally -- though mistakenly -- classified
as Atlantean. The characteristic that distinguished them from the
others of their kind was the ability to project consciousness into
animal forms, and the power they possessed of reifying
thought-forms. The bestiaries of all the races of the earth are
littered with the results of their sorceries.
They were non-human entities; that is to say they pre-dated the
human life-wave on this planet, and their powers -- which would
today appear unearthly -- derived from extra-spatial dimensions.
They impregnated the aura of the earth with the magical seed from
which the human foetus was ultimately generated.
Arthur Machen was, perhaps, near the truth of the matter when he
suggested that the fairies and little people of folklore were
decorous devices concealing processes of non-human sorcery repellent
to mankind. (1)
Machen, Blackwood, Crowley, Lovecraft, Fortune, and others,
frequently used as a theme for their writings the influx of
extra-terrestrial powers which have been moulding the history of our
planet since time began; that is, since time began for us, for we
are only too prone to suppose that we were here first and that we
alone are here now, whereas the most ancient occult traditions
affirm that we were neither the first nor are we the only ones to
people the earth; the Great Old Ones and the Elder Gods find echoes
in the myths and legends of all peoples.
Austin Spare claimed to have had direct experience of the existence
of extraterrestrial intelligences, and Crowley -- as his
autobiography makes abundantly clear -- devoted a lifetime to
proving that extra-terrestrial and superhuman consciousness can and
does exist independently of the human organism.
(2)
As explained in Images and Oracles of Austin Osman Spare
(3), Spare
was initiated into the vital current of ancient and creative sorcery
by an aged woman named Paterson, who claimed descent form a line of
Salem witches. The formation of Spare’s Cult of the Zos and the
Kia(4) owes much to his contact with
Witch Paterson who provides the model for many of his ’sabbatic’ drawings and paintings. Much of the
occult lore that she transmitted to him suffuses two of his books --
The Book of
Pleasure and the Focus of Life.
(5) In the last years of
his life he embodied further esoteric researches in a grimoire
(6)
which he had intended publishing as a sequel to his two other books.
Although death prevented its publication, the manuscript survives,
and the substance of the grimoire forms the basis of this chapter.
Spare concentrated the theme of his doctrine in the following
Affirmation Creed of Zos vel Thanatos.
"I believe in the flesh ’as now’ and
forever... for I am the Light, the Truth, the Law, the Way, and
none shall come unto anything except through his flesh.
"Did I not show you the eclectic path between ecstasies; that
precarious funambulatory way...
"But you had no courage, were tired, and feared. THEN AWAKE!
Dehypnotize yourselves from the poor reality you be-live and
be-lie. For the great Noontide is here, the great bell has
struck ... Let others await involuntary immolation, the forced
redemption so certain for many apostates to Life. Now, in this
day, I ask you to search your memories, for great unities are
near. The Inceptor of all memory is your Soul. Life is desire,
Death is reformation ... I am the resurrection ... I, who
transcend ecstasy by ecstasy, meditating Need Not Be in
Self-love...
This creed, informed by the dynamism of
Spare’s will and his great ability as an artist, created a Cult on
the astral plane that attracted to itself all the elements naturally
orientated to it. He referred to it as
Zos Kia Cultus, and its
votaries claimed affinity on the following terms:
-
Our Sacred Book:
The Book of
Pleasure.
-
Our Path: The eclectic path
between ecstasies; the precarious funambulatory way.
-
Our Deity: The All-Prevailing
Woman. (’And I strayed with her, into the path direct’.)
-
Our Creed: The Living Flesh. (Zos):
(’Again I say: This is your great moment of reality -- the
living flesh’).
-
Our Sacrament: The Sacred
Inbetweenness Concepts.
-
Our Word: Does Not Matter-Need
Not Be.
-
Our Eternal Abode: The mystic
state of Neither-Neither. The Atomospheric ’I’. (Kia).
-
Our Law: To Trespass all Laws.
The Zos and the Kia are represented by
the Hand and the Eye, the instruments of sentiency and vision. They
form the foundation of the New Sexuality, which Spare evolved by
combining them to form a magical art -- the art of visualizing
sensation, of ’ becoming one with all sensation’, and of
transcending the dual polarities of existence by the annihilation of
separate identity through the mechanics of the Death Posture.
(7)
Long ago, a Persian poet described in a few words the object of
Spare’s New Sexuality.
"The kingdom of I and We forsake,
and your home in annihilation make."
The New Sexuality, in the sense that
Spare conceived it, is the sexuality not of positive dualities but
of the Great Void, the Negative, the Ain: The Eye of Infinite
Potential. The New Sexuality is, simply, the manifestation of
non-manifestation, or of Universe ’B’, as Bertiaux would have it,
which is equivalent to Spare’s Neither-Neither concept. Universe ’B’
represents the absolute difference of that world of ’all otherness’
to anything pertaining to the known world, or Universe ’A’. Its
gateway is Daath, sentinelled by the Demon Choronzon.
Spare
describes this concept as ’the gateway of all inbetweenness’. In
terms of Voodoo, this idea is implicit in the Petro rites with their
emphasis upon the spaces between the cardinal points of the compass:
the off-beat rhythms of the drums that summon the loa from beyond
the Veil and formulate the laws of their manifestation.
(8)
Spare’s system of sorcery, as expressed
in
Zos Kia Cultus, continues in a straight line not only the
Petro
tradition of Voodoo, but also the Vama Marg of Tantra, with its
eight directions of space typified by the Yantra of the Black
Goddess, Kali: the Cross of the Four Quarters plus the inbetweenness
concepts that together compose the eightfold Cross, the eight-petalled
Lotus, a synthetic symbol of the Goddess of the Seven Stars plus her
son, Set or Sirius. (9)
The mechanics of the New Sexuality are based upon the dynamics of
the Death Posture, a formula evolved by Spare for the purpose of
reifying the negative potential in terms of positive power. In
ancient Egypt the mummy was the type of this formula, and the
simulation by the Adept of the state of death
(10) -- in Tantric
practice -- involves also the total stilling of the psychosomatic
functions.
The formula has been used by Adepts not
necessarily working with specifically tantric or magical formulae,
notably by the celebrated Advaitin Rishi, Bhagavan Shri Ramana
Maharshi of Tiruvannamalai,(11)) who attained Supreme Enlightenment
by simulating the process of death; and also by the Bengal Vaishnavite,
Thakur Haranath, who was taken for dead and actually
prepared for burial after a ’death trance’ which lasted several
hours and from which he emerged with a totally new consciousness
that transformed even his bodily constitution and appearance.
(12)
It is possible that Shri Meher Baba, of Poona, during the period of
amnesia that afflicted him in early life, also experienced a form of
death from which he emerged with power to enlighten others and to
lead a large movement in his name.
The theory of the Death Posture, first described in
The Book of
Pleasure, was developed independently of the
experiences of the above mentioned Masters about whom nothing was
published in any European language at that time.
(13)
The Rosicrucian mystique of the pastos containing the corpse of
Christian Rosencreutz -- dramatized by MacGregor Mathers in the 5° =
6° Ceremony of the Golden Dawn -- resumes the mystery of this
essentially Egyptian formula of the mummified Osiris. Spare was
acquainted with this version of the Mystery. He became a member of
Crowley’s A:.A:., for a brief period, in 1910, and the Golden Dawn
rituals -- published shortly afterwards in The Equinox
(14) -- may
have been available to him.
The concepts of death and sexuality are inextricably connected.
Saturn, death, and Venus, life, are twin aspects of the Goddess.
That they are, in a mystical sense, one idea is evidenced by the
nature of the sexual act. The dynamic activity connected with the
drive to know, to penetrate, to illumine, culminates in a stillness,
a silence, a cessation of all effort which itself dissolves in the
tranquility of total negation. The identity of these concepts is
explicit in the ancient Chinese equation 0 = 2, where naught
symbolizes the negative, unmanifest potential of creation, and the
two the two polaritites involved in its realization.
The Goddess represents the negative
phase: the atmospheric ’I’ symbolized by that all-seeing Eye with
all its ayin symbolism;(15) and the twins -- Set-Horus -- represent
the phase of 2, or duality. The lightning-swift alternations of
these terminals, active-passive, are positive emanations of the
Void, i.e. the manifestation of the Unmanifest, and the Hand is the
symbol of this creative, power-manifesting duality.
(16)
The supreme symbol of
Zos Kia Cultus therefore resumes that of the
Scarlet Woman [i.e.
BABALON -B:.B:.] and is reminiscent of Crowley’s
Cult of Love under Will. The Scarlet Woman embodies the Fire Snake,
control of which causes ’change to occur in conformity with will’.
(17) The energized enthusiasm of the Will is the key to Crowley’s
Cult, and it is analogous to the technique of magically induced
obsession which Spare uses to reify the ’inherent dream’.
(18)
One of the foremost magicians of our time -- Salvador Dali -
developed a system of magical reification at about the same time
that Crowley and Spare were elaborating their doctrines. Dali’s
system of ’paranoiac-critical activity’ evokes echoes of resurgent
atavisms that are reflected into the concrete world of images by a
process of obsession similar to that induced by the Death Posture.
Dali’s birth in 1904 -- the year in which Crowley received The Book
of the Law -- makes him, literally, a child of the New Aeon; one of
the first! His creative genius adumbrates at every stage of its
flight the flowering of the essential germ that has made him a
living embodiment of New Aeon consciousness, and of the ’Kingly Man’
described in AL.
Dali’s objects are reflected in the fluid and ever-shifting
luminosity of the Astral Light. They resolve themselves and melt
continually into the ’next step’,(19) the next phase of
consciousness expanding into the further image of Becoming.
Spare had already succeeded in isolating and concentrating desire in
a symbol which became sentient and therefore potentially creative
through the lightnings of the magnetized will. Dali, it seems, has
taken the process a step further. His formula of ’paranoiac-critical
activity’ is a development of the primal (African) concept of the
fetish, and it is instructive to compare Spare’s theory of
’visualized sensation’ with Dali’s definition of painting as ’hand
don colour photography of concrete irrationality’. Sensation is
essentially irrational, and its delineation in graphic form (’hand
done colour photography’) is identical with Spare’s method of
’visualized sensation’.
These magicians utilized human embodiments of power (shakti) which
appeared -- usually -- in feminine form. Each book that Crowley
produced had its corresponding shakti. The Rites of Eleusis (1910)
were powered, largely, by Leila Waddell. Book Four, Parts I & II
(1913) came through Soror Virakam (Mary d’ Este). Liber Aleph --
The
Book of Wisdom or Folly (1918) - was inspired by Soror Hilarion (Jane
Foster).
His great work, Magick in Theory and
Practice, was written mainly in 1920 in Cefalu, where Alostrael
(Leah Hirsig) supplied the magical impetus; and so on, up to the New
Aeon interpretation of the Tarot (The Book of Thoth), which he
produced in collaboration with Frieda Harris in 1944. Dali’s shakti
-- Gala -- was the channel through which the inspiring creative
current was fixed or visualized in some of the greatest paintings
the world has seen. And in the case of Austin Osman Spare, the
Fire
Snake assumed the form of Mrs. Paterson, a self-confessed witch who
embodied the sorceries of a cult so ancient that it was old in
Egypt’s infancy.
Spare’s grimoire is a concentration of the entire body of his work.
It comprises, in a sense, everything of magical or creative value
that he ever thought or imagined. Thus, if you posses a picture by
Zos, and that picture contains some of his sigillized spells, you
possess the whole grimoire, and you stand a great chance of being
swept up and attuned to the vibrations of
Zos Kia Cultus.
A little known aspect of Spare, an aspect that links up with his
friendship with Thomas Burke, (20) reveals the fact that a curious
Chinese occult society -- known as the Cult of the Ku - flourished
in London in the nineteen-twenties. Its headquarters may have been
in Peking, Spare did not say, perhaps he did not know; but its
London offshoot was not in Limehouse as one might have expected, but
in Stockwell, not far from a studio-flat that Spare shared with a
friend.
A secret session of the cult of the Ku
was witnessed by Spare, who seems to have been the only European
ever to have gained admittance. He does, in fact, seem to have been
the only European apart from Burke who had so much as heard of the
Cult. Spare’s experience is of exceptional interest by reason of its
close approximation to a form of dream control into which he was
initiated many years earlier by Witch Paterson.
The word Ku has several meanings in Chinese, but in this particular
case it denotes a peculiar form of sorcery involving elements which
Spare had already incorporated in his conception of the New
Sexuality. The Adepts of Ku worshipped a serpent goddess in the form
of a woman dedicated to the Cult. During an elaborate ritual she
would become possessed, with the result that she threw off, or
emanated, multiple forms of the goddess as sentient shadows endowed
with all the charms possessed by her human representative.
These shadow-women, impelled by some
subtle law of attraction, gravitated to one or other of the devotees
who sat in a drowsy condition around the entranced priestess. Sexual
congress with these shadows then occurred and it was the beginning
of a sinister form of dream-control involving journeys and
encounters in infernal regions. [one cannot help but note at this
point the strong sexual component coupled with "dream-state"
consciousness manipulations so intrinsic to the current "alien
abduction" phenomena. -B:.B:.]
The Ku would seem to be a form of the Fire Snake exteriorized astrally as a shadow-woman or succubus, congress with which enabled
the devotee to reify his ’inherent dream’. She was known as the
’whore of hell’ and her function was analogous to that of the
Scarlet Woman of Crowley’s Cult, the Suvasini of the Tantric Kaula
Circle, and the Fiendess of the Cult of the Black Snake. The
Chinese
Ku, or harlot of hell, is a shadowy embodiment of subconscious
desires (21) concentrated in the alluringly sensuous form of the
Serpent of Shadow Goddess.
The mechanics of dream control are in many ways similar to those
which effect conscious astral projection. My own system of dream
control derives from two sources: the formula of Eroto-Comatose
Lucidity discovered by Ida Nellidoff and adapted by Crowley to his
sex-magical techniques, (22) and
Spare’s system of Sentient Sigils
explained below.
Sleep should be preceded by some form of Karezza(23) during which a
specially chosen sigil symbolizing the desired object is vividly
visualized. In this manner the libido is baulked of its natural
fantasies and seeks satisfaction in the dream world. When the knack
is acquired the dream will be extremely intense and dominated by a
succubae, or shadow-woman, with whom sexual intercourse occurs
spontaneously. If the dreamer has acquired even a moderate degree of
proficiency in this technique he will be aware of the continued
presence of the sigil.
This he should bind upon the form of the
succubae in a place that is within range of his vision during
copulation, e.g., as a pendant suspended from her neck; as
ear-drops; or as the diadem in a circlet about her brow. Its locus
should be determined by the magician with respect to the position he
adopts during coitus. The act will then assume all the
characteristics of a Ninth Degree Working,(24) because the presence
of the Shadow-Woman will be experienced with a vivid intensity of
sensation and clarity of vision.
The sigil thus becomes sentient and in
due course the object of the Working materializes on the physical
plane. This object is, of course, determined by the desire embodied
in and represented by the sigil. [although the current crop of
succubae appear to enjoy dressing up as "space aliens," one cannot
help but note the striking similarities to ancient magickal rites
and indeed, question not only the immense secrecy behind these
rituals but also the underlying nature of organizations which hold
as their ultimate goal such "Ninth Degree (sex magick) Workings." -B:.B:.]
The important innovation in this system of dream control lies in the
transference of the Sigil from the waking to the dream state of
consciousness, and the evocation, in the latter state, of the
Shadow-woman. This process transforms an Eighth Degree Rite
(25)
into the similitude of the sexual act as used in Ninth Degree
Workings.
Briefly, the formula has three stages:
-
Karezza, or unculminating sexual
activity, with visualization of the Sigil until sleep
supervenes.
-
Sexual congress in the
dream-state with the Shadow-woman evoked by Stage I. The
Sigil should appear automatically at this second stage; if
it does not, the practice must be repeated at another time.
If it does, then the desired result will reify in Stage.
-
After awakening (i.e. in the
mundane world of everyday phenomena).
A word of explanation is, perhaps,
necessary concerning the term Karezza as used in the present
context. Retention of semen is a concept of central importance in
certain Tantric practices, the idea being that the bindu (seed) then
breeds astrally, not physically. In other words, an entity of some
sort is brought to birth at astral levels of consciousness. This,
and analogous techniques, have given rise to the impression -- quite
erroneous -- that celibacy is a sine qua non of magical success; but
such celibacy is of a purely local character and confined to the
physical plane, or waking state, alone. Celibacy, as commonly
understood, is therefore a meaningless parody or travesty of the
true formula.
Such is the initiated rationale of
Tantric celibacy, and some such interpretation undoubtedly applies
also to other forms of religious asceticism. The ’temptations’ of
the saints occurred on the astral plane precisely because the
physical channels had been deliberately blocked. The state of
drowsiness noted in the votaries of the Ku suggests that the ensuing
shadow-play was evoked after a fashion similar to that obtained by a
species of dream control.
Gerald Massey, Aleister Crowley, Austin Spare,
Dion Fortune, have --
each in their way -- demonstrated the bio-chemical basis of the
Mysteries. They achieved in the sphere of the ’occult’ that which
Wilhelm Reich achieved for psychology, and established it on a sure
bio-chemical basis.
Spare’s ’sentient symbols’ and ’alphabet of desire’,
(26)
correlating as they do the marmas of the body with the specific
sex-principles, anticipated in several ways the work of Reich who
discovered -- between 1936 and 1939 -- the vehicle of psychosexual
energy, which he named the orgone. Reich’s singular contribution to
psychology and, incidentally, to Western occultism, lies in the fact
that he successfully isolated the libido and demonstrated its
existence as a tangible, biological energy.
This energy, the actual substance of
Freud’s purely hypothetical concepts -- libido and id -- was
measured by Reich, lifted out of the category of hypothesis, and
reified.
[Indeed, "space aliens" allegedly
capable of "interstellar travel" would certainly have discovered
petrie dishes -- thereby rendering them capable of mass-producing as
much cloned "DNA" as they please. It has always appeared far more
plausible that these clever entities are far more interested in
farming orgone, prana, tantric energies or other intradimensional
"substances" which we do not yet know about or understand than mere
biological sperm or ova. B:.B:.]
He was, however, wrong in supposing that the orgone was the ultimate
energy. It is one of the more important kalas but not the Supreme Kala (Mahakala), although it may become such by virtue of a process
not unknown to Tantrics of the Varma Marg. Until comparatively
recent times it was known -- in the West -- to the Arab alchemists,
and the entire body of alchemical literature, with its tortuous
terminology and hieroglyphic style, reveals -- if it reveals
anything -- a deliberate device on the part of Initiates to veil the
true process of distilling the Mahakala.
Reich’s discovery is significant because he was probably the first
scientist to place psychology on a solid biological basic, ant the
first to demonstrate under laboratory conditions the existence of a
tangible magical energy at last measurable and therefore strictly
scientific. Whether this energy is termed the astral light (Levi),
the elan vital (Bergson), the Odic Force (Reichenbach),
the libido
(Freud), Reich was the first - with the possible exception of
Reichenbach (27)) -- actually to isolate it and demonstrate its
properties.
Austin Spare suspected, as early as 1913, that some such energy was
the basic factor in the re-activization of primal atavisms, and he
treated it accordingly as cosmic energy (the ’Atmospheric I’)
responsive to subconscious suggestion through the medium of Sentient
Symbols, and through the application of the body (Zos) in such a way
that it could reify remote atavisms and all possible future forms.
During the time that he was preoccupied with these themes Spare
dreamed repeatedly of fantastic buildings whose alignments he found
quite impossible to note down on waking. He supposed them to be
adumbrations of a future geometry of space-time bearing no known
relation to present-day forms of architecture. Eliphaz Levi claimed
a similar power of reification for the ’Astral Light’ but he failed
to show the precise manner of its manipulation. It was to this end
that Spare evolved his Alphabet of Desire ’each letter of which
relates to a sex- principle’. (28)
That is to say he noted certain
correspondences between the inner movements of the sexual impulse
and the outer form of its manifestation in symbols, sigils, or
letters rendered sentient by being charged with its energy. Dali
refers to such magically charged fetish-forms as ’ accommodations of
desire’(29) which are visualized as shadowy voids, black emptinesses,
each having the shape of the ghostly object which inhabits its
latency, and which IS only by virtue of the fact that it is NOT.
This indicates that the origin of
manifestation is non-manifestation, and it is plain to intuitive
apprehension that the orgone of Reich, the Atmospheric
’I’ of Austin
Spare, and the Dalinian delineations of the ’ accommodations of
desire’ refer in each case to an identical Energy manifesting
through the mechanics of desire. Desire, Energized Will, and
Obsession, are the keys to unlimited manifestation, for all form and
all power is latent in the Void, and its god-form is the Death
Posture.
These theories have their roots in very ancient practices, some of
which -- in distorted form -- provided the basis of the medieval
Witch Cult, covens of which flourished in New England at the time of
the Salem Witch Trials at the end of the 17th century. The
subsequent persecutions apparently obliterated all outer
manifestations both of the genuine cult and its debased
counterfeits.
The principal symbols of the original cult have survived the passage
of aeon-long cycles of time. (30) They all suggest the
Backward Way:
(31) The Sabbath sacred to Sevekh or Sebt, the number Seven, the
Moon, the Cat, Jackal, Hyaena, Pig, Black Snake, and other animals
considered unclean by later traditions; the Widdershins and
Back-to-Back dance, the Anal Kiss, the number Thirteen, the Witch
mounted on the besom handle, the Bat, and other forms of webbed or
winged nocturnal creature; the Batrachia generally, of which the
Toad, Frog, or Hekt (32) was preeminent.
These and similar symbols originally
typified the Draconian Tradition which was degraded by the pseudo
witch-cults during centuries of Christian persecution. The Mysteries
were profaned and the sacred rites were condemned as anti-Christian.
The Cult thus became the repository of inverted and perverted
religious rites and symbols having no inner meaning; mere
affirmations of the witches’ total commitment to anti-Christian
doctrine whereas -- originally -- they were living emblems, sentient
symbols, of ante-Christian faith.
When the occult significance of primal symbols is fathomed at the
Draconian level, the system of sorcery which Spare evolved through
contact with ’Witch’ Paterson becomes explicable, and all magical
circles, sorceries, and cults, are seen as manifestations of the
Shadow.
Notes:
1) See The White People, The
Shining Pyramid, and other stories. This theme is a frequent
one with Machen. The hideous atavisms described by Lovecraft
in many of his tales evoke even more potently the atmosphere
of cosmic horror and ’evil’ peculiar to the influx of
extra-terrestrial powers.
2) See The Confessions, Moonchild, Magick Without Tears, and
other works by Crowley.
3) Frederick Muller, 1975.
4) ’The body considered as a whole I call Zos’ (The Book of
Pleasure, p. 45). The Kia is the ’Atmospheric I’. The
’I’
and the ’Eye’, being interchangeable, the entire range of
’eye’ symbolism -- to which repeated reference has been made
-- is here applicable.
5) First published in 1913 and 1921 respectively. There has
been a recent republication of The Book of Pleasure, with an
introduction by Kenneth Grant. (Montreal, 1975).
6) This was to have been divided into two parts: The Book of
the Living Word of Zos and The Zoetic Grimoire of Zos; in
the present chapter it is referred to simply as the grimoire.
7) Vide infra.
8) See previous chapter.
9) The significance of the number eight as the height, or
ultimate One, is explained in Aleister Crowley & the Hidden
God.
10) i.e. the assumption of the ’god-form’ of death.
11) See Arthur Osborne: Ramana Maharshi and the Path of Self
Knowledge, London, 1954.
12) See Shri Haranath: His Play and Precepts, Bombay, 1954.
13) i.e. 1913.
14) The 5ø = 6ø Ritual was published in Volume I, No. 3 in
1910.
15) See Chapter I.
16) By Qabalah, Hand=Yod=10; Eye=Ayin=70. The total, 80=Pe
(Mouth), the Goddess, Uterus, or Utterer of the Word.
17) Crowley’s definition of magick. See Magick, p. 131.
18) i.e. the True Will.
19) Crowley defined the Great Work in terms of the ’Next
Step’, implying that the Great Work is not a remote and
mysterious thing, unattainable by humans, but the
realization of the ’here and now’, and attention to
immediate reality. Both Spare and Crowley castigated the
prevaricators who, scared of the idea of work, look to the
’future life’ and the unattainable, instead of seizing
reality and living NOW. ’O Babblers, Prattlers, Loquacious
Ones,...learn first what is work! and the Great Work is not
so far beyond’ (The Book of Lies, Chapter 52).
20) 1886-1945.
21) Hell is the type of the concealed place symbolic of the
subconsciousness; the ’infernal’ region.
22) See Chapter 10.
23) Vide, infra, p. 204.
24) i.e. a sex magical working with a female partner.
25) i.e. a solitary sex act.
26) Described in
The Book of
Pleasure (A.O. Spare),
republished 1975.
27) See Letters on Od and Magnetism; Karl von Reichenbach,
London, 1926.
28)
The Book of
Pleasure, p. 56.
29) See The Secret Life of Salvador Dali, New York, 1942.
30) They were carried over from the Draconian or Typhonian
Traditions of pre-dynastic Egypt. See The Magical Revival,
Chapter 3.
31) The Way of Resurgent Atavisms.
32) Hecate, the witch or transformer from dark to light, as
the tadpole of the waters to the frog of dry land, as the
dark and baleful moon of witchcraft to the full bright orb
of magical radiance and enchantment exemplified for Spare by
’Witch’ Paterson who changed from the hag to the virgin
before his eyes. See Images and Oracles of Austin Osman
Spare, 1975.
|