Category: Sigils

Reflections of Zos: Austin Osman Spare (1886-1956)

On By D-LuxIn Aleister Crowley, Austin Osman Spare, Chaos Magic, Genesis P-Orridge, Gordon White, Kenneth Grant, Ramsey Dukes/Lionel Snell, SigilsLeave a comment

Art can contradict science.

– Austin Osman Spare

What Spare is doing is “tricking” us. All his writings are symbolic, they were never intended to be taken literally, as illustrations, on any level. His writings are primarily journals, decorative encryptions of basic techniques of travel. But they are appendices to the REAL work. This special trick was to convince everybody that his drawings, paintings, and images were symbolic, fantastical, products of his imagination. They are in fact the essence of his sorcery.

– Genesis P-Orridge 1995
Spare in his later years. (http://www.austinspare.co.uk/zos.html)

About one month ago (in April 2019 if you read this in the far future 🙂 ), I had the pleasure of giving a presentation on Chaos Magic to Minnesota’s Left Hand Path Community in Minneapolis. We had great discussions afterward and it gave me something to blog about: Austin Osman Spare, who came up in the talk and about whom there is always more to say.

Austin Osman Spare is often considered the grandfather of Chaos Magic, something he would have probably scoffed at. Refusing membership in Aleister Crowley’s magical order, the A∴A∴, Spare wrote:

Others praise ceremonial Magic, and are supposed to suffer much Ecstasy! Our asylums are over-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.

– Austin Osman Spare, The Book of Pleasure (self-love)

In Spare’s ridicule of ceremonial magicians, it’s hard not to see his ire directed at Crowley himself. For his part, on the one hand Crowley remembered him fondly. Based on the Beast’s steamy poem “The Twins” that he dedicated to the artist (Crowley n.d.), he was jonesing for AOS. On the other, Crowley later accused Spare of being a “Black Brother,” a magician that refuses to surrender her/his ego at the required moment and becomes corrupted by it. Or in this case, maybe one who became contemptible to a self-styled magus he criticized and would not follow. How many have found themselves in a similar boat?

Based on egos it’s little surprise these precocious magicians clashed. One was a poet, a celebrated mountain climber, and a renowned exhibitionist; the other a reclusive artist of national renown before the age of 20. Whether true or not, labeling Spare egotistical is the pot calling the kettle black. Yet despite their differences, their approaches to magic are sometimes characterized as much the same. Although occult authors may cohabit the same bookstore shelves, all magic is not alike. That’s as true of different magicians as it is of different magics practiced by the same adept.

In Liber Null which doubles as the syllabus of the Chaos Magic order Illuminates of Thanateros (IOT), Peter Carroll defines magic as “the science and art of causing change to occur in conformity with will” (Carroll 1987). In Magick in Theory and Practice (accessible through Liber ABA: Magick, Book 4), Crowley defines magick as “the Science and Art of causing Change to occur in conformity with Will.” You can see where Carroll got his inspiration for this. It’s a very good encompassing definition at that, which is why so many people use it. However, Spare’s approach in some ways contradicts it, which is part of what makes him so interesting. While Carrol’s definition does include art, one doesn’t get the sense that includes the draughtsman’s art that was Spare’s. It’s perplexing that in wishing to sidestep the ideologies of the OTO, et al., Carrol adopted this Crowley factoid at such a fundamental level.

Traditional science has a linear approach to time and events. Following this, the scientific approach to magic carefully records operations, and the circumstances under which they were performed, to determine what is and isn’t effective when the results (or lack of them) are known. A linear approach to cause and effect, even if why the magic works is unknown. Although his ability as an artist was not just a matter of gift and talent but also practice, the height of Spare’s sorcery eludes the possibility of boxing it into a single, practical methodology and tracking results in this way.

Spare’s popularity with occultists today has less to do with his provocative art than his sigilizing technique, described in The Book of Pleasure (Spare 1913) and most famously by Carroll in Liber Null. While the technique is well worth looking into, as Genesis P-Orridge eloquently argues in his essay “Virtual Mirrors,” Spare’s greatest sorceries were his drawings and paintings.

Drawing by Spare incorporating sigils (from Pilkington n.d.).

Spare’s technique as widely used by chaos magicians can be summarized as follows:

1) Construct a phrase detailing the magical intent.

2) Eliminate vowels and duplicate letters.

3) Artistically recombine the remaining letters to form a sigil like the examples shown.

4) Release the sigil to do its work by exhausting oneself, thereby forgetting the intent to avoid conflicting thoughts and intentions that might prevent it from manifesting. (“We are not free to believe…however much we so desire, having conflicting ideas to first exhaust.” – The Book of Pleasure)

A sample of sigils created by AOS with his Alphabet of Desire. (Image: Wikimedia Commons)

Exhaustion is achieved by focusing on the sigil in an ‘inhibitory’ or ‘excitatory’ state, in other words by focusing all attention on it while shutting off the rest of the mind. This can be done by staring at the sigil during trance, while reaching intense emotional states (anger, fear, or joy), or at orgasm either solo or with a partner when the mind is emptied of other things. Gordon White provides an effective meditative approach in “Wish Granting Squiggles,” chapter 7 of The Chaos Protocols. Spare himself favored the death posture described in the The Book of Pleasure. The mechanism that activates the sigil is described somewhat differently by Spare and modern chaotes, but is generally thought to involve placing the sigil unobstructed into the subconscious where the desire would be recognized and result in an obsession that must be fulfilled.

There’s no reason not to adjust these steps or the entire method to one’s own liking (“nothing is true, everything is permitted”), but it’s a useful procedure to follow if one has never done it before. In fact, Kenneth Grant, who was Spare’s friend at the end of his life, describes the artist’s views on the necessity of defining one’s own approach:

It was Spare’s opinion that for this language to be truly effective, each individual should evolve his own, creating his sigils from the material nearest to hand – his own subconscious.

Kenneth Grant 1972

Please note, it is not necessary nor desirable to learn and use any traditional body of sigils, seals, or the like. While a lot of practitioners consider the step-by-step method above to be the beginning and end of the sigil method, the sky is literally the limit. Other forms of sigil magic include turning the intent into a mantra or incantation that can be chanted or sung, fashioning a pictographic image rather than one combining letters, and dance or other forms of physical performance.

Stop at sigils? Gen says “nah.” (Image: Wikimedia Commons)

But what about Spare’s art? If P-Orridge is right, he understood that his drawings were not mere representations but as “real” as the subjects, like a mirror indissolubly linked to what it reflects.

Space and time are overcome in his sorcery, his art mirrors capturing the essence of his subjects for future resurgence, including himself. Creating immortality or “a very different form of mortality,” through his art.

…There is a drawing in my possession by Spare, a pencil and gouache, finished in 1928. The main figure is Mrs. Paterson. Coming from behind her head, making a blister in a shimmering green pencilled aura, is a half completed face. It belongs to no-one, everyone. It is her at times, it is cavalier, it is also Austin Osman Spare. This one picture contains all the secrets Spare never wrote down, and his books are thorough, precise, and often opaque. Spare appears in the bottom right-hand corner, represented as he projects he will look as an old man, eyes closed, concentrated, manifesting, it would seem, the other beings in the picture. Remarkably, his projection of an older SELF is uncannily accurate.

Genesis P-Orridge 1995

To provide some context, Yelda Paterson is the elderly witch that initiated Spare into magic as a teenager, also a close friend and lover. Observers have seen the image move, in P-Orridge’s opinion because Spare captured some of the life essence of the subjects in it, who live on through Spare’s work.

The beauty of Chaos Magic lies in more than its simplicity and the highly accessible method of working with “wish granting squiggles.” Its impact on other forms of magic and on society in general are owed to its role as an example of archaic revival (I’m not saying Terrance McKenna was right, but I do think he’s “good to think with”). Despite the differences I noted earlier between Spare and Crowley, for the early chaotes Chaos Magic was a project of stripping other traditions of dogma and non-essential components to arrive at the shamanic core they all share, Thelemic magick included. “When stripped of local symbolism and terminology, all systems show a remarkable uniformity of method. This is because all systems ultimately derive from the tradition of Shamanism” (Carroll 1987). Whether this is owed to recovering the common ancient strata of these practices, the shared human (and non-human) capabilities that power them, or something else is still an open question. Without a doubt Austin Osman Spare was, as Lionell Snell (1987) called him, the “master shaman” of this new form of “shamanistic Sorcery.” While many attempt to duplicate it through the sigil method, that is only be a hollow echo of his real magic.

Sources

Carroll, Peter (1987), Liber Null and Psychonaut. Weiser.

Crowley, Aleister (n.d.), The Twins, accessed 24 April 2019: http://mypoeticside/show-classic-poem-6834

Crowley, Aleister (2012), Liber ABA: Magick, Book 4, 2nd revised ed. Weiser.

Pilkington, Mark (n.d.), “Atavism to Zos: Spare’s Philosophy and Magic.” Accessed 22 May 2019: http://www.austinspare.co.uk/zos15.html

Grant, Kenneth (1972), The Magical Revival. Muller.

P-Orridge, Genesis (1995), “Virtual Mirrors: Thee Prophetic Portals ov Austin Osman Spare in T.I.M.E.” Available at the Genesis Breyer P-Orridge online archive, accessed 22 May 2019: http://genesisporridgearchive.blogspot.com/2014/11/virtual-mirrors-austin-osman-spare.html?zx=2be454646eb2031b

Snell, Lionell (1987), “Exploring Spare’s Magic.” Fulgur. Accessed 22 May 2019: https://fulgur.co.uk/austin-osman-spare/exploring-spares-magic/?v=7516fd43adaa

Spare, Austin Osman (1916), The Book of Pleasure (self love). Available at the Hermetic Library, accessed 24 April 2019: https://hermetic.com/spare/pleasure

White, Gordon (2015), The Chaos Protocols. Red Wheel/Weiser.

Divination for Spell Work

On By D-LuxIn Chaos Magic, Divination, I Ching, Sigils, TarotLeave a comment

Some of us have a well-developed sense of what will and won’t work for us. Their spider sense tingles when they’re about to hit an icy patch on the road of life. But maybe you don’t or you’d like more insight. When mine tingles, I’m simply unsure, or there are a lot of balls in the air and it’s difficult to say how they’ll land in a particular situation, I do an I Ching or Tarot reading, or both, to determine the probable outcome.

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I’m still a fool, but I use divination to avoid difficult situations and recover more quickly. (image: Wikimedia commons)

Not everyone does, it’s a personal choice. I know from experience that my ego sometimes clouds my judgement and I benefit from the insight of divination. In fact, divination has been my one constant tether to the invisible world even through years when I was not practicing magic. I’ve used the I Ching since I was 17 and I’m grateful for the assistance the Shen, or celestials, provide me through this remarkable book. I also use Tarot, playing cards, and other means for information on probable outcomes. If you do it you know how helpful it can be. If you don’t, you might want to try it. Sometimes we just want to take our chances and don’t care a lot about the knocks and bruises life may bring us. If you’re younger than me and better positioned socially than I was in years past, you may not feel the need for a reading. But help is available if you want a little insurance, or you’ve skinned your knee casting a spell and want to do better next time.

If there is a psychic censor or something else that inhibits sigil work or other kinds of magic, it may have a purpose. Would you really like it if every stray thought you had manifested physically? Before you cast a spell, you have the option to find out how the effects might ripple through your life. Sigil making is so easy that you could find yourself launching numerous and even contradictory spells that interfere with one another. It’s been said that “magic follows the path of least resistance.” This means that things with a good probability of success will be helped along by magic, while pursuit of the impossible may be a waste of time and effort. (But never doubt that with the right incentive, skill, and elbow grease, the seemingly miraculous can happen—what we colloquially refer to as magic!) If you want to win the lottery you have to buy a ticket. But millions of others are going to buy one too. Even if buying the ticket and magic get you closer to the prize, do you want to spend the money on dozens of tickets if you’re never going to win? Before undertaking any significant magic, it’s beneficial to determine the likely outcome through some form of divination. It will help you clarify your wishes among competing alternatives and decide which are worth your efforts. If you need more money, the cards may suggest it’s time to find a new job instead of spending more on lotto tickets when it’s not going to pay off. Then you can plan a course of action to improve your chances of landing a dream job.

A good Tarot or I Ching reading can help you gather intelligence, sharpen your focus to improve your chances of success, or may warn you of the unforeseen problems that might follow some act. It’s also been said that every wish is answered, only sometimes the answer is “no,” or the way it might manifest is not something you’d really want. Remember The Monkey’s Paw? If you’d known the outcome in advance, maybe you’d have not wanted what you wished for in the first place.

In the end, it’s up to you to decide the best approach for you. Divination can help you make informed decisions and bolster your internal Spidey sense.

Think about it. You might want revenge for some loss you’ve experienced. Upon reflection, you might be better off pursuing your ultimate goal rather than wasting your time and energy trying to harm an enemy or bitter rival—e.g., finding a new lover worth your time rather than messing up a rival that your ex will eventually throw over just like you. A Tarot reading that includes the Justice card (11, one of my numbers) may be telling you just that.

The Justice card in a reading may advise that you seek balance and forego revenge. (image: Wikimedia commons)

Similarly, if you’re in a conflict it’s often better to step out of the line of fire rather than to engage in direct combat. That can leave competitors wasting their energy trying to bring you down while you safely move closer to success with your goals. Maybe some protection work would help.
If divination is new to you, try asking a skilled friend to read for you or hire a good professional. In fact, some recommend never reading for yourself, but again that’s a personal choice.

Whether or not you have a well-developed intuition, divination provides added insight on chances of success or possible impacts of spell work. (Marvel black light greeting card by Third Eye, 1971)

There are countless books about divination. The one I began with was Positive Magic by Marion Weinstein. It gives detailed instructions for getting started with Tarot, the I Ching, and tips on astrology as well. It also gives helpful advice on avoiding common pitfalls and pratfalls in the art. Note that Weinstein’s book is out of print, you might find one used, but there are lots of good books and websites on the topic. Go to the bookstore and skim through some books on the Tarot, I Ching, etc. and see which one feels right to you. Some prefer to work with playing cards rather than the Tarot and just about everyone already has them. I had good results with methods in Professor Charles Porterfield’s A Deck of Spells almost out of the box. The best reader I’ve ever known only used playing cards and whatever kabbalistic significance you want to give to the Tarot (and there’s really no reason you shouldn’t), she was still better than more educated ceremonial magicians. Skills.

Divination gives you a window not on some grim fate that awaits you, but the probable outcome if things continue as they’re going at the time of the reading. I recently talked with someone who said that when she took an abnormal psych course, the teacher warned the class they would probably start to imagine that they had symptoms of the illnesses they were going to learn about, it would freak them out, and they should try to let it pass. In divination, with the wrong interpretive guide or an overactive imagination, before long you may be paralyzed with fear about some hideous, imaginary fate lurking for you in the shadows, especially the first time you draw the Death card! You have to learn to let it pass and take an expansive view of the meanings in divination whether you use Tarot cards, I Ching hexagrams, tea leaves or anything else.

Divination gives you insight on how to alter your trajectory or intention so you can arrive at the kind of outcome you’re looking for. A good way to go about that is to formulate your question for the cards or oracle something like this:

“What will be the probable outcome if I do spell work (or a sigil, or a curse, etc.) to acheive X.”

With magic you enter a quantum world in which exciting new possibilities are just around the corner! Divination will help you to find and follow the paths to your heart’s desire. 

Sources

Porterfield, Charles (2015), A Deck of Spells: Hoodoo Playing Card Magic in Rootwork and Conjure. Lucky Mojo Curio Company.
http://www.professorporterfield.com/a-deck-of-spells.html

Weinstein, Marion (2002), Positive Magic. New Page Books.

Chaos Redux or Sigil Fetishism

On By D-LuxIn Austin Osman Spare, Chaos Magic, Fetishism, Genesis P-Orridge, SigilsLeave a comment

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.  –Austin Osman Spare, The Book of Pleasure (self-love) (1913)

And thee most powerful weapon we have is thee Sigil, thee magickal process by which we charge our dreams and desires, and make manifest their living beauty. -Genesis P-Orridge, Thee Psychich Bible (1994)

On April 20, the first day of Taurus during the full moon in Libra, I had the pleasure of giving a presentation on Chaos Magic to the Minnesota Left Hand Path Community meetup in Minneapolis. If you’re reading this and don’t know about them, it’s probably in your interest to look them up on Facebook here. They’re a great group involved in many things. Naturally we talked about sigil making and that’s inspired me to do some blogging.

IMO sigils are an example of Sondheim’s lyric in a song near the end of Into the Woods, “Wishes are our children.”

The Chaos Star (Wikimedia Commons).

A sigil is basically something you create as a personal symbol imbued with a wish or intention. I’ll describe how to do that in a future post. In the classic method of Austin Osman Spare, the sigil maker actively forgets the intention so that for practical purposes, the sigil becomes a thing independent of your continuing belief or physical pursuit that might otherwise be diverted by other concerns competing for your time and attention. Why? We are all magical as much as physical beings, and some say our minds have a censor that prevents magic from manifesting without skilled effort. In this view, the sigil is supposed to enable you to slip past the censor to allow the process to work. Whatever the reason and frankly, all proposed reasons are only theories, something prevents all our wishes from coming true and sigilizing is a technique for getting around that magically in order to fulfill your desires.

Another idea more in line with Sondheim’s lyric is that sigil making creates a ‘fetish’, in an anthropological rather than a sexual sense, that works for you. I’m not going to cite any authority on that because that’s my idea. A wise woman once summed this up for me in a five words: a fetish is a “thing that is a person.” In other words, it is a seemingly inanimate object or symbol that may acquire agency and works on your behalf. This is a broader definition of fetish than the sexual kind but it works in a similar fashion – for some people an object like shoes, nylons, a painfully cinched waist or other objectified body part, etc. becomes as desirable as a sexual partner and more so in some cases, or in a sense becomes the partner. The thing becomes like a person and serves to satisfy a burning desire. The sigil does the same but outside as well as inside the bedroom. But perhaps those are not so different. A sigil can potentially become a sexual fetish as well, if only temporarily until it is incarnated. Formulate an intent that’s a sexual desire, sigilize it, charge and release it through sexual excitement… The possibilities are endless.

Apart from the media on which it was created, a sigil also has a spiritual life and can travel beyond its corporeal form to do its job, even after the form (a piece of paper on which it is written, etc.) is destroyed. This is because you endow it with life, become the maker, and give it a job to perform for you: fulfillment of your desire or intention.

In the last century or so of Western thought, the fetish has been conceived as disempowering by putting people in a position of relating to things and not other people. In contrast, the sigil is activated to get you more of what you really want. The power and responsibility is in your hands. This can involve relationships with other people if their wishes coalesce with your own. But there are ways these powerful motivations are turned against us in advertising and the marketplace every day. Perhaps no one has articulated this better than Karl Marx  and Marxian thinkers who have followed him, through his concept of commodity fetishism. In this ‘anti-life equation’ people are reduced to consumers with desires fed to them, and their fulfillment pre-appointed, so rather than fulfilling their true desires their behavior is directed and controlled to the benefit of a small cadre of fabulously wealthy masters. More on that in a future post along with instructions for how you make a sigil that works for you.

But next, I want to provide some background for those of you who have not done this before, or a refresher for those who have, starting with the use of divination with spellcasting.

Sources

P-Orridge, Genesis (2010), Thee Psychick Bible (edited by Jason Louv). Feral House.

Spare, Austin Osman (1916), The Book of Pleasure (self love). Available at the Hermetic Library: https://hermetic.com/spare/pleasure