Austin Osman Spare
Apr. 9th, 2007 09:31 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
poliphiloThis guy trundled onto the Antiques Road Show with a picture by Austin Osman Spare that he'd bought in a car boot sale or found in his attic. "I understand" he simpered to the expert. "That he dabbled in black magic."
"Dabbled"? That's like saying Einstein dabbled in physics or Tiger Woods plays a little golf. Dabbling is what children do in muddy puddles.
But the words have become glued together, joined at the hip. If it's magic you're a dabbler. Even if, like Spare, you're the world's number one. The ready made phrase, besides displaying a lack of thought in its user, suggests middlebrow distaste, a waving of the proverbial barge-pole, a nervous refusal to take the subject quite seriously. "Eugh, look at the naughty man, he's dabbling. Children, avert your eyes."
And while we're being prissy, "black magic" is another no-brainer. You might as well talk about white science and black science. Or white shop-keeping and black shop-keeping. Magic is magic. It's a discipline. A profession. No more or less disreputable in itself than any other. Like most things people do it can be done with bad intent. Spare practised magic. He was a magician. He was the magician's magician. Even Crowley deferred to him. It was widely acknowledged that if you wanted results- as opposed to lots of pretty theorising- then Spare was your man.
Much of Spare's writing is available on line. I tried to read some of it last night. And got choked off pretty quickly. Humourless, self-pitying, phallocentric are words that come to mind. Spare was- and I'm weighing my words carefully here- a complete wanker.
But he was also- incidentally, as it happens- a quite brilliant artist. I wish I had a Spare in my attic.
"Dabbled"? That's like saying Einstein dabbled in physics or Tiger Woods plays a little golf. Dabbling is what children do in muddy puddles.
But the words have become glued together, joined at the hip. If it's magic you're a dabbler. Even if, like Spare, you're the world's number one. The ready made phrase, besides displaying a lack of thought in its user, suggests middlebrow distaste, a waving of the proverbial barge-pole, a nervous refusal to take the subject quite seriously. "Eugh, look at the naughty man, he's dabbling. Children, avert your eyes."
And while we're being prissy, "black magic" is another no-brainer. You might as well talk about white science and black science. Or white shop-keeping and black shop-keeping. Magic is magic. It's a discipline. A profession. No more or less disreputable in itself than any other. Like most things people do it can be done with bad intent. Spare practised magic. He was a magician. He was the magician's magician. Even Crowley deferred to him. It was widely acknowledged that if you wanted results- as opposed to lots of pretty theorising- then Spare was your man.
Much of Spare's writing is available on line. I tried to read some of it last night. And got choked off pretty quickly. Humourless, self-pitying, phallocentric are words that come to mind. Spare was- and I'm weighing my words carefully here- a complete wanker.
But he was also- incidentally, as it happens- a quite brilliant artist. I wish I had a Spare in my attic.
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no subject
Date: 2007-04-12 07:13 pm (UTC)I don't suppose he could run very fast.
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Date: 2007-04-12 09:56 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-04-13 08:59 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-04-13 12:17 pm (UTC)My husband told me one September morning over breakfast that he would be driving down to Atlanta over Halloween to summon a demon with his little group...
He mentioned the meeting (provocatively, I think now) from time to time over the three weeks, but when I tried to ask simple questions--"Exactly how do you plan to do this?"--he was evasive and patronising: "I can't talk about it."
He was amazingly calm about it.
I wondered if he would bring back something from the Other world where demons dwell, but I didn't know how to ask.
He spent most of the day reading The Golden Dawn by the living room window, studying up for the big weekend, while I took the children for walks, to the library, to see their grandmother.
Then the big weekend arrived, and he didn't leave. I made Katie and Ricky costumes for Trick-or-Treating, and they wore them around the house all day. Richard sat in his chair, reading The Golden Dawn.
"Aren't you--you know?--going to Atlanta?"
"Cancelled," he said, turning a page and not looking up.
--It was during this waiting time that I dreamed about Crowley chasing me down corridors.
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Date: 2007-04-13 01:10 pm (UTC)Also unkind.
Crowley- who despised people who dabbled in magic- would have been far more cutting.
He was a complex person, was Crowley. For all the hype and bragadoccio I believe he did very little real harm and possibly quite a lot of good.
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Date: 2007-04-13 01:16 pm (UTC)In our different ways, we're all yearning to look behind the veil and "know everything." Most of us don't know how to go about it--when I get most yearning, I tend to pray, just because I don't know what else to do.
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Date: 2007-04-13 01:52 pm (UTC)Maybe thats our destiny- to know it all.
I think it'll take a lot of lifetimes (and whatever comes after lifetimes) for us to get there.