Austin Osman Spare

[poliphilo]

This 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.

Comments

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

Your husband was a silly man.

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.

[jackiejj.livejournal.com]

I've been thinking about what Einstein said, that mystery is the most beautiful thing, and about my mother who is increasingly frail and who says almost every time we're together, "I want to know--everything! About the universe!"

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.

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

Crowley wanted to know everything too.

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.